Petrolia : the landscape of America's first oil boom
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Petrolia : the landscape of America's first oil boom
（Creating the North American landscape）
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In Petrolia, Brian Black offers a geographical and social history of a region that was not only the site of America's first oil boom but was also the world's largest oil producer between 1859 and 1873. Against the background of the growing demand for petroleum throughout and immediately following the Civil War, Black describes Oil Creek Valley's descent into environmental hell. Known as "Petrolia," the region charged the popular imagination with its nearly overnight transition from agriculture to industry. But so unrestrained were these early efforts at oil drilling, Black writes, that "the landscape came to be viewed only as an instrument out of which one could extract crude." In a very short time, Petrolia was a ruined place-environmentally, economically, and to some extent even culturally. Black gives historical detail and analysis to account for this transformation.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction. The Persistence of Oil on the Brain
Chapter 1. "A Good Time Coming for Whales"
Chapter 2. "A Triumph of Individualism"
Chapter 3. The Sacrificial Landscape of Petrolia
Chapter 4. Oil Creek as Industrial Apparatus
Chapter 5. "What Nature Intended This Place Should Be"
Chapter 6. Pithole: Boomtowns and the "Drawing Board City"
Chapter 7. Delusions of Permanence
Epilogue. The Legacy of Petrolia
Appendix
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"