“No one anticipated any unusual problems as the Exxon Valdez left the Alyeska Pipeline Terminal at 9:12 p.m., Alaska Standard Time,” an account by the Alaska Oil Spill Commission would later report about the March 24, 1989, offshore disaster. 

After nearly a dozen years of routine daily passages through Prince William Sound, Alaska, an oil tanker ran aground, rupturing the hull. Supertanker Exxon Valdez hit Bligh Reef and spilled more than 260,000 barrels of oil, affecting hundreds of miles of coastline. Some consider the spill amount used by Alaska’s Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council as too conservative.

Field studies continue to examine the effects of the Exxon supertanker’s disastrous grounding on Bligh Reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound in 1989. Photo courtesy Erik Hill, Anchorage Daily News.

A General Complacency

When the 987-foot tanker hit the reef shortly after midnight, “the system designed to carry two million barrels of North Slope oil to West Coast and Gulf Coast markets daily had worked perhaps too well,” according to the Alaska Oil Spill Commission’s initial report. 

“At least partly because of the success of the Valdez tanker trade, a general complacency had come to permeate the operation and oversight of the entire system,” the commission noted. Complacency about giant oil tankers ended on March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef.

“The vessel came to rest facing roughly southwest, perched across its middle on a pinnacle of Bligh Reef,” added the commission’s report. “Eight of 11 cargo tanks were punctured. Computations aboard the Exxon Valdez showed that 5.8 million gallons had gushed out of the tanker in the first three and a quarter hours.”

“Eight of 11 cargo tanks were punctured. Computations aboard the Exxon Valdez showed that 5.8 million gallons had gushed out of the tanker in the first three and a quarter hours.”

Tankers carrying North Slope crude oil had safely transited Prince William Sound more than 8,700 times during the previous 12 years. Improved shipbuilding technologies resulted in supersized vessels.

“Whereas tankers in the 1950s carried a crew of 40 to 42 to manage about 6.3 million gallons of oil…the Exxon Valdez carried a crew of 19 to transport 53 million gallons of oil,” the report explained.

Alaskan weather conditions — 33 degrees with a light rain — and the remote location added to the 1989 disaster, the report continues. With the captain not present, the third mate made a navigation error, according to another 1990 investigation by the National Transportation and Safety Board, Practices that relate to the Exxon Valdez.

“The third mate failed to properly maneuver the vessel, possibly due to fatigue or excessive workload,” the Safety Board concluded.

Containing Oil Spills

At the time, spill response capabilities to deal with the spreading oil were found to be unexpectedly slow and inadequate, according to the Oil Spill Commission.

“The worldwide capabilities of Exxon Corporation would mobilize huge quantities of equipment and personnel to respond to the spill — but not in the crucial first few hours and days when containment and cleanup efforts are at a premium,” the commission’s report explained.

At 987 feet long and 166 feet wide, the Exxon Valdez — delivered to Exxon in December 1986 — was the largest ship ever built on the West Coast.

The commission added that the U.S. Coast Guard “would demonstrate its prowess at ship salvage, protecting crews and lightering operations, but prove utterly incapable of oil spill containment and response.”

Spill Cleanup Lessons

Exxon began a cleanup effort that included thousands of Exxon and contractor personnel, according to ExxonMobil. More than 11,000 Alaska residents and volunteers rushed to the coastline to assist.

“Because Prince William Sound contained many rocky coves where the oil collected, the decision was made to displace it with high-pressure hot water,” noted a 2001 study for the American Academy of Underwater Sciences.

“However, this also displaced and destroyed the microbial populations on the shoreline; many of these organisms (e.g. plankton) are the basis of the coastal marine food chain, and others (e.g. certain bacteria and fungi) are capable of facilitating the biodegradation of oil,” explained scientific diving expert Stephen Jewett, professor emeritus of environmental studies at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

“At the time, both scientific advice and public pressure was to clean everything, but since then, a much greater understanding of natural and facilitated remediation processes has developed, due somewhat in part to the opportunity presented for study by the Exxon Valdez spill,” Jewett added.

His academic paper, “Scuba techniques used to assess the effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill,” brought insights into mitigating the impact of the Alaskan oil spill — which had expedited passage of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration photo from 2014 study, “Twenty-Five Years After the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: NOAA’s Scientific Support, Monitoring, and Research.”

According to ExxonMobil, the company spent $4.3 billion as a result of the accident, “including compensatory payments, cleanup payments, settlements and fines. The company voluntarily compensated more than 11,000 Alaskans and businesses within a year of the spill.”

A separate study by the Alaska Oil Spill Commission resulted in the February 1990 report, “Details about the Accident.” Scientists monitoring effects of the grounding have reported the ecosystem of Prince William Sound continues to recover, but it is healthy.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2014 published the 78-page “Twenty-Five Years After the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: NOAA’s Scientific Support, Monitoring, and Research” further examining the response.

In California two decades before the Exxon Valdez, the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill from a Union Oil platform six miles off the coast led to the modern environmental movement — and establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a year later. Learn more in Oil Seeps and Santa Barbara Spill.

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Recommended Reading:  The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Perspectives on Modern World History (2011); Slick Policy: Environmental and Science Policy in the Aftermath of the Santa Barbara Oil Spill (2018); Amazing Pipeline Stories: How Building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Transformed Life in America’s Last Frontier (1997). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please support this energy education website, subscribe to our monthly email newsletter, and help expand historical research. Contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. 

Citation Information – Article Title: “Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/transportation/exxon-valdez-oil-spill. Last Updated: March 21, 2026. Original Published Date: March 24, 2009.

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Soon after America’s first commercial oil well of 1859, a small group met in northwestern Pennsylvania and decided a 42-gallon wooden barrel was best for transporting their oil.

When filled with oil instead of fish or other commodities, a 42-gallon “tierce” weighed 300 pounds. The 42-gallon oil barrel was officially adopted in 1866. Today, a barrel’s refined products include about 20 gallons of gasoline, 12 gallons of diesel, and four gallons of jet fuel (and rocket fuel) and other products, including asphalt.

By the 1860s, barges floated barrels of oil down the Allegheny River to Pittsburgh to be refined into a highly demanded product — kerosene for lamps. Image from an early oil company stock certificate.

In August 1866 a handful of America’s earliest independent oil producers met in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and agreed that henceforth, 42 gallons would constitute a barrel of oil. Pennsylvania led the world in oil production as demand soared for kerosene lamp fuel.

The 42-gallon barrel standard was adopted in 1872 by the Petroleum Producers Association of the Pennsylvania oil region.

Although pipelines would later challenge the oil region’s teamsters, the business of moving oil depended mostly on men, wagons, horses, flatboats, and barrels. To reach railroad stations and docks, teams of horses pulled wagons carrying as many as eight barrels of oil. Rugged northwestern Pennsylvania terrain and muddy roads added to transportation problems.

