Where the end of the world began
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The machines that cut down the forests, and the ones which ground the mountain tops away to facilitate the harvest of mineral treasuries from the deep, and the machines which fly to the edge of space – and in fact the very machine which I drove to a spot 3 miles south of Titusville, Pennsylvania (in Cherrytree Township) – wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for this site. Neither would one have had quite as much to talk about on NYC’s Newtown Creek for all those years, if weren’t for the Drake Well and its many descendants.
In 1859, this is where the modern world was born. You’re looking at a theoretically accurate recreation of the Drake Well site. The original installation was swept away during the tumult of the Pennsylvania Oil Rush, which occurred in this section of the commonwealth from the 1860’s to 1890’s. The Drake Well is a National Historic place, a National Historic Landmark, a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark, and a National Historic Chemical Landmark as well.
It’s also where the modern world was born.
The beetle like race who will take over stewardship of the planet, after we are gone, will likely view it in the same way we regard the asteroid which annihilated the dinosaurs, or the volcanic overactivity which caused the great dying during the Permian era – which is coincidentally when the deposits of organic material that would become petroleum were first laid down, in vast mounds of death.
This is the actual exact spot where the current, anthropogenic in nature, Holocene Mass Extinction event began.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve read about this place and the PA. Oil Boom hundreds of times in pursuance of knowledge about the fabled Newtown Creek, and the 80+ small oil refineries which proliferated along its banks in the post civil war period. An oil boom, aka a ‘great rich quick’ feeding frenzy, erupted here in the 1860’s and played out for decades. There were no environmental or regulatory laws back then, when ‘progress’ was the order of the day. Much of this activity was conducted by small operations, a vast army of wildcatters and roughnecks who were working for themselves or entrepreneurs.
An ancient Hemlock forest was here, which dated back to the retreat of the glaciers. That forest was cut down, and wood from its multitudinous trees was used to build the oil extraction derricks. None of the trees in any of these photos is older than 120 or so years, as they’re what grew back after the boom ended, when the wildcatters moved on to despoil even greener pastures in the west and south. Everything I’ve read about what the landscape looked here, after the boom ended, is reminiscent of WW1’s Ypres, or Tolkien’s Mordor.
Today, the recreation of the Drake Well sits on a 22 acre wooded property that operates as a museum, and has since 1945. A waterway called ‘Oil Creek’ is nearby, but more on that next week.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By the early 1890’s, after the oil rush in Pennsylvania had abated, the young industry had moved on to other and more productive fields in Texas and California. The independent entrepreneurial side of the oil business had also all but evaporated, as well. If you wanted to be involved in this sort of endeavor, you were going to have to deal with HIM, lest you draw destruction upon yourself.
Gaunt, ruthless, humorless and severe, HE had risen to the top of the heap in this new industry. He controlled the production, transport, refinement, and distribution of petroleum product in not just the United States, but 90% of the entire world.
Later in life, HE suffered from Alopecia universalis, rendering HIM bald as a cue ball. In HIS lifetime, HE was viewed as the very embodiment of evil and greed by the country at large (an actual contemporaneous quote about HIS business practices, from the NY World: ‘the most cruel, impudent, pitiless, and grasping monopoly that ever fastened upon a country’.) By the time of HIS death, HIS accumulated fortune was greater than that of all the Pharoahs of Egypt, the Caesar’s of Rome, and the Crown heads of Europe – all put together.
An entire generation of comic book villains were based on HIM – Lex Luthor, Doctor Sivana, even Mr. Potter from the ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ movie. All you had to do to indicate that a fictional character was ‘evil’ was to show them as being rich and bald. HE became an archetype.
HIS name was John Davison Rockefeller, and his Standard Oil Trust was the lever by which he moved the world. His dominance over the petroleum industry, and the Nation, started during the Pennsylvania Oil Boom.
The oil extracted here was at first shipped to and refined in Cleveland (Standard Oil Company of Ohio), but after merging the Standard operation with Charles Pratt’s “Astral” operation in Brooklyn, it began flowing to the East River and Newtown Creek (Standard Oil Company of NY) for processing and distribution through NY Harbor.
Rockefeller controlled shipping rates for oil on the Pennsylvania Railroad, ensuring that his ‘product’ was cheaply transported and that his competitors paid more for the service. The Standard Oil Trust was a distributed network, one which controlled – for instance – the price of the timber and iron which would be used for oil barrels, and the salaries of the coopers who constructed the barrels. Canneries, and the mines which supplied tin or steel for the cans, were under his thumb as well. All of the secondary suppliers were called ‘combinations.’
