The Machines That Built Standard Oil's Pipeline And Set Pennsylvania On Fire

They pushed six inches of wrought iron pipe 109 miles through the Allegheny Mountains to move oil past every open flame in Pennsylvania. It leaked at every joint. The entire Oil Creek valley was saturated with crude — the ground, the wooden towns, the creeks. A leak near fire did not mean a spill. It meant the town burned. Oil City was destroyed and rebuilt multiple times. The men who threaded the pipe by hand with hammers and Klein tongs are not named in the records. The pipeline that was supposed to make oil transport safer made the landscape more flammable than ever. #OilPipeline #StandardOil #PennsylvaniaHistory #IndustrialDisasters #ForgottenMachines