Meanwhile, as derricks multiplied, forests along Oil Creek were reduced to barrel staves by recently introduced barrel-making machinery. Hoop mills operated day and night, supporting cooperages that sprang up to join in the oil boom in what would later be called “the valley that changed the world.”

Why a 42-gallon Oil Barrel?

Long before England’s King Richard III defined the wine puncheon as a cask holding 84 gallons and a tierce as holding 42 gallons, watertight casks of many sizes were crafted by “tight” coopers. A powerful guild, the Worshipful Company of Coopers, prescribed the manner of construction.

Lesser skilled craftsmen (known as slack coopers) made casks, barrels, and pails for dry goods. Practical experience and custom made the 42-gallon watertight tierce a standard container for shipping everything from eel, salmon, herring, molasses, soap, butter, wine, and whale oil. The 42-gallon barrel became a familiar 19th-century container.

Then came Edwin L. Drake’s 1859 oil discovery at Titusville, Pennsylvania, the first commercial U.S. oil well. The petroleum exploration and production boom that followed it consumed wooden tierces, whiskey barrels, casks, and barrels of all sizes.

The guild of the Worshipful Company of Coopers prescribed methods for making watertight barrels. Lesser skilled craftsmen (slack coopers) made casks and pails for dry goods.

When filled with crude oil instead of fish or other commodities, a 42-gallon tierce weighed more than 300 pounds — about as much as a man could reasonably wrestle. Twenty would fit on a typical barge or railroad flatcar. Bigger casks were unmanageable, and smaller ones were less profitable.

Contemporary photographs show cooperages’ prodigious response to the new demand. Within a year of Drake’s discovery, oil barrels were commonly considered to hold 42 gallons, according to “The Oil Fountains of Pennsylvania” in Littell’s’ Living Age of September 1860.

By 1866, these abundant tierce-sized barrels were the logical choice to become the industry’s standard measure. The 42-gallon standard oil barrel was officially adopted by the Petroleum Producers Association in 1872 and the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Bureau of Mines in 1882.

As the 42-gallon size soon became a key part of petroleum industry transportation infrastructure, Pennsylvania’s booming oil production became linked to college football’s Heisman Trophy. Among the Titusville cooperage companies, the Oberly & Heisman Company on Bridge Street supplied barrels — and provided Michael Heisman’s son John an after-school job.

John Heisman played varsity football for Titusville High School as a guard on the varsity team from 1884 to 1887. He graduated in 1887 and went on to become the legendary football coach for whom the Heisman Trophy is named.

“Blue Barrel” Myth

Not long after forming the Standard Oil Company in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1870, John D. Rockefeller focused on efficiency and growth for his new petroleum refining business.

Technologies for making watertight casks replaced “tight” coopers and their guild. Standard Oil in 1902 introduced a 42-gallon steel barrel that kept the cask-like appearance.

Instead of buying oil barrels, Standard Oil bought tracts of oak timber, hauled the dried timber to Cleveland on its own wagons, and built the barrels in its own cooperage. Standard’s cost per wooden barrel dropped from $3 to less than $1.50. A persistent oilfield myth says that the abbreviation “bbl” for a barrel of oil resulted from Standard Oil Company’s early practice of painting their barrels blue — bbl for “blue barrel.”

However, while Ida Tarbell’s widely popular 1904 History of the Standard Oil Company acknowledged the “holy blue barrel,” the abbreviation “bbl” had been in use before the 1859 birth of the petroleum industry. The muckraking journalist grew up in the Pennsylvania oil regions — where as a young girl she witnessed an early petroleum industry tragedy, the 1861 Rouseville oil well fire.

In the early 19th century, wooden barrels of all capacities were common containers of trade: hogsheads, puncheons, tierces, butts, tuns, and other long-since-forgotten terms.

Shipping manifests reveal that quantities of honey, rum, whale oil, and other commodities were shipped by the “bbl” — well before John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil’s blue barrels. For modern industry and commerce, the abbreviation simply signifies a 42-gallon (159 liters) unit of measure…of any color.

Learn about the history of the 55-gallon steel drum in the Remarkable Nellie Bly’s Oil Drum.

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Recommended Reading:  The History of the Standard Oil Company: All Volumes (2015); Myth, Legend, Reality: Edwin Laurentine Drake and the Early Oil Industry (2009); The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (2008); Trek of the Oil Finders: A History of Exploration for Petroleum (1975). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an annual AOGHS supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2026 Bruce A. Wells. 

Citation Information – Article Title: “History of the 42-Gallon Oil Barrel.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/transportation/history-of-the-42-gallon-oil-barrel. Last Updated: January 10, 2026. Original Published Date: December 1, 2006.

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She was one of the most famous journalists of her day as a reporter for the New York World. Widely known as the remarkable Nellie Bly, Elizabeth J. Cochran Seaman investigated conditions at an infamous mental institution, made a trip around the world in less than 80 days — and manufactured the first practical 55-gallon oil drum.

The 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y., promoted her Iron Clad Manufacturing Company as “owned exclusively by Nellie Bly — the only woman in the world personally managing industries of such magnitude.”

Recognizing the potential of an efficient metal barrel design, Nellie Bly acquired the 1905 patent rights from its inventor, Henry Wehrhahn, who worked at her Iron Clad Manufacturing Company.

For her first assignment as a reporter for Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper, the New York World, Elizabeth Jane Cochran (1867-1922) feigned insanity for 10 days in New York’s notorious Blackwell’s Island Asylum. She had been hired in 1887 to write about the mental institution.

Elizabeth J. Cochran in January 1890, four years before her marriage to industrialist Robert Seaman. After gaining fame as a journalist, she became “determined to make steel containers for the American trade.” Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Writing under the pen name Nellie Bly (a character in a popular song of the time), her numerous exposés and adventures would capture the public’s imagination and make her a world-famous woman journalist.

In 1889, the New York World sent the 25-year-old Bly on a steamboat trip around the world to mimic Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. After a 72-day journey, she returned to New York to write a popular book.

Much has been written about this remarkable woman from Cochran’s Mills, Pennsylvania, and her investigative reporting career with the Pittsburgh Dispatch and the New York World. There’s a less-known side to her remarkable life — the manufacturing of “Iron Clad” steel oil drums.

Woman of Steel

In America’s oilfields, traditional wooden barrels had always been problematic for shipping oil. Despite the introduction of pipelines and railroad tank cars, there remained the need for manageable-sized, durable, leak-proof barrels (see History of the 42-Gallon Oil Barrel).

Elizabeth Cochran Seaman received a 1902 U.S. patent for inventing improved, stackable “garbage or refuse cans particularly adapted for street use by street-cleaning departments.”

Standard Oil Company introduced a steel version of the common 42-gallon oil drum in 1902. It had the traditional cask-like appearance. Although stronger than wooden barrels, the new barrel could still leak. Nellie Bly had a better idea.