Standard Oil was depicted as an octopus by its contemporaries, with tendrils reaching into all sectors of the economy. By the end of the 19th century, the Standard Oil Trust had become a de facto government unto itself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
None of the equipment within the Drake Well building is original, rather it’s a recreation using equipment contemporary to what Drake would have had access to, with its position and typology based on historic photographs from the actual wellhead.
A bit of signage is installed within that describes the circumstance of the tableau.
The Standard Oil Trust’s activity – economic, politically, and industrially speaking – which spawned out from this spot defined the 20th century in the United States. Rockefeller’s operation did everything it could to ensure that only elected officials friendly to Standard Oil would populate any State or Federal level offices which could interfere with the de facto monopoly they had on the petroleum business. From pumping it out of the ground, to the end phase of distribution to the consumer, every phase of oil production was controlled.
Rockefeller called this ‘horizontal integration.’
Even the President of the United States was famously ‘on their side.’ William McKinley, who waged war against the Spanish Empire largely for the benefit of the Brooklyn based Havemeyer Family and their Sugar Trust, raised the American Flag in Puerto Rico, conquered Cuba and the Philippines, and forced colonization upon Hawaii and Guam.
McKinley was a protectionist, who enacted brutally high tariffs on foreign goods as well, and advocated for a ‘gold standard’ monetary policy which strictly benefited those who already held the gold. He was legendarily friendly to the various Trusts and Combinations, and especially so with Standard Oil. He was ‘their man in Washington.’
That is, until McKinley was assassinated by a self described ‘Anarchist’ back in 1901, and his Vice President took over.
The new President, Theodore Roosevelt, was no friend to the monopolies, combines, or the trusts. Roosevelt was a Progressive Republican from NYC, and had been added to McKinley’s ticket in order to shore up electoral strength in traditionally Democrat turf like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston.
Rockefeller had opposed adding Roosevelt to the ticket, as did several of his counterpart ‘Captains of Industry,’ but there you are.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Using the Sherman Anti Trust Act as his lever, Roosevelt forced the breakup of Standard Oil into 43 smaller companies in 1911.
The new company based at Newtown Creek in Brooklyn was called ‘The Standard Oil Company of New York,’ or ‘SOCONY,’ and like the 42 other new companies, it was forbidden from colluding with The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, or any of the other baby Standards, to fix prices on supply or distribution, or to share resources.
Whereas at the time, the end of the capitalist world was predicted due to regulation, this newly competitive environment forced innovation, and vastly magnified the financial rewards for these off shoots of Standard Oil. The lesson learned by Wall Street was that monopoly is bad and competition is good. A hundred years later, AT&T was taught the same lesson in the 1980’s. Google is likely next on that list.
SOCONY became Mobil, Standard of New Jersey became Exxon, Standard of California is Chevron. Standard of Ohio became Marathon, Standard of Texas became Texaco – and the list goes on and on.
Added together, the valuation of the Standard Oil offshoots are worth a great deal more than the original behemoth was, and hundreds of thousands of their shareholders and legions of their employees are enriched by it, rather than just a handful of oligarchs.
Of course, this predicate storyline and super valuable industry is how humanity ended up in the pickle that we’re experiencing a century and a half later.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The petroleum in the ground in Pennsylvania, and all the other places, (mentioned above) was deposited as organic matter laid down during another mass extinction – the Permian-Triassic’s ‘Great Dying’ event. Petroleum is generally prospected in areas which were once oceanic or sea floor, but are now deeply buried in the ground due to the actions of plate tectonics. The Appalachian Mountains are amongst the oldest on the planet, and are rich in hydrocarbon deposits – famously coal, but with oil and gas as well.
A second oil rush is currently underway hereabouts, harvesting the formerly unreachable or economically unfeasible banks of ‘shale oil,’ using a process referred to as ‘fracking.’
Whew. I haven’t talked about this particular subject in a year, so forgive the verbose telling of it. It’s like letting a Djinn out of a bottle.
Back next week with more from Oil Country, in Pennsylvania’s Venango County.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
To the world’s ruin
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A humble narrator had been planning a Pennsylvania day trip for a while, one which would see him piloting the Mobile Oppression Platform (the MOP) on a two hour long, mostly north western journey, from Pittsburgh to Pennsylvania’s Venango County.
