From "Black Creek" to "Oil Springs"
In the 1830s, when Southwestern Ontario was beginning to see signs of larger settlements and resource development, Enniskillen Township, in present-day Lambton County, was the least settled area due to the large stretches of what was then known as the "Enniskillen swamp". The tangled mass of forest and marshes with sticky gum beds (surface petroleum seepage) were unsuitable for agricultural development, milling operations, or settlements.
It wasn't until a sample of bitumen appeared at the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) that attention was brought to the potential of the "uninhabitable" region. Thomas Sterry Hunt, a chemist for GSC submitted a report which concluded that the bitumen could be used to "build roads, to pave the bottom of ships, [and] to manufacture gas for lighting." Charles Nelson Tripp, a resourceful man with an interest in minerals, heard about the bitumen samples and set out for Lambton County.
Tripp was interested in collecting surface deposits of bitumen and boiling this to produce asphalt. To that end, Tripp formed the world's first oil company in 1852, the International Mining and Manufacturing Company. Unfortunately his success would not last. The swampy landscape of Enniskillen Township created a serious transportation problem, one that would persist into the peak years of the oil industry, and Tripp found himself with significant financial troubles.
Early Oil History: Tripp Brothers
Duration: 1:35 minutes - Transcription
During a trip to Hamilton for supplies, Tripp met James Miller Williams, a successful business owner who recognised the greater potential of the oil deposits. At the time, whale oil had been a popular lighting fluid but supplies were rapidly dwindling as literacy rates grew and desire increased for a fuel that burned brighter than candles. In the 1850s, progress was made to distill kerosene from crude oil. Williams traveled to Lambton County to seek out crude oil, which he suspected existed beneath the surface. He began to dig wells on the banks of Black Creek near what would become Oil Springs and in the early summer of 1858, one of his wells produced enough oil to be refined and marketed, becoming the first commercial oil well in North America, a year before the famous Drake well in Pennsylvania.
Early Oil History: James Miller Williams
Video clip. A dramatic recreation telling the story of James Miller Williams and the first well in what is now Oil Springs.
Duration: 1:38 minutes - Transcription
News of the discovery spread quickly and soon other men began to join in the prospection. Initial wells dug in Oil Springs and Petrolia exposed small oil deposits trapped in shallow layers of sand and gravel. In 1862, John Shaw used the spring-pole method to expose deeper strata beneath bedrock and hit Canada's first oil gusher. Oil flowed for four days before the deluge could be stopped.
Early Oil History: John Shaw
Video clip. A dramatic recreation telling the story of John Shaw and the first gusher in what is now Oil Springs.
Duration: 1:10 minutes - Transcription
This set off a frenzy of activity as people flocked to Black Creek. By the end of the year, over 1000 wells were producing 12,000 barrels of oil per day, and as a result the town was renamed Oil Springs. As it turned out, this oil deposit was small and by 1866, wells began producing more salt water than oil. American prospectors, who had stimulated a significant portion of the activity in Oil Springs, returned to the Pennsylvania oil fields after the American Civil War ended and the threat of Fenian Raids drove the end of the oil boom in Oil Springs. Although a deeper stratum of oil was discovered in the 1880s and renewed interest in the area, a much larger and more sustainable oil field had been discovered in Petrolia and attention was drawn away from Oil Springs.
Three pole derricks mark the location of the 1862 Shaw well gusher. Canada's first oil gusher. Image: Oil Museum of Canada