What a tale there is in and around Oil City, Pennsylvania!
I had no idea that oil was discovered along Oil Creek, PA, in 1859. The area quickly looked like, well, name your gold rush, only with puny oil derricks everywhere. And of course men who squandered their fortunes on alcohol and women as quickly as they made them, if they even made them.
Towns, too, sprung up and died. Pithole — what a name! — lasted all of 500 days, and its estimated population topped out around 15,000 to 20,000.
Others lasted and even got some gorgeous buildings that still stand. Oil City, for one.
John D. Rockefeller was one of this winners. John Wilkes Booth, better known as Lincoln’s assassin, was one of the losers.
I learned all this and more while biking the middle section of the developing Erie to Pittsburgh Trail. It’s actually lots of smaller trails: the Samuel Justus Trail (named after an oil baron), part of the Allegheny River Trail, some of the trail going through Oil Creek State Park and more. I only wish we had made it as far as the Drake Well Museum and Park, where oil was discovered. (Rain!)
The route
This area is as pretty as that around the Pine Creek Rail Trail, which I explored six weeks earlier. Rugged, wooded steep hills. Not as narrow a canyon as Pine Creek, and we think we had cell service the whole time. The route offers better views of Oil Creek or the wide Allegheny River (it becomes the Ohio River in Pittsburgh) than we had of Pine Creek.
And it’s generally paved, unlike Pine Creek’s crushed stone.
But on this Sunday, at least, it was less busy than Pine Creek in the middle of the week. Did the threat of rain put people off?
A few things to know:
-You’ll find many remnants of the oil boom along the trail. Do stop to read the historical markers.
-There’s a steep quarter-mile climb just south of Petroleum Centre and an entrance to the state park. (It’s OK to walk up; there’s barely any cars on the road.) The state park is working on a route that would bypass that climb by extending the trail in the park. But it will still need a bridge over Oil Creek. Timeline TBD.
-That bridge into the park by Petroleum Centre is closed to cars (and why there’s almost no traffic on that hill). But while it’s open to bicycles now, that will change when bridge rehabilitation actually starts. Maybe spring of 2027? One construction season?
In the meantime, stop there to see the scale model of the town on its heyday, located on the train station.
-This dam in Oil Creek? It’s really an ice breaker. Because when Oil Creek gets clogged with ice, things get nasty.
-If you want to ride the trail one way, take the tourist train on weekends. Pick it up just north of Oil City at Rynd Farm and take it to the end of the line in Titusville. Bike back through the state park. You’ll still have to tackle the hill one way. Get on at Petroleum Centre to skip the hill. Either way, you’ll need that bridge to be open.
-Looking to camp? I found a couple of options on the trail. At Oil City Marina, it’s $10 for a night. Bathroom and running water (no shower) is a short walk away. You need to get a permit from the city (or call the police?).Heading south from Franklin is free camping but no facilities. The portapotty is a mile north in the parking lot with a part-time, volunteer-staffed visitor center. Someone else can weigh in on what either of these is like; we stayed in a hotel.
Camping in the state park near the trail is for groups. No facilities.
And Oil City?
What a wealthy place Oil City was for decades and decades. This is where oil was traded (at the Oil Exchange, once it moved out of a special rolling train).
That building eventually was replaced with Oil City National Bank, recently restored. Go into the restaurant and you can see the old vault, four doors thick. (The restaurant’s pork belly bites are fabulous, btw.)
Across the street is Rockefeller’s National Transit Building, where he once controlled the pipelines that sent 80,000 barrels of Pennsylvania oil per day to refineries.
Take a look inside if you can. At least the mural in the lobby. Space on the second floor is rented cheap to artists via a nonprofit, in keeping with Oil City’s efforts to attract artists to this town of less than 10,000 people.
Fun fact: its artist relocation program has helped bring 100 artists over 20 years (when funds are available).
I was thrilled to see the arts side of Oil City’s in action at Mural Fest through my involvement with Association EBN in memory of Emma Burke Newman, the daughter of friends and who was killed while riding her bike on Scotland. Artist painted four four-sided monoliths over two days in an event. They’ll soon go up on the trail and elsewhere, part of Association EBN’s support of artists, community and place making.
Here are some of the artists at work. The final one is the winner of the people’s choice award.
There’s more art in Oil City. Some murals we spotted:
Exploring by bicycle 