As is my habit for ‘away games,’ a fair amount of research back at HQ was undertaken. A Google Map was created with a series of way points and destination markers to follow and order the day. I always build an itinerary which would be fairly impossible to accomplish in one go, but there you are. Weather forecasts for the destination had been observed for the preceding week. A final embarkation date was arrived at in the last 48 hours before the trip, as to which of two or three candidate dates might be atmospherically propitious for the effort. Every day is D-Day for me – gotta get it right or you’re wasting your time, and there’s no greater sin than wasting time.
One left HQ, in Pittsburgh’s Borough of Dormont, at 4:30 in the morning and it was just 31 degrees Fahrenheit outside when I did. A companion was going to be coming along on this one, whom I’d pick up not too far from the half way point on my journey, at about 5:45 a.m.
The plan was to arrive just as the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself was rising in the vault of the sky. I was counting on fog rising off of the Allegheny River, in its hinterlands, but not quite as much fog as the peas soup we encountered upon arrival.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The night before this trip saw me emptying the camera bag out, and cleaning up all the equipment. Dust was blown off the lenses, an inventory of the bag’s contents accomplished, and everything was packed back up for travel. I would be bringing the full kit.
Clothing for the day was also laid out the night before, so as to not disturb Our Lady of the Pentacle or ‘razz up’ Moe the Dog at 4 in the morning. Also, a sandwich was constructed, the water bottle filled, and travel plan reviewed. I had even put the sandwich and the water bottle in the car so I didn’t forget them. It was colder without than inside my refrigerator, so…
As a note: I’m an absolute moron and klutz in the mornings, prior to having inhaled a few cups of coffee. Anything that I’ve left for myself to do in the early hours – other than ‘blow ballast’ in the lavatory, shower, and dress – has a 50/50 chance of successful completion. Long experience has taught me to handle all the fine details of preparation on the night before an adventure lest something gets left behind.
Leaving little to chance, and advance planning, is my way. It’s also why I’m seldom late for appointments.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It was a somewhat harrowing drive. One thing about the so called ‘red counties’ surrounding Pittsburgh that I just don’t understand revolves around street lighting. If you’re a Conservative, please explain this one to me in the comments section. Does street lighting, along major highways, somehow impugn your freedom? Do you just not want to pay for it? I really don’t get this one from a public safety POV, but as a prophylactic measure I activated the ‘brights’ on the Mobile Oppression Platform’s (MOP’s) head lamps and drove north cautiously.
One has recently became aware of a statistic affecting this part of the nation, which states that a Pennsylvania driver has a 1 in 59 chance of wrecking their car by hitting a deer, sometime during their driving career.
You know what would help shrink that deer statistic? Proper, and endemic, street lighting… but I digress…
One made it to the halfway point, where I was meant to pick up my traveling companion, in Pennsylvania’s City of Butler. After we tucked his gear into the back of the MOP, the northernly pathway was resumed. We arrived here, at the first destination on my Google Map just as the sky began to lighten up.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That anticipated fog was omnipresent, but was a great deal thicker and more opaque than I had counted on. A temperature inversion had occurred, which saw the atmospheric milieu shift from temperatures in the the high 70’s just a day before, then absolutely collapse into overnight temperatures in the high 20’s and low 30’s. It was definitively freezing out, but the Allegheny River’s water hadn’t received the memo and it was still about 50-60 degrees (that’s Fahrenheit for you euros and canucks). Thick slabs of fog and mist thereby occluded the first destination I had pegged for the day’s effort.
I like to start these photo expeditions at a point of elevation, it should be mentioned. The location we were in was an overlook park set against a steep hill. The river was flowing about 800 or so feet below us, but you could not discern the small city below us for love or money.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This is something else I plan for, unexpected circumstance. We took a few photos of the fog, as you’ve probably noticed by now. There were two central locations we were meant to visit on this day, with the first one being where we were – the community of Oil City, Pennsylvania. The second was about twenty miles north of here – up in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Given the atmospheric conditions here in Oil City, we decided to reverse the order of the various waypoints on my map and return here later in the day. We hopped into the MOP and drove a short distance up to Titusville to see ‘it.’
All those years on NYC’s Newtown Creek, where the oil pipelines and rail shipments of crude petroleum ‘product’ were heading to for distillation in the 19th century, had made the names of these two communities quite familiar to me from historical research about the oil business. This is where the petroleum destined for refinement and distillation in Brooklyn and Queens, along the fabulous Newtown Creek, originally came from.
