A Day in Oil City, PA

Oil City is in Northwestern Pennsylvania where Oil Creek flows into the Allegheny River. It is part of the Oil Heritage Region, Inc. an officially designated Pennsylvania Heritage Park. In 1859, Colonel Edwin Drake drilled the world's first commercial oil well here that started a "chain of events that literally changed the world." In 2004, t was established as the 25th National Heritage Area in the U.S., a place where "natural, cultural, historic and scenic resources combine to form a cohesive, nationally distinctive landscape arising from patterns of human activity shaped by geography."

At the Visitors Office (a former train depot) or the Chamber of Commerce you can pick up brochures for walking/driving tours of the downtown and residential historic districts. This area is so chock full of beautiful, fascinating, historical, cultural and just plain fun things to do, we ended up staying a second night and wish we had more. We barely scratched the surface.

Here's some of what we saw on our first day in and around Oil City:

Beautiful White Victorian Home


Street scene in Oil City


Art on the sidewalk - decorative Storm Grates


Steeples of St. Joseph Church


St. Joseph Church, high on a hill and visible all over town


Oil City Railroad tracks


Green Craftsman style home in Oil City


Division Street


Statue of Seneca Chief called Cornplanter. We found his statue next to the river bank with a plaque that said we were standing on part of the land reserve granted to him in gratitude for his efforts to maintain peace along the frontier in the late eighteenth century.


C. Lockhart sign, one of many historical markers located around the town