55-gallon oil drum

It was a big story for society pages in 1894 when Bly wed wealthy industrialist Robert Seaman, who was about 40 years her senior. At the time, Iron Clad produced milk cans, riveted boilers, tanks, and “The Most Durable Enameled Kitchen Ware Made.”

At the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, Iron Clad factories were promoted as being, “Owned exclusively by Nellie Bly — the only woman in the world personally managing industries of such a magnitude.”

Some questioned her management skills — but not her flamboyance — after her husband died in 1904, when she became the energetic and innovative president of his Iron Clad Manufacturing Company.

During a 1904 visit to Europe, Nellie Bly saw glycerin containers made of steel. “I determined to make steel containers for the American trade,” the young factory owner later proclaimed. She acquired her patented “metal barrel” design one year later.

Nellie Bly brought energy and ideas to the Brooklyn, New York, Iron Clad factory. The company had established itself as a kitchenware manufacturer, as shown in this 1884 advertisement.

“My first experiment leaked and the second was defective because the solder gave way, and then I brazed them with the result that the liquid inside was ruined by the brazing metal,” she said.  “I finally worked out the steel package to perfection, patented the design, put it on the market and taught the American public to use the steel barrel.”

Inventive Employee Henry Wehrhahn

Real credit must go to Nellie Bly’s employee, Henry Wehrhahn, who received two patents that would lead to the modern steel barrel, the 55-gallon oil drum.

Wehrhahn, superintendent for the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company of Brooklyn, New York, on May 23, 1905, received a patent (no. 790,861) that included a metal barrel with “a means for readily detaching and securing the head of a metal barrel.” The inventor assigned his patent to the widow of Iron Clad Manufacturing founder, Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman — Nellie Bly.

The day after Christmas 1905, Wehrhahn received another patent for an improved metal barrel, which he also assigned to the company’s new, young president.

The design included a flanged metal barrel, and the familiar encircling hoops allowed for guided rolling of the barrel for better control. “My invention has for its object to provide a metal barrel which shall be simple and strong in construction and effective and durable in operation,” he explained in his patent (no. 808,327).

Wehrhahn, who had entered the machinist trade in 1884 at age 18, became superintendent of the Iron Clad Manufacturing Company in 1902, the same year the company patented a stacking metal garbage can.

Iron Clad Manufacturing, which also patented an innovative milk container, benefitted from having a celebrity journalist as president. “I am the only manufacturer in the country who can produce a certain type of steel barrel for which there is an immense demand at present, for the transportation of oil, gasoline, and other liquids,” she proclaimed.

At its peak, Iron Clad employed 1,500 and could produce 1,000 steel barrels daily, but then charges of fraud led to bitterly contested bankruptcy proceedings, beginning in 1911. 

An Iron Clad Manufacturing enameled ware ad in The House Furnishing Review, January 1899.

Wehrhahn had moved on to become superintendent of the Pressed Steel Tank Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by 1912. Bly was in Austria looking for financial backers when World War I began. Her company would not last much longer.

Iron Clad Manufacturing Company succumbed to debt, and Bly returned to newspaper reporting, covering women’s suffrage events and Europe’s Eastern Front during the war. She died of pneumonia in 1922 — two years after the 19th Amendment secured her the right to vote.

Elizabeth J. Cochran was eulogized by the New York Evening Journal as Nellie Bly, “the best reporter in America,” Her steel barrels ultimately became the ubiquitous 55-gallon oil drum of today, and she should be remembered for her unique contribution to America’s petroleum history.

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Recommended Reading: The Incredible Nellie Bly: Journalist, Investigator, Feminist, and Philanthropist (2021); Nellie Bly: Daredevil, Reporter, Feminist (1994); Breaking the Gas Ceiling: Women in the Offshore Oil and Gas Industry (2019); Anomalies, Pioneering Women in Petroleum Geology, 1917-2017 (2017). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter today and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. 

Citation Information – Article Title: “Remarkable Nellie Bly’s Oil Drum.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/transportation/nellie-bly-oil-drum. Last Updated: December 20, 2025. Original Published Date: December 1, 2006.

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Presaging the first gas pump, S.F. (Sylvanus Freelove) Bowser sold his newly invented kerosene pump to the owner of a grocery store in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on September 5, 1885. Less than two decades later, the first purposely built drive-in gasoline service station opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

Bowser designed a simple device for reliably measuring and dispensing kerosene — a product in high demand as lamp fuel for half a century. His invention soon evolved into the metered gasoline pump.

Gas pumps with dials were followed by calibrated glass cylinders. Meter pumps using a small glass dome with a turbine inside replaced the measuring cylinder as pumps continued to evolve. Illustration courtesy Popular Science, September 1955.

Originally designed to safely dispense kerosene as well as “burning fluid, and the light combustible products of petroleum,” early S.F. Bowser pumps had marble valves with wooden plungers and upright faucets.

With the pump’s popular success at Jake Gumper’s grocery store, Bowser formed the S.F. Bowser & Company and patented his invention in late October 1887.

Bowser’s 1887 patent was a pump for “such liquids as kerosene-oil, burning-fluid, and the light combustible products of petroleum.”

As consumer demand for kerosene (and soon, gasoline) grew, Bowser’s innovative device and those that followed faced competition from other manufacturers of self-measuring pumps. In Wayne, Indiana, the Wayne Oil Tank & Pump Company designed and built 50 of a new model in 1892, the company’s first year of business (learn more in Wayne’s Self-Measuring Pump).

S.F. Bowser’s “Self-Measuring Gasoline Storage Pumps” became known as “filling stations.” A clamshell lid closed for security when unattended.

Despite the competition, in the early 1900s – as the automobile’s popularity grew – Bowser’s company became hugely successful. His grocery store pump consisted of a square metal tank with a wooden cabinet equipped with a suction pump operated by hand-stroked lever action.

Beginning in 1905, Bowser added a hose attachment for dispensing gasoline directly into the automobile fuel tank. The S. F. Bowser “Self-Measuring Gasoline Storage Pump” became known to motorists as a “filling station” as more design innovations followed.

A 1922 Bowser advertisement illustrating the size of S.F. Bowser’s Fort Wayne, Indiana, manufacturing facility and six-floor headquarters similar to early Chicago skyscrapers.

S.F. Bowser died on October 3, 1938, and the manufacturing company he founded maintained its presence on Creighton Avenue in Fort Wayne until being demolished in 2012.

“In Fort Wayne today, the only reminder of Bowser’s legacy is a street named in his honor,” reported Indiana landmarks in 2017, adding, “In parts of Europe and Australia, however, people still refer to a gasoline pump generically as a ‘bowser.'” 

The popular Bowser Model 102 Chief Sentry with its “clamshell” cover offered security when the pump was left unattended (see the 1920 Diamond Filling Station in Washington, D.C.).

Manufactured in 1911, an S.F. Bowser Model 102 “Chief Sentry” pumped gas on North Capitol Street in Washington D.C., in 1920. The Penn Oil Company’s pump’s topmost globe, today prized by collectors, survived only as a bulb. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

With the addition of competing businesses such as Wayne Pump Company and Tokheim Oil Tank & Pump Company, the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, became the gas-pump manufacturing capital of the world.

