Haymaker Well Historical marker

This historical marker in Murrysville, Pa is used to remember the discovery of Haymaker Well (1887). Brothers Michael and Obe Haymaker initially envisioned the well in 1876 after they observed their neighbor, Josh Cooper, using gas emerging naturally from Turtle Creek to boil maple syrup. After a long struggle to find financing, they were eventually able to drill and stuck natural gas on November 3, 1878 at 1,400 feet. This gas came out fast and uncontrollable, which resulted in it catching on fire in September of 1881, due to a lantern, and burning for four years straight. Once the fire was under control the brothers sold the well to a wealthy man named “Mr. Pew.” This discovery would result in Pittsburgh’s economy and air quality improving juristically as Pittsburgh is only 18 miles away from the well and transporting the gas that distance was easy. Today, there is no doubt that natural gas is used for a wide variety of purposes such as heating and generating electricity. 

The history of the Haymaker Well in Murrysville, Pennsylvania is unbelievable. The story begins in 1876, when brothers Michael and Obe Haymaker observed their neighbor, Josh Cooper, using gas emerging naturally from Turtle Creek to boil maple syrup. Now at the time, the brothers were working as petroleum drillers for Israel Painter and saw the natural gas emerging from the creek as a sign that there may be oil in the area (Downey, 2013). The brothers then pitched their idea to their boss, and Painter also saw their vision. He agreed to help finance their drilling as long as he received some of the profit. However, the amount he was able to finance was not nearly enough for the equipment needed to achieve this dream. The first year of drilling was extremely slow and Michael Haymaker was on the record saying that, “It took us one full year to go through that 400 feet” (Downey, 2013). Along with that, Painter was running extremely low on funds and was no longer able to help finance the project any longer (Wells, 2021). This resulted in what would become a lengthy process of trying to find other people to help the brothers finance their dream.

The brothers struggled for a long time trying to find someone else to help them financially. They had many promising offers throughout western Pennsylvania, but these deals all fell through for one reason or another. The brothers were on the verge of quitting when Michael talked to Sheriff Borland, and he suggested that they talked to Mr. Brunot. To put into perspective how close the Haymaker brothers were to giving up, they flipped a coin to determine if they would even attempt to meet with this man (James Anthony Clark, 2009). Luckily for them, the coin landed in favor of them meeting with him, and he gave them $500 in exchange for one eighth of the well’s profits. On November 3, 1878, the brothers finally struck natural gas at the depth of 1,400 feet, and the gas went shooting up high into the sky (ExplorePAhistory, 2019). The brothers were a little disappointed that they had not struck oil because that would have been cause for larger profits; however, they were still happy with the discovery. 

Now the gas that was coming out of the well was coming out so fast, and in such large proportions, that the brothers could not handle it. The well itself was producing thirty-four million cubits of oil a day (Wintermantel, 2014). This became a huge attraction and people were constantly coming to take a look. One night, while a crew of people was observing the well, one of them got too close with a lantern and started a fire that would burn for four years. The fire had an unlimited fuel source due to the amount of gas that was being pumped out, and the Haymaker brothers had no way of putting out this fire. It was said that the initial blast was seen all the way in Pittsburgh. To put that into perspective, Pittsburgh is eighteen miles away from the location of the well (History of the County | Westmoreland County, PA - Official Website, n.d.). Eventually, the men were able to put the fire out at the well using an old smokestack, and the brothers then had a new challenge, trying to find somebody to buy the well from them.  

Now one may be wondering, “Why would these brothers sell the well; there was so much money to be made by it?” To put it simply, the brothers could not afford the materials needed to store and transport the gas. This resulted in the brothers talking to many extremely rich figures in the northern United States, including Andrew Carnegie, who declined to buy it and later stated that he had made a huge mistake in not buying it (Downey, 2013). They eventually sold the well and two hundred acres surrounding it to a shady man from Chicago for $20,000, a great deal for the man. The payment plan was to go as follows: $1,000 day one, $3,000 by day thirty, and the remaining $16,000 by the sixtieth day (Downey, 2013). The man paid the $1,000 up front, but then disappeared and did not continue payments. The Haymaker brothers ended up finding a man named Mr. Pew who agreed to the same deal but was actually willing to keep up his end of the bargain. The man from Chicago was not willing to give up the deal, but the brothers just deposited the $1,000 from before back into his bank account. Apparently, this man did not take too kindly to this, and on November 26, 1883, fifty armed men showed up to the well. These men stated that they were taking back the well and ended up killing Obe Haymaker from a combination of gunshot wounds and stabbing him with a bayonet. Eventually these men would be arrested and go to prison; however, the damage had already been done.  

Mr. Pew would then install piping and use other forms of transportation to ship the gas from the well to Pittsburgh where it would begin to be used by many companies as a replacement for fossil fuels (Wohleber, 1997). The newfound use of this gas made it so that Pittsburgh was no longer considered the dirtiest city in the United States and helped the Pittsburgh economy drastically (Davis 2014), which leads into today's day and age. Companies nowadays are constantly looking for cleaner fuel sources, renewable energy, and protecting the environment at all costs. This trend would not be possible if it was not for the discovery of the Haymaker brothers in the 1800s, and people around the world should be thanking them for their contributions.  

Clark, James Anthony. (2009). Chronological history of the petroleum and natural gas 

industries. General Books. 

Davis, J. D. (2014). Blue gold the political economy of natural gas. Springer Verlag. 

Downey, M. (2013, November 20). Haymaker: the origin of big natural gas. Scarce Whales. 

ExplorePAhistory. (2019). Murrysville gas well historical marker. Explorepahistory.com. 

History of the County | Westmoreland County, PA - Official Website. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2022, from https://www.co.westmoreland.pa.us/902/History-of-the County#:~:text=Westmoreland%20County%20History&text=Pennsylvania   

Wells, B. (2021, November 1). Natural gas is king in Pittsburgh. American Oil & Gas Historical Society. https://aoghs.org/petroleum-pioneers/pennsylvania-natural-gas/ 

Wintermantel, M. (2014 11). Haymaker Well historical marker. Www.hmdb.org.https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=79286 

Wohleber, Curt. "'St. George' Westinghouse." American heritage of invention and technology 12:3 (1997): 28-42