The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Funnily enough, this is the same view which I was denied, here in Pennsylvania’s Oil City, due to heavy bank of fog at dawn when I first arrived – as detailed in this post. The POV above is from a small park area, called Murray’s Overlook, which I’d ‘guesstimate’ as being about 800 feet over the municipality, and the branch of the Allegheny River which snakes through it.

Oil City is a spot I’ve been wanting to check out since moving to Western PA. from NYC. As the name of the place might suggest – it’s one of several ‘oil boom towns’ which sprang up during the Pennsylvania Oil Rush during the late 19th century. This used to be the HQ location for Pennzoil, Quaker State, and Wolf’s Head Oil.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Oil City achieved its greatest population size in 1930, when it was home to about 20,000 people and had a very busy industrial maritime shoreline that handled the subterrene lakes of oil being extracted from the nearby fields. Industry and large businesses have relocated since, and thereby the population in Oil City has steadily declined over the last century from peak levels. There’s about 9,000 people living here in modernity.

The boom years left behind a stock of beautiful old buildings in the downtown historical area, a particular specimen of which will be focused in on – as a matter of fact – a bit later this week. There’s rail tracks still present in Oil City, but there’s no station anymore and the trains passing through the place are carrying freight.

Well, I guess you can ride a train for part of the year at least, the Oil City & Titusville heritage line, which was mentioned yesterday.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The town promotes its historic legacy, in an attempt to draw in tourists, and there’s wooded trails and historic districts and all kinds of stuff to explore here. We parked the Mobile Oppression Platform (MOP) in the lot of one these trails, which follows the shoreline of the Allegheny River (pictured above), and sallied forth on foot.

There’s a bunch of cool bridges here too. I have no idea which one I was standing under… umm, ok… it’s the 1990 vintage Veteran’s Memorial Bridge, which replaced an earlier 1910 version.

Apparently, an apocalypse played out hereabouts in 1892, one which wiped out the entire town – the disastrous flood and fire of June 4th and 5th. Click through for this one, I’d advise – burst dam causes a flood, naphtha and oil released into water, a yellowish fog rises, a fire starts, a boom, suddenly everything’s burning including people and animals… Here’s a second link, one with actual photos of the devastation. Here’s a third, from the Federal Agency NOAA. It’s some story, this.

The conflagration’s official tally included killing about 132 people, destroying roughly a million and a half bucks worth of private property, and largely wiping out Oil City’s waterfront. Titusville was hit by this flooding as well, and all of the bridges across Oil Creek leading into Oil City were lost.

That’s 1892 money, btw, in modernity those one and a half million dollars of loss would translate to a modern day sum of $36,627,500.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It had become quite a beautiful day by the time we returned to Oil City, my companion and I thought, after executing our quickly decided upon change of plan in the morning.

I was catching a ‘vibe,’ however, that we didn’t want to hang around here terribly long, lest the attentions of some base element catch upon us. A definite vibe of being watched from afar…

Regarding this hippy dippy ‘vibe’ thing of mine, nothing in particular set the radar off. I was just suddenly ‘aware’ of my surroundings, and something was off.

To be fair: We had zero in the way of negative interaction with others, my companion and I, but my ‘spidey sense’ was tingling. The few residents of Oil City whom we interacted with couldn’t have been nicer, in actuality. Maybe I was just tired, and fatigue was fueling my paranoia.

I think it’s smart to be a little paranoid, but I am from NYC.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

At any rate, I was beginning to feel some actual physical exhaustion, after waking up so much earlier than I usually do. There were still a couple of things I wanted pics of before heading back to Pittsburgh, however. Regardless, I had about a two and change hour drive from Oil City ahead of me to get back home.

I also knew that the southeasterly drive would place the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself directly in the center of the MOP’s windshield. That’s going to suck, I thought, and Y’know what? I was right, it did – in fact – suck.

The fact that I was going to have to contend with school bus influenced stop and go traffic was also present in the brain. Additionally, just as I would be entering Pittsburgh, the evening rush hour would be getting underway.

This day trip, thereby, was nearly over.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

These six images were all ‘tripod shots,’ and the last of that sort of shooting I’d be doing this day.

From this point out, I had rigged the camera for ‘photowalk’ duty, and after stowing the tripod and other gear into my knapsack, we headed over to the historic district, where a specific structure that I wanted to get a few shots of would be found.

More on that tomorrow.

Also, about the title of this post – everytime I say ‘Oil City,’ the Guns and Roses song ‘Paradise City’ pops up in my noggin for some reason. What can I say, other than that I’m all ‘effed up.

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