Some enterprising manufacturing companies even came up with coin-operated gas pumps.

Penn Oil Company filling stations were the exclusive American distributor of Lightning Motor Fuel, a British product made up of “50 percent gasoline and 50 percent of chemicals, the nature of which is secret.” The secret ingredient was likely alcohol. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

First Drive-In Service Station

Although Standard Oil will claim a Seattle, Washington, station of 1907, and others argue about one in St. Louis two years earlier, most agree that when “Good Gulf Gasoline” went on sale, Gulf Refining Company opened America’s first true drive-in service station.

Gulf Refining Company had been established in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1901 by Andrew Mellon and other investors as an expansion of the J. W. Guffey Petroleum Company formed earlier the same year to exploit the Spindletop oilfield discovery in Texas. The company’s motoring milestone took place at the corner of Baum Boulevard and St. Clair Street in downtown Pittsburgh on December 1, 1913.

Unlike earlier simple curbside gasoline filling stations, an architect purposefully designed the pagoda-style brick facility that offered free air, water, crankcase service, and tire and tube installation.

Gulf Refining Company’s decision in 1913 to open the first service station (above) along Baum Boulevard in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was no accident. The roadway had become known as “automobile row'” because of its high number of dealerships. Photo courtesy Gulf Oil Historical Society.

“This distinction has been claimed for other stations in Los Angeles, Dallas, St. Louis and elsewhere,” noted a Gulf corporate historian. “The evidence indicates that these were simply sidewalk pumps and that the honor of the first drive-in is that of Gulf and Pittsburgh.”

The Gulf station included a manager and four attendants standing by. The original service station’s brightly lighted marquee provided shelter from bad weather for motorists. A photo of the station, designed by architect J.H. Giesey, may or may not have been taken on opening day, according to the Gulf Oil Historical Society.

“At this site in Dec. 1913, Gulf Refining Co. opened the first drive-in facility designed and built to provide gasoline, oils, and lubricants to the motoring public,” noted a Pennsylvania historical marker dedicated on July 11, 2000.

Spitlers Auto Supply Company, 205 Commerce Street, Fredericksburg, Virginia, closed in 1931. It was an example of curbside pumps used before Gulf Refining Company established covered, drive-through stations.

The drive-in station sold 30 gallons of gasoline at 27 cents per gallon on its first day, according to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

“Prior to the construction of the first Gulf station in Pittsburgh and the countless filling stations that followed throughout the United States, automobile drivers pulled into almost any old general or hardware store, or even blacksmith shops in order to fill up their tanks,” the historical commission noted at ExplorePAhistory.com.

The decision to open the first station along Baum Boulevard in Pittsburgh was no accident. When the station was opened, Baum Boulevard had become known as “automobile row” because of the high number of dealerships that were located along the thoroughfare.

Until about 1925, Gulf Refining Company was the only oil company to issue maps. Gulf was formed in 1901 by members of the Mellon family of Pittsburgh. Map image courtesy Harold Cramer.

“Gulf executives must have figured that there was no better way to get the public hooked on using filling stations than if they could pull right in and gas up their new car after having just driven it off the lot,” noted a commission historian.

In addition to gas, the Gulf station also offered free air and water — and sold the first commercial road maps in the United States. “The first generally distributed oil company road maps are usually credited to Gulf,” said Harold Cramer in his “Early Gulf Road Maps of Pennsylvania.”

This 1916 Bowser gasoline pump operated by a hand crank and “clock face” dial. Photo from the Smithsonian Collection.

“The early years of oil company maps, circa 1915 to 1925, are dominated by Gulf as few other oil companies issued maps, and until about 1925 Gulf was the only oil company to issue maps annually,” Cramer explained. That would change.

Founded in 1996, the Road Map Collectors Association (RMCA) preserves the history of road maps to educate the public about America’s automobile age, also documented and exhibited by the Smithsonian Institution (see America on the Move).

While the Gulf station in Pittsburgh could be considered the first “modern” service station, kerosene and gasoline “filling stations” helped pave the way.

Memorabilia once exhibited at the Northwoods Petroleum Museum outside Three Lakes, Wisconsin, opened by Ed Jacobsen in 2006 and closed in 2024.

“At the turn of the century, gasoline was sold in open containers at pharmacies, blacksmith shops, hardware stores and other retailers looking to make a few extra dollars of profit,” noted Kurt Ernst in a 2013 article.

“In 1905, a Shell subsidiary opened a filling station in St. Louis, Missouri, but it required attendants to fill a five gallon can behind the store, then haul this to the customer’s vehicle for dispensing…A similar filling station was constructed by Socal gasoline in Seattle, Washington, opening in 1907,” Ernst explained in his article “The Modern Gas Station celebrates its 100th Birthday.”

One-hundred years after the Gulf Refining Company station opened, America’s 152,995 operating gas stations included 123,289 convenience stores, according to Ernst. On average, each location sold about 4,000 gallons of fuel per day, “quite a jump from the 30 gallons sold at the Gulf station in Pittsburgh on December 1, 1913.”

Photographs of early service stations remain an important part of preserving U.S. transportation history (also true for architecture, pump technologies, advertising methods, and more). The American Oil & Gas Historical Society’s Dome Gas Station at Takoma Park offers insights revealed in just one 1921 black-and-white photograph of a station in a Washington, D.C., suburb.

The Library of Congress maintains a large collection of service station images, as do other libraries and organizations listed with it in AOGHS photo resources.

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Recommended Reading: Pump and Circumstance: Glory Days of the Gas Station (1993); Fill’er Up!: The Great American Gas Station (2013); The American Highway: The History and Culture of Roads in the United States (2000). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information: Article Title: “First Gas Pump and Service Station.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/transportation/first-gas-pump-and-service-stations. Last Updated: December 1, 2025. Original Published Date: March 14, 2013.

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The 19th-century U.S. petroleum industry launched many new industries for producing, refining, and transporting the highly prized resource. With oil demand rapidly growing worldwide, America exported oil (and kerosene) during the Civil War when a small Union brig sailed across the Atlantic.

Soon after Edwin L. Drake drilled the first American oil well in 1859 along a creek in northwestern Pennsylvania, entrepreneurs swept in, and wooden derricks sprang up in Venango and Crawford counties.

Launched in 1847 by the shipbuilding firm of J. & C.C. Morton of Thomaston, Maine, the Elizabeth Watts was about 96 feet long with a draft of 11 feet. The 224-ton brig made petroleum history during the Civil War.

As demand for oil-refined kerosene for lamps grew, oilfield discoveries created early boom towns like the one at Pithole Creek. Moving the “black gold” from oilfields also brought the beginning of the petroleum industry’s transportation infrastructure.

