Pithole and Kanawha Oil Company stock certificate c1865 (Pennsylvania)

Nice PA oil piece.  Top vignette is the Pennsylvania state seal. At the bottom, there is a small dogs head vignette.  Unissued and not cancelled. Circa 1865 from issued examples. Dated 186_. Approximately 11 x 7.5 inches.

Incorporated 1865, the Pithole & Kanawha Oil Company operated in the late 1860s during the Pennsylvania oil boom, as evidenced by its name, which refers to the Pithole Creek area where a major oil strike occurred in 1865, and the Kanawha River valley, an earlier center of salt and oil production.

The story of Pithole began in the spring of 1864 when Isaiah Frazier, James Faulkner Jr., Frederick W. Jones, and J. Nelson Tappan formed the United States Petroleum Company. The company soon purchased 64 acres of the Holmden Farm on which they quickly built the “Wildcat Well.” On January 7th, 1865, when the completed well began pumping out 250 barrels of oil a day. Overnight, stocks in the US Petroleum Co. skyrocketed from $6.25 to $40, generating enormous interest in the Pithole Creek Area.

Duncan and Prather, seeing the possible gains, laid out 500 lots for a town, which they called Pithole City, located in Venango County. The success of Frazier’s Wildcat Well brought a stampede of prospectors and entrepreneurs to the unfinished site of Pithole City. The first building of Pithole City began construction of May 24th, 1865. After just one week, Holmden Street, the main street of Pithole City, was lined with buildings under construction. Over the course of the next 90 days Pithole transformed from an empty plot of land to a bustling city of 15,000 inhabitants.

Unfortunately, Pithole’s success would not last. The death of Pithole began in the August of 1865 when the Homestead Well stopped producing.  By January 1866, just one year after Frazier struck oil, the town was only producing 3,600 barrels a day. By December that number was down to 1,800. Once 1867 rolled around it was down to only 1,000. After pumping out a totally of 3,500,000 barrels of oil, Pithole City had been sucked dry. Seeing that there was no more money to be made, the prospectors and entrepreneurs packed their belongings and fled the city in droves, leaving the city abandoned.

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