We found our way to ‘it.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
By ‘it,’ I mean the Drake Well. The site of the very first modern, and commercial, oil well, on the planet. Dug in 1859. U.S.A.! More on that one tomorrow in what very well might be the longest post I’ve offered in years.
What you’re looking at is the spot where the end of the world started.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Chartiers Creek in Carnegie
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Preparing for an upcoming day trip of some personal interest, one nevertheless needed to get some exercise and felt a psychological need to wave the camera around a bit. On the ‘other side of the hill’ from HQ’s location, in the Pittsburgh suburb of Dormont, is found the town of Carnegie. There’s a waterway which runs through here called Chartiers Creek, pictured above. I had done a bit of advance scouting for this area, using Google maps, and figured out a few spots of interest to bring the camera to.
This area is what you’d call ‘Downtown Carnegie.’ There’s a few historic buildings, which have been beaten with the gentrification hammer in modernity, to be found here. The coda used for such projects hereabouts is ‘revitalization.’ Shops on Main Street have been converted to breweries, fancy pizza joints, taco shops, and in the case of the tall building on the right side of the shot – a home for the Carnegie Historical Society. There’s also art gallery, and craft shops, along this Main Street. Hey, you gotta do something if you don’t want to ‘rust belt.’
Me? I was there for the canal infrastructure which Chartiers Creek flows through.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a set of rail tracks on the left side of the water pictured above. Said tracks are rusty with just the tiniest amount of ‘shiny,’ thus they’re barely being used by RR trains. This observation was confirmed when a passing local started up a conversation with me. It was the ‘I’ve got my dad’s old camera, think it’s worth anything’ followed by the ‘my kid had a drone’ random person chat. Nice enough guy, who told me he’s lived in Carnegie for 30 years and had only seen a train moving on those tracks about 4 times in that interval.
‘I still got it’ thought a humble narrator, after confirmation of his observation about the mundanity of the railroad tracks.
Based on olfactory evidence, Chartiers Creek receives a bit of the town’s residential sewerage and runoff. It had been raining for about an entire week prior to my visit, as a note. Yeah, I’ve still ‘got it.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve also got a few nearby spots in Carnegie which I’ve been wanting to check out, notably one spot where a smallish locomotive switching yard is found at the edge of the town. There’s “T” light rail tracks running through Carnegie, but they’re on a different line than the ‘Red Line’ service which services HQ in neighboring Dormont. Another winter project will involve riding these mysterious Blue and Silver lines, to see where they go. As of this post, I still haven’t taken a ride on a City Bus, nor personally observed the famous Pittsburgh Busways. Yeah, Infrastructure Nerd, I’ll admit it.
That bridge pictured above carries an arterial roadway called Mansfield Boulevard towards an interstate, called I-376, which carries vehicular traffic through and onto the Fort Pitt Tunnel and Bridge and into Downtown Pittsburgh or to points north of the city.
Chartiers Creek ultimately joins the Ohio River nearby the West End Bridge, something which I’ll be showing you a picture of sometime in the next few weeks. Sitting on the edge of your seat for that one, huh?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In Carnegie, and it should be mentioned that this section of the country has a long – and terrible – history with flooding, Chartiers Creek and its tributaries are largely contained and controlled by a series of spillways and high walled canals. Saying that, when it rains enough or there’s an unusually large snowpack in the spring… this must become a torrent.
One wandered about for a bit, and then found my way over to one of those spillways.
I also found a village of homeless people, who are dwelling in tents and shanty dwellings, along Chartiers’s banks. As is my practice, I didn’t photograph any of that, (or at least they’re not the ‘subject’) as that’s kind of a dick move unless you’ve got a good reason to do so. You can just make out some of these shanties in the shot above, under the far side of the bridge carrying Mansfield Blvd.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The particular section of the water, pictured above, wasn’t the main course of Chartiers Creek – instead it was a stream that was pouring down off of a steep hill that seemed to be residential in character. The crazy verticality of the terrain around Pittsburgh allows flowing water to really speed up, and during spring thaws I’m sure this flow becomes massive, or you wouldn’t see a build out like this otherwise. When I was there just a few weeks ago, the water was maybe a foot or two in depth, but was still shooting along at a good clip.
