A petroleum history exhibit opens this Sunday in Titusville, where 153 years ago, Edwin L. Drake drilled the oil well that launched the modern industry.
The Drake Well Museum’s new 10,000-square-foot exhibit is called, “There's a Drop of OIL and Gas in Your Life Every Day!"
The museum includes operating oil field machinery in a park setting. There’s a steam engine whistle calling listeners to a replica of Edwin Drake's 1859 engine house. And squeaking rod lines show how workers used one engine to pump many wells. There are also opportunities to smell oil from wells around the world, make plastic, and watch a film in a sensory theatre that conveys movement of a whale--the animals were saved by the petroleum industry since they had previously been excessively hunted for blubber.
“When you tour the gallery and look at the problem-solving of the early pioneers, you gain a great deal of respect for the people who built this industry,” said museum director Barbara Zolli.
Zolli said the exhibit is particularly relevant in the light of the current natural gas drilling boom.
“You see in the industry the evolution of drilling from percussion to rotary and now horizontal,” she said. “You see the concerns that came out of 150 years of environmental impact on the valley that we call, ‘The Valley That Changed the world,’ here in northwestern Pennsylvania. And you see how nature has recovered but you see that the impact is much more global in scope and now we need to be thinking about those issues as we drill.”