Emlenton Borough

Emlenton Borough Hall, P.O. Box 537, Emlenton PA 16373; phone: 724-867-8611.

Beginnings [1]

The land on which Emlenton lies was acquired early in the nineteenth century by Philadelphian Joseph B. Fox, who became the founder of the town of Foxburg, four miles downriver. When the site of Emlenton was surveyed in 1830, the new town was named in honor of Fox's wife, Hannah Emlen. Andrew McCaslin was one of the earliest settlers in the area that was to become Emlenton. He operated a store as early as 1820, conducted a ferry across the Allegheny River, and ran two covered wagons on the route between Emlenton and Pittsburgh. In 1834 there were but three homes in the settlement. Warehouses were the village's most imposing earliest buildings, erected to store the goods shipped upriver from Pittsburgh. The district's oldest extant resource, the Valley House Hotel, was constructed along the Allegheny in 1837. The first bridge over the river, a Burr-arch covered bridge of two 230-foot spans, was erected in 1856, funded by stock subscriptions of the local citizens. County Judge John Keating, an early settler and the town's first Postmaster, became the major stockholder in the bridge. The 1856 bridge was replaced by a Howe truss bridge of iron in 1883; the toll remained on the bridge until 1898 when Venango County paid off the outstanding bonds and the bridge became the first toll-free bridge on the Allegheny in Venango County. In the 1970s, the iron bridge was replaced by a new concrete structure opening into Fifth Street. There was little in Emlenton prior to the 1860s. The handful of residents who lived in the settlement owed their livelihood primarily to the river ford and the downstream traffic — particularly logging — related to the Allegheny River. The community grew as an important oil-related railroad and river town in the second half of the nineteenth century, eventually becoming established as a desirable place to refine crude oil pumped in the region for shipment to market across the country.

Emlenton's early years of economic prosperity were due to the activity of the iron industry along the Allegheny River. As early as 1838, no fewer than twenty furnaces were in operation within sixteen miles of the town. Leading facilities included Kensington Furnace, located on the A. W. Crawford farm, across the river from Emlenton, Shippen Furnace on the Magee farm near Nickleville, north of Emlenton, and Richland Furnace, at the mouth of Mill Creek. When the river became navigable in the spring and fall, ironmasters received their goods from steamboats and Emlenton became an important shipping and receiving point in the region. John Keating, mentioned above, was an early local ironmaster, having erected a furnace in 1846 south of Emlenton between St. Petersburg and Turkey City; at the time of his death in 1881 he had amassed more than one thousand acres of land. No tangible remnants of the iron industry are found within the confines of the historic district.

The Borough of Emlenton was incorporated on January 27, 1859, only months before Col. Edwin L. Drake sank the first commercial oil well near Titusville and changed the face of the world — and of this community — forever. Emlenton lies within the "Lower Region" of the northwestern Pennsylvania oil fields, as characterized by Williamson and Dunn in The American Petroleum Industry 1859-1899. These same authors also wrote that "...visiting the Oil Regions in the summer of 1868, J. R. G. Hazard reported [in the New York Daily Tribune] a prevalent belief in an oil belt extending all the way from Titusville to Emlenton in the still undeveloped Lower Region."

The prosperity which Emlenton enjoyed in the first quarter-century of the oil industry was due primarily to its location on the Allegheny River and to the success of nearby strikes at St. Petersburg, Foxburg, and at Parker's Landing (now known simply as Parker). J. H. Newton's 1879 county history recorded: "Since the year 1860, Emlenton seems to have received a new impetus in business and growth. Two railroads pass through the place, which have added greatly to its advantage. In the year above alluded to, it polled only 40 votes. At present it contains a population of 1,600, and polls from 300 to 400 votes. Within the last few years the town has undergone extensive improvements."

Newton's "new impetus" was oil, which was found first east of town, on nearby Ritchey Run, in 1867. Known as Well No. 3, it produced well into the twentieth century and, along with No. 8 at Mineral Springs — also just east of the municipal limits — was one of the oldest continuously-producing wells in the Pennsylvania field. Emlenton residents even drilled for oil in their back yards, some finding deposits that produced up to one hundred barrels daily. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century show derricks dotting the landscape within the historic district, and oral tradition established Emlenton as the home of more millionaires per capita than any other town in the country. This reputation — accurate or not — was re-affirmed in an article in the Oil City Derrick as recently as 1978.

With the discovery of oil in the environs, the town became a bustling center of activity for Lower Region exploration. Railroads were established, including the Allegheny Valley Railroad and the narrow-gauge Emlenton & Shippenville Railroad. Four hotels thrived, a brick school was built, and several churches were organized. A foundry was established which specialized in oil field equipment, and commercial buildings and handsome homes were built.

To complete the picture, in the last years of the century, a thirty-odd year-old native son named Harry Crawford established in Emlenton a business destined to become an international leader in the processing of "Pennsylvania crude," the very finest petroleum in the world. The Emlenton Historic District is significant for its position as the birthplace and long-time home of Crawford's Quaker State Oil Refining Company, one of the nation's major petroleum refiners. The Emlenton Refining Company had been located at the west end of town since the 1890s. With the creation of the Quaker State Oil Refining Company at this complex in 1931, the community's importance within the industry rose even higher. Consisting of large storage tanks, a variety of equipment, and associated production and office buildings, the sprawling refinery along the river is a clearly identifiable physical manifestation of the patterns of oil production in northwestern Pennsylvania.