After I was done, with these shots of Chartiers Creek here in Carnegie, one jumped behind the steering wheel of the Mobile Oppression Platform and drove around the vicinity for a bit, to see where else I mind find a way down to the shoreline. Scouting, essentially.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The rest of the day’s outing wasn’t terribly exciting, or very productive, but I did visit a few spots ‘right around the corner’ from HQ which I hadn’t seen up close yet, and prospected a couple of interesting points of view for future inspection. I managed to walk about four miles in total for the afternoon, an extremely short walk on a nice day.
One last shot of Chartiers Creek, and back tomorrow with something different at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
There is a season…
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Western Pennsylvania is kind of famous for its autumnal ‘leaf season,’ and appropriately so. The place is absolutely choked with vegetation (confirming the ‘sylvania’ thing), whose foliage turns orange and red and yellow as the wheel of the year turns with the seasons. I was lurking alongside a set of rail tracks, hoping to see a passing Norfolk Southern train set when these leaves caught my notice. The train shot didn’t happen, wrong time of day, I guess.
I checked in via a texted cell phone photo, with an arborist hippie buddy of mine back in NYC, a fellow whom I always rely on for plant identification about whether or not this might be Poison Ivy. He was a little ticked at me as he’s actually currently overseas in South East Asia, and that text ended up costing him fifty cents to receive, but he nevertheless assured me that this looked like Boston Ivy to him.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This particular morning involved another checkup for Our Lady of the Pentacle, in regard to her recent medical procedure. One had time to kill, so I took up station alongside these RR tracks on Pittsburgh’s North Side. As a note, that white car at the bottom left of the shot is the oft mentioned Mobile Oppression Platform. You only get one license plate in Pennsylvania, which goes on the back of the car, but since I bought the car in New York where you’ve got two, the front plate mount on the MOP is empty.
Most of the locals install a humorous plate when they’ve got an out of state car, or a license plate shaped placard which displays allegiance to some sports ball team or a political ideology. I can’t commit to any single humorous message or motto, and couldn’t care less about the sports ball fetish. I’d really like a super bright LED panel there, to be honest. One of the RAV4’s failings is an anemic set of headlamps.
I’ve always liked ‘grass, gas, or ass – nobody rides for free,’ but that’s really more of a mud flap thing, not a plate.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back at home, on the same evening as my walkabout, I was still testing the new gear, specifically seeing how the new wide angle lens might handle ‘astro’ shots. If you click on through to Flickr to the larger incarnation of this photo, you’ll see some stars. This was from one of the very rare days in Pittsburgh when there weren’t any clouds. It’s not perfect, I would mention, theres’ a tiny amount of ‘pull’ or coma on the stars.
One needed to begin adjusting his sleeping schedule right around this point in the week, however, going to bed earlier and earlier to facilitate that upcoming day trip I mentioned yesterday, which would start in the extreme early morning a couple of days hence…
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Getting around
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ok, this is the last post which will be focused on discussing the experimentation with that new wide angle lens (16mm) I’ve recently acquired, which I walked around with in Pittsburgh on a recent autumn afternoon and evening. Pictured above and below is the T light rail, which was utilized to get ‘to and fro’ on this particular day.
The point of these shots were about testing the thing’s capability, seeing where it sings and where it fails. I learned quite a bit about the lens, and have continued its usage rather than returning it for refund.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The next few days, after these shots were captured, were quite rainy. That was fine with me, as I had quite a bit of research to complete for an upcoming day trip, one I’ve been anxious to experience since arriving here in Pittsburgh. It has been just about one year now since I closed the cover on Newtown Creek, but there’s a connection to that malign ribbon of urban neglect snaking along the undefended border of Brooklyn and Queens back in NYC, which I’ve long wished to witness. Those posts, exploring the day trip dealie, start up at the end this week, and I hope you’ll come with…
Overall, I’m intrigued by the new lens and what it’s going to let me do. It performed pretty well in low light, I’ll offer. It’s also a weird new tool which I haven’t shot with enough for it to be called ‘predictable.’
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This time last year, one was moving at a thousand miles an hour preparing to leave NYC, and execute the move to Pittsburgh. A humble narrator was also trying to do everything, see everyone, and always be conscious of the fact that ‘everytime was the last time.’ There’s a lot of people whom I just said ‘goodbye’ to, as it’s unlikely I’ll ever see or hear from them again. That’s the New York way, when somebody leaves.
This year, I’ve been in a very very different place, figuratively and literally. I’ve also got that snazzy new 16 mm lens, so there’s that, too.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
The Newtown Pentacle 