First published in 1907, A Few Scraps records the birth of the oil industry in Pennsylvania from the eyewitness perspective of Alfred Smiley, a Pennsylvania native who worked on the world's first modern oil well. The "Drake" well, often called the birthplace of the modern petroleum industry, was struck on Oil Creek near Titusville, Pennsylvania, in August 1859. Smiley worked on this well and many others throughout the region, riding the overnight success and eventual decline of the oil boom in the second half of the nineteenth century. Mixing a quirky personal narrative with...
First published in 1907, A Few Scraps records the birth of the oil industry in Pennsylvania from the eyewitness perspective of Alfred Smil...
