The McClintock Well No. 1 is the oldest continuously operated oil well in the world. It has been pumping oil out of northwestern Pennsylvania since 1861.

Oil production in the United States began, as is well known, in 1850s Pennsylvania. Whales, over-harvested by this time, were becoming scarce, and lamps needed an alternative energy source. The principals in the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Co. (which had recently been founded, as a rather wildly speculative adventure) hired Edwin Drake and sent him to Titusville, in northwestern Pennsylvania, to drill for petroleum.

A Fateful Railroad Pass

Drake was an unemployed railroad conductor. The investors thought him qualified because he had a railroad pass that would get him to Titusville for free. When the shell company’s money ran out, Drake borrowed money on his own credit to continue the drills. His first success, on August 27, 1859, came just in time for him. 

The McClintock Well No. 1 located just south of Titusville, would drill almost exactly two years after that first strike, in August 1861.  It was drilled during what was by then a wild “oil rush” very akin to the gold rush in California a few years before.   

Soon after news of Drake’s success, Sarah McKnight McClintock leased her farmland to Brewer, Watson and Company. McClintock was not surprised by the boom. Her family had been collecting and selling oil that seeped to the surface for years.

By the summer of 1860, John Watson of Brewer, Watson had erected a dozen wells on the McClintock property. These wells were powered by human legs. Operators sat on devices that looked like stationary bikes and “kicked down” the drill. It was in this way that oil was discovered at what was then called the Colby Well, but that came to be known as McClintock Well No. 1. 

At its productive peak, this well produced 175 barrels of oil a day. By 1920, this had fallen to just half a barrel.

From Quaker State to the PHMC

The well changed hands several times over the first century of its existence. In 1952, it became the property of the Quaker State Corporation. Quaker State’s legacy (as its name suggests) was very enmeshed with that of the Pennsylvania oil boom. By the 1950s, when Quaker State was a multinational, its corporate sense of history led it to make this purchase and to ensure that the McClintock continued to operate several times a year to maintain its status as a continuously operated well.

Forty years later, during the late 1990s, a period of consolidation for the oil industry, Quaker State became part of Royal Dutch Shell. The combined company transferred ownership of the McClintock to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) in 2000.

To this day the McClintock well is still producing oil. Operated by the PHMC’s Drake Oil Museum, the well is pumped just two or three times a year to keep its historical streak going. McClintock now has an annual output of just 30 to 40 barrels.

Titusville Today

Other towns that have grown up around oil drilling have come and gone -- the population dissipating when the holes were emptied. But one is happy to note. Titusville is still there.

As of 2017, Titusville had a population of 5,418 people, in 2,397 households, with a population density of 1,931.2 inhabitants per square mile.