“Doubt and distrust that preceded Drake’s successful venture suddenly fled before the common conviction that an oil well was the ‘open sesame’ to wealth,” reported Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. After his historic discovery near Titusville, Drake bought up all the 40-gallon whiskey barrels he could find to transport his oil on barges down the Allegheny River to Pittsburgh refineries.

In January 1860, oil sold for $20 a barrel and brought jubilant investors huge profits, including Drake’s investors at the Seneca Oil Company of New Haven, Connecticut. By May 1861, more than 130 producing wells were crammed into the area, yielding 1,288 barrels of oil a day.

New cooperages joined the oil boom and stripped the Pennsylvania hillside forests to sell barrels at up to $3.25 each, while teamsters charged up to $4 each to haul them. But with an oversupply of oil came plummeting prices and instability that would bring ruin to many fledgling petroleum companies.

About this time, the veteran cargo brig Elizabeth Watts was chartered by the successful Philadelphia import-export firm of Peter Wright & Sons. “She was a two masted, square-rigged ship well suited for the Atlantic cargo trade of the day,” noted J. & C.C. Morton, the Maine shipbuilding firm that constructed the 224-ton brig in 1847.

Since its founding in 1818, Peter Wright & Sons had grown and prospered, transporting glass and Queensware China, among other commodities.

Barrels of vinegar — “Vinegar Bitters” — at New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1870 would be similar to the 1861 loading of oil and kerosene barrels aboard the Elizabeth Watts prior to departing the Port of Philadelphia for England. Photo courtesy New Bedford Whaling Museum.

At the prompting of new partner Clement Acton Griscom, the firm secured the Elizabeth Watts and Captain Charles Bryant for the novel purpose of transporting crude oil from Philadelphia to London. The three British consignees awaiting the cargo were G. Crowshaw & Company, Coates & Company, and Herzog & Company.

To reach Philadelphia docks, the oil would have to travel overland across Pennsylvania. The nearest railroad to Oil Creek’s prolific fields was a grueling trek on muddy roads clogged with teamsters’ wagons. The preferred railhead, owing to primitive road conditions, was the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad station at Miles Mills (now Union City), 20 miles north of Titusville.

From Miles Mills, railroad flatcars laboriously stacked with barrels and pulled by a steam locomotive could make their way eastward to Philadelphia.

The 42-gallon barrel standard was officially adopted in 1872 by members of the Petroleum Producers Association in Pennsylvania.

Despite the hazards and difficulty, 901 barrels of Pennsylvania crude and 428 barrels of refined kerosene made the trip. Each 40-gallon barrel weighed over 60 pounds empty and 348 pounds full of oil. The oil region’s producers had adopted a standard 42-gallon oil barrel as early as 1866, and the Petroleum Producers Association made it official in 1872 (see History of the 42-Gallon Oil Barrel ).

At the Port of Philadelphia, it took dockside stevedores 10 days to load the oily cargo aboard the moored Elizabeth Watts. Sailors were not anxious to sign on with a ship that could explode and burn even before casting off and sailing down the Delaware River toward the open sea. Capt. Bryant reportedly had to “Shanghai” his crew of seven.

The cargo’s fumes were noxious, lurking, and explosive. The risk of fire or explosion was constant, especially since saltwater residue could eat at the barrels’ glue and cause leakage. No ship had ever crossed the Atlantic bearing such cargo.

Whether by persuasion or chicanery, Capt. Bryant secured his crew, and the Elizabeth Watts departed the Philadelphia docks on November 19, 1861. Forty-five days later, the Elizabeth Watts sailed down the Thames River to arrive at London’s Victoria Dock. 

It took twelve days to unload the 1,329 barrels. Just one year later, Philadelphia would export 239,000 barrels of oil — still without the technology of railroad tank cars or “tanker” ships designed for the purpose (also see petroleum transportation).

Built in 1889 for the Standard Oil Company (Ohio), the SS Delaware used nine pairs of tanks to ship about 28,000 barrels of oil to the United Kingdom. Delaware under Steam oil painting by William T. Mathew. Print courtesy Appreciating Affordable Art, Richard Grassby.

An expert on the Port of Philadelphia and its early role in the growth of the U.S. petroleum industry, maritime historian William Flayhart in 2003 published Perils of the Atlantic Steamship Disasters, 1850 to the Present. 

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Recommended Reading: The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power (2008); Perils of the Atlantic: Steamship Disasters, 1850 to the Present (2003). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “America exports Oil.” Author: Aoghs.org Editors. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/transportation/america-exports-oil. Last Updated: November 16, 2025. Original Published Date: December 1, 2005.

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The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History has educated millions of visitors about the history of U.S. transportation since “America on the Move” opened in November 2003 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. 

Today’s first-floor exhibits in the General Motors Hall of Transportation include the 1903 Winton (the first automobile to drive across the country), bicycles, carriages, antique automobiles, and a 1959 Chicago Transit Authority “L” mass transit car. Nearby, a A 260-ton locomotive built in 1926 is featured across from exhibits about Route 66 — the “People’s Highway.”

“America on the Move” also displays a red, 1931 Ford truck representing a typical oilfield service company. 

An exhibit about the history of Route 66 — commissioned in 1926 and fully paved by the late 1930s — is part of the Transportation Hall at the National Museum of American History. Photo by Bruce Wells.

The $22 million Transportation Hall encompasses 26,000 square feet and displays more than 340 historic objects. The space features 19 historic settings in chronological order, reflecting the nation’s relationship with great and small roadways.

“America on the Move replaces exhibits of road and rail transportation and civil engineering installed when the National Museum of American History opened as the Museum of History and Technology in 1964,” notes the America on the Move website.

“We would not do an exhibit about cars and trains, or even a transportation history exhibit. It would be an exhibit about transportation in American history,” the site adds.

Visitors to the Hall of Transportation learn how and why the U.S. interstate highway system began in the 1950s. Photo by Bruce Wells.

“America on the Move” features the Smithsonian’s extensive transportation collection using multimedia technology — and large displays, including a PS-4 Class steam locomotive (No. 1401) built in 1926. The exhibition educates visitors about the history of U.S. transportation infrastructure and “reveals America’s fascination with life on the road.”

The role of “Route 66” from Chicago to Los Angeles is featured in the Smithsonian museum’s transportation hall. Photo by Bruce Wells.

The exhibit hall begins with late 19th-century transportation technologies, including steam-powered ships and trains, the building of canals, and urban development of street cars. The artifacts and custom displays progress to early internal combustion gasoline-fueled autos.

Public fascination with driving for recreation and camping at National Parks is also included in the Trams[prrtation Hall. Among the most popular collections, “America Adopts the Auto” features interactive exhibits about the massive new infrastructure required across the country (also see Asphalt paves the Way).

“Explore the way the automobile went from being a plaything of the rich to a major factor in the American transportation landscape,” notes the Smithsonian. “In this exhibit section full of objects, you can see toy cars, early license plates, engines, road markers, car-part inventions, mechanics’ tools, and gas pumps.”

