The American Oil City That Rose From Nothing and Vanished in Two Years

In January of 1865, two men drilled into a farm along a creek that smelled of sulfur. Eleven months later, 20,000 people lived there. Twelve months after that, almost no one did. This is the full story of Pithole City, Pennsylvania — the oil boomtown that rose from empty farmland to a city of 20,000 residents and collapsed back to silence in under two years. It also built the world's first commercial oil pipeline along the way. In August of 1878, the entire land sold for $4.37. — Topics covered: The Pennsylvania oil rush of 1865 The rise of Pithole City Samuel Van Syckel and the world's first oil pipeline The collapse of 1866 What remains today This video contains a combination of real historical archive photographs (sourced from the Library of Congress and public domain collections, restored and reformatted) and AI-generated imagery created to visually represent historical scenes where no photographic record exists. — Today footage credit: @lauraswesternpennsylvaniaa2126 — This is Abandoned US Industries — the channel that covers the places American industry built, used, and walked away from. New video every week. Subscribe to follow the series.