To cope with the changes that “automobility” brought, the nation developed an elaborate system of law, commerce, and custom, adds the Smithsonian. Congress passed laws to rebuild roads as inventors improved production techniques. New businesses — gas stations, tire shops, and garages — sprang up to supply drivers’ needs.

In 1901, the year of the great oilfield discovery at Spindletop Hill in Texas, New York became the first state to register automobiles; by 1918, all states required license plates. Created in 1913, the Lincoln Highway Association promoted the building of a paved highway from New York to California largely supported by donations from car-related businesses.

An oilfield service truck from Seminole, Oklahoma, is among the exhibits in the General Motors Hall of Transportation. Photo by Bruce Wells.

By 1930, more than half of American families owned a car — and 23 million cars were on the road. Many high schools began offering driver education classes. A large exhibit area highlights the Smithsonian’s collection, including displays showing the history of the interstate highway system and images and artifacts from Route 66.

A section about “life on the open road” notes how in the 1920s new highways began to affect people’s lives: “Some Americans used highways to migrate. Others earned a living on the road, or by its side, running businesses. Many Americans began to take to the highways for pleasure.”

Travelers often saw the highway as a symbol of independence and freedom – although they depended on the government for the roads and on businesses such as automobile and tire manufacturers, oil refiners, gas stations, and roadside restaurants.

Route 66 and Interstates

Among the exhibits are images of Route 66, which was commissioned in 1926 and fully paved by the late 1930s. A prominent Tulsa, Oklahoma, businessman — who also invested in the petroleum industry – is credited with creating the enduring (and international) popular identity of Route 66.

Cyrus Avery, a Pennsylvania native, saw the need for better roads, the exhibit notes. As chairman of the Oklahoma Highway Commission, he helped plan the system for numbered highways. His proposal for a highway from Chicago to Los Angeles along a southwestern route was approved and designated U.S. 66 in 1926.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike — “the nation’s first long-distance superhighway” — opened in 1940. Photo by Bruce Wells.

Avery founded the U.S. 66 Highway Association and coined the route’s nickname, “Main Street of America.”

Another exhibit notes that after decades of debate, Congress passed the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1956 — and the interstate network was born. The 41,000-mile system was designed to reach every city with a population of more than 100,000.

When the Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940, it stretched 160 miles from Carlisle to Irwin. It would more than double in length by 1957. A historical marker notes the creation of one of the earliest “service plazas,” now commonplace on all interstate highways (also see Iowa 80 Trucking Museum).

The “limited access” design of the turnpike became the model for future superhighways — the U.S. interstate system. Almost completed by the 1990s, the total cost of the nation’s interstate system reached more than $100 billion.

The Route 66 exhibit includes the red Oklahoma “oil field service” truck owned by the Rufus Lillard Company of Shawnee with this note: “The 20th-century oil industry employed increasingly large numbers of men in the oil fields: their number rose from 22,230 workers in 1902 to 93,205 in 1919.”

Even more people were employed building pipelines and working in refineries, corporate offices, and product marketing. Despite the Depression, by the mid-1930s the U.S. petroleum industry employed some one million people. Read about America’s first automobile show in 1900 in New York City’s Madison Square Garden in Cantankerous Combustion.

Delbert Jackson’s 56-foot mural “Panorama of Petroleum” welcomed visitors to the Smithsonian Museum of Science and Technology in 1967.

Similar to today’s “American on the Move” hall, the National Museum of American History once devoted space to the petroleum industry. On June 28, 1967, the “Hall of Petroleum” opened. It included a full-size cable-tool rig, rotary drilling rigs, pump jacks, and many other oilfield exhibits.

The Hall of Petroleum’s main entrance featured a mural by Oklahoma artist Delbert Jackson. Learn more in Smithsonian’s “Hall of Petroleum.”

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Recommended Reading: The American Highway: The History and Culture of Roads in the United States(2000); Official Guide to the Smithsonian, 4th Edition (2016). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Become an AOGHS supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells.

Citation Information: Article Title: “America on the Move.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/transportation/america-on-the-move-smithsonian-exhibit. Last Updated: November 13, 2025. Original Published Date: January 27, 2010.

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The Houston Ship Channel, the “port that built a city,” opened for ocean-going vessels on November 10, 1914, making Texas home to a world-class commercial port. President Woodrow Wilson saluted the occasion from his desk in the White House by pushing an ivory button wired to a cannon in Houston.

The Houston Ship Channel opened on November 10, 1914, as an ocean-vessel waterway linking Houston, the San Jacinto River, and Galveston Bay. 1950 postcard courtesy Boston Public Library.

The National Anthem played from a barge in the center of the Turning Basin as Sue Campbell, daughter of Houston Mayor Ben Campbell, sprinkled white roses into the water, according to a Port of Houston historian.

An 1915 image of the Houston Ship Channel that had been dredged to a depth of 25 feet. Photo courtesy Fort Bend Museum, Richmond, Texas.

“I christen thee Port of Houston; hither the boats of all nations may come and receive a hearty welcome,” Campbell proclaimed.

The bayou had been used to ship goods to the Gulf of Mexico as early as the 1830s. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) described the original waterway — known as Buffalo Bayou — as “swampy, marshy and overgrown with dense vegetation.”

“Steamboats and shallow-draft vessels were the only boats able to navigate the complicated channel,” noted ASCE, adding that in 1909, Harris County citizens formed a navigation district (an autonomous governmental body for supervising the port) and issued bonds to fund half the cost of dredging the channel.

Army engineers dredge and maintain the Houston Ship channel for deepwater shipping. It terminates about four miles east of downtown Houston. Photo courtesy U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

According to the Port of Houston Authority of Harris County, in 1937 the steamship Laura traveled from Galveston Bay up Buffalo Bayou to what is now Houston.

The steamship Laura’s trip — in water no deeper than six feet — proved the bayou was navigable by “sizable vessels” and established a commercial link between Houston and ports around the world

A bird’s eye view of Houston in 1891. Today’s Port of Houston is ranked first in foreign cargo and among the largest ports in the world. Map image courtesy Library of Congress Panoramic Maps.

“With the discovery of oil at Spindletop in 1901 and crops such as rice beginning to rival the dominant export crop of cotton, Houston’s ship channel needed the capacity to handle newer and larger vessels,” reported the Port Authority, administrator of the channel.

Harris County voters in January 1910 overwhelmingly approved dredging their ship channel to a depth of 25 feet for $1.25 million. The U.S. Congress provided matching funds. As work began in 1912, similar giant maritime projects included construction of the Panama Canal and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.

An oil museum in Beaumont, Texas, includes petroleum science and refinery exhibits for educating young people about the Port of Houston. Photo courtesy Texas Energy Museum.

By 1930, eight refineries were operating along the deep water channel, ASCE notes. The area eventually supported massive petrochemical complexes along the shoreline of processing facilities and oil refineries, including ExxonMobil’s Baytown Refinery.

A circa 1910 postcard of the Houston Ship Channel and foot of Main Street, Houston, Texas, S. H. Kress & Co., courtesy University of Houston Digital Collection.

Under continuous development since its original construction, the Houston Ship Channel has been extended to reach 52 miles with a depth of 45 feet and a width of up to 530 feet. It travels from the Gulf through Galveston Bay and up the San Jacinto River, ending four miles east of downtown Houston. 

Although the dredging vessel Texas first signaled by whistle the channel’s completion on September 7, 1914, the official opening date has remained when Sue Campbell sprinkled her white roses and President Wilson remotely fired his cannon.

With refineries and expanded liquefied terminals for exporting natural gas (LNG), the Texas waterway has grown into one of the largest petrochemical facilities in the world.

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Recommended Reading:  Sheer Will: The Story of the Port of Houston and the Houston Ship Channel (2014). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2025 – Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information: Article Title – “Houston Ship Channel of 1914.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/transportation/houston-ship-channel. Last Updated: November 7, 2025. Original Published Date: November 25, 2014.

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The first U.S. auto show opened in New York City’s Madison Square Garden in 1900, just five years after Charles Duryea claimed the first American patent for a gasoline-powered automobile. Gas proved to be the least popular source of engine power.

On November 3, 1900, America’s first automobile show presented an innovative assortment of electric, steam, and “internal explosion” engines to power horseless carriages. Manufacturers like Olds Motor Works of Lansing, Michigan, introduced models — one of each kind — to compete in the developing market.

Autos powered by internal combustion engines at the 1900 National Automobile Show were loud and difficult to start. The most popular models proved to be electric and steam-powered.

From 1901 to 1907, Olds manufactured the “Curved Dash” powered by a single-cylinder, five-horsepower gasoline engine. It sold for $650 and was the first mass-produced U.S. automobile. The concept of automotive assembly lines began when Ransom Olds used a stationary assembly line (Henry Ford would be the first to manufacture cars using a moving line). 

Manufacturers presented 160 different vehicles in Madison Square Garden during the first national automobile show, November 3-10, 1900, sponsored by the Automobile Club of America. Chicago would host its own auto show in 1901.

Future titans of the transportation industry gave driving and maneuverability demonstrations on a 20-foot-wide track that surrounded the exhibits. A wooden 200-foot ramp tested hill-climbing power.

About 48,000 visitors to the first U.S. auto show paid 50¢ each to see the latest automotive technology. The most popular models proved to be electric, steam, and gasoline — in that order.

Electric Autos and “Steamers”

New Yorkers welcomed electric models as a way to reduce the estimated 450,000 tons of horse manure, 21 million gallons of urine, and 15,000 horse carcasses removed from the city’s streets each year.

Hundreds of “Hansom” cabs built by the Electric Vehicle Company worked well, but heavy lead-acid batteries, muddy roads, and lack of electrical infrastructure confined these early electrics to metropolitan areas.

This ad for the Winton motor carriage – often identified as the first American automobile ad, according to the Henry Ford Museum – appeared in an 1898 issue of Scientific American magazine.

Consumers favored “steamers” over their gasoline-powered competitors. Steam-powered automobiles traced their roots back to 1768, when a French military engineer, Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot, built a self-propelled steam tricycle to move artillery.

By 1900, manufacturers like Bridgeport, Connecticut-based Locomobile — from the words “locomotive” and “automobile” — the Stanley Motor Carriage Company of Tarrytown, New York, and others boasted of their products’ safety and touted the virtues of simple steam power over “complex and sinister” internal combustion engines.

At the time of the first U.S. auto show, Locomobile produced 750 steamers, second in sales only to Columbia & Electric Vehicle Company of Hartford, Connecticut, but consumers complained of the time required to heat boilers and the necessarily frequent stops for water.

Progress in the development of internal combustion engines soon outpaced steam technology.

At the turn of the century, about 8,000 vehicles shared mostly unpaved roads with horses and wagons. At the first U.S. auto show, an innovative assortment of electric, steam, and “internal explosion” engines powered the latest designs in horseless carriages.

Automobiles powered by internal combustion engines at the 1900 National Automobile Show were primitive, noisy, and cantankerous. Most were based on Nikoulas Otto’s 1876 four-stroke design and ran on a variety of “light spirits,” such as stove gas, kerosene, naphtha, lamp oil, benzene, mineral spirits, alcohol, and gasoline.

Karl Benz applied for an imperial patent for his three-wheeled carriage in 1886. It was powered by a one-cylinder, four-stroke gasoline engine. His wife Bertha took it on a widely publicized drive two years later (see First Car, First Road Trip).

Driving the Stanley Steamer “Rocket” in 1906, Fred Marriott — a mechanic for the Stanley Motor Carriage Company — set the world land speed record at 127.7 mph, a record unsurpassed until 2009. Photo courtesy New England Historical Society.

But in the United States, one critic described the internal combustion engine as “noxious, noisy, unreliable, and elephantine. It vibrates so violently as to loosen one’s dentures. The automobile industry will surely burgeon in America, but this motor will not be a factor.”

Adding Horsepower

The critic was wrong. Gasoline, once an unwanted byproduct of kerosene refining, cost only about 15 cents a gallon in 1900 and produced dramatic increases in engine horsepower. Despite the absence of “filling stations,” gasoline became available in a consumer market where electric lights were making kerosene obsolete.

The refining industry needed a product to replace kerosene and gasoline was it. In 1901, Olds Motor Works sold 425 models of a gasoline-powered “Curved Dash Runabout” for $650 each. Four years later, when the model was discontinued, almost 19,000 had been sold. American consumer preference for gasoline-powered internal combustion engines was thoroughly established.

Many technology concepts for modern hybrid cars began with Ferdinand Porsche’s 1902 gasoline-electric Mixte.

When New York City hosted its next automobile show in 1901, more than 1,000 vehicles would be on display for one million visitors. Internal combustion and hybrid gasoline-electric automobiles were well represented at the show. The first mass-produced auto, the Curved Dash Oldsmobile (with a horizontal, one-cylinder gasoline engine), made its debut at the show.

America on the Move

A growing number of the new “infernal machines” soon shared unpaved U.S. roads with startled horses. Of the 4,200 new automobiles sold in the United States at the turn of the century, less than 1,000 were gasoline powered.

Charles Duryea and his brother Frank in April 1892 had tested a gasoline-powered automobile built in their Springfield, Massachusetts, workshop. Considered the first automobile regularly manufactured for sale in the United States, a total of 13 were built by the Duryea Motor Wagon Company. 

Although their company would last only three years, according to the Henry Ford Museum, the Duryea brothers became the first Americans to attempt to build and sell automobiles at a profit. Other manufacturers quickly followed the Duryea example. 

By the time Henry Ford sold his first “quadricycle” in 1896, New York City public workers were removing 450,000 tons of horse manure from the streets every year. 

Improved gasoline-powered engines would become popular with consumers.

Two months after the Duryea Company’s first sale in 1896, a New York City motorist driving a Duryea reportedly hit a bicyclist. This was recorded as the nation’s first automobile traffic accident.

The Ford Model T “Tin Lizzy,” the first mass-produced car the average American buyer could afford, first rolled off its production line on October 1, 1908. 

“Petroleum, which consists of crude oil and refined products such as gasoline, diesel, and propane, is the largest primary source of energy consumed in the United States, accounting for 36 percent of total energy consumption in 2018…More than two-thirds of finished petroleum products consumed in the United States are used in the transportation sector.” — U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Today in Energy, August 2019. Two years later, EIA reported the nation’s petroleum consumption decreased to a 25-year low.

In 2003, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., opened a major exhibition about the role of transportation in society (see American on the Move). The National Museum of American History’s collection includes the history of Route 66, the U.S. interstate system, and the evolving technologies of cars.

A rocket motor fueled by natural gas powered the Blue Flame to a world land speed record in October 1970 that would stand for more than a decade.

Learn how liquefied natural gas (LNG) fueled a 1970 land world speed record in Blue Flame Natural Gas Rocket Car.

Electric Cars: Back to the Future

“The available supply of gasoline, as is well known, is quite limited, and it behooves the farseeing men of the motor car industry to look for likely substitutes.” – Horseless Age, 1905

More than a century ago, “automotive engineers” examined novel ways of combining electric motors and gasoline engines to exploit the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of each.

Electric cars once were practical on level roads — even with their mammoth lead-acid batteries and limited range — but were largely confined to big cities where recharging infrastructure was available. Twenty-first-century hybrid cars emulate their predecessors.

“In this system, an electric generator or dynamo is coupled direct to the petrol motor, and the current furnished is employed to operate electric motors which drive the car,” noted Paul Hasluck in his 2015 book The Automobile: A Practical Treatise on the Construction of Modern Motor Cars – Steam, Petrol, Electric, and Petro-Electric (from a 1923 French book by Gerard Lavergne).

Modern hybrids are much indebted to Ferdinand Porsche’s 1902 gasoline-electric Mixte. The Mixte used a small four-cylinder gasoline engine to generate electricity – but not to turn its wheels. The engine powered two three-horsepower electric motors mounted in the Mixte’s front wheel hubs that could briefly surge to seven horsepower and carry it to a top speed of 50 mph.

While more than a century of technological evolution separates Mixte from today’s hybrids, both rely upon gasoline to enhance and recall the virtues of “electrics” as automobiles with a future.

Learn much more about internal combustion engine history by visiting the New England Auto Museum and see many rare early examples preserved at the Cool Coolspring Power Museum.

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Recommended Reading: The Automobile: A Practical Treatise On the Construction of Modern Motor Cars Steam, Petrol, Electric and Petrol-Electric (2015); A History of General Motors (1992); A History of the New York International Auto Show: 1900-2000 (2000). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Cantankerous Combustion — First U.S. Auto Show.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L. Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/transportation/first-auto-show. Last Updated: November 2, 2025. Original Published Date: March 1, 2008.

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Seen from the highway, the spheres look like massive eggs or fanciful Disney architectural projects. A 19th-century iron bridge manufacturer from Chicago conceived the idea for these globes — at first made by riveting together wrought iron plates. Modern highly pressured vessels are vital for storing and transporting liquified natural gas (LNG).

Chicago Bridge & Iron Company (CB&I) officially named “Hortonspheres” — also called Horton spheres — after Horace Ebenezer Horton (1843-1912), the company founder and designer of water towers and rounded storage vessels. His son George would patent designs that stand among the great innovations to come to the oil patch.

Hortonspheres, the trademarked name of massive containers for storing and transporting liquified natural gas (LNG), were invented by a bridge-building company.

Horace Horton grew up in Chicago, where he became skilled in mechanical engineering. He was 46 years old when he formed CB&I in 1889. His company prospered, building seven bridges across the Mississippi River. 

Horton then expanded the company’s Washington Heights, Illinois, fabrication plant to begin manufacturing water tanks. It was a decision that would bring water towers to hundreds of towns. 

Horace Ebenezer Horton (1843-1912) founded the company that would build the world’s first “field-erected spherical pressure vessel.”

CB&I erected its first elevated water tank in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in 1892, according to the company, which has noted that “the elevated steel plate tank was the first built with a full hemispherical bottom, one of the company’s first technical innovations.”

When Horton died in 1912, his company was just getting started. Soon, the company’s elevated towers were providing efficient water storage and pipeline pressure that benefited many cities and towns. CB&I’s first elevated “Watersphere” tank was completed in 1939 in Longmont, Colorado.

Improved Oilfield Structures

The company brought its steel plate engineering expertise to the oil and natural gas industry as early as 1919, when it built a petroleum tank farm in Glenrock, Wyoming, for Sinclair Refining Company (formed by Harry Sinclair in 1916).

Horace E. Horton’s company designed spherical storage vessels for his Chicago Bridge & Iron Company. Photo courtesy CB&I.

CB&I’s innovative steel plate structures and construction technologies proved a great success. The company left bridge building entirely to supply the petroleum infrastructure market.

A spherically bottomed water tower shown in the Chicago Bridge & Iron Company 1912 sales book.

Newly discovered oilfields in Ranger, Texas, in 1917 and Seminole, Oklahoma, in the 1920s were straining the nation’s petroleum storage capacity. A lack of pipelines and storage facilities in booming West Texas was a big problem.

In the Permian Basin, an exploration company’s executives were desperate to store soaring oil production. They hired engineers to design an experimental tank capable of holding up to five million barrels of oil at Monahans, Texas. Construction in early 1928 took three months, working 24 hours a day.

Roxana Petroleum Company’s massive storage structure used concrete-coated earthen walls 30 feet tall. The oil reservoir was covered with a cedar roof to slow evaporation.

But when no solution could be found for leaking seams, the oil storage attempt was abandoned. The concrete oval, which briefly became a water park in 1958, later became home to Monahans’ Million Barrel Museum.

By 1923, CB&I’s storage innovations like its “floating roof” oil tank had greatly increased safety and profitability as well as set industry standards. That year the company built its first Hortonsphere in Port Arthur, Texas.

Liquefied Natural Gas

As an iconic engineering example of form following function, the sphere is the ideal shape for a vessel that resists internal pressure. Spherical vessels of all sizes became common for storage of compressed gases such as propane and butane. Hortonspheres could hold large amounts of liquefied natural gas (LNG), produced by cooling the gas at atmospheric pressure to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point it liquefies. 

In the first Port Arthur installation and up until about 1941, the component steel plates were riveted; thereafter, welding allowed for increased pressures and vessel sizes. As metallurgy and welding advances brought tremendous gains in Hortonspheres’ holding capacities, they also have proven to be an essential part of the modern petroleum refining business.

CB&I constructed fractionating towers for many petroleum refineries, beginning with Standard Oil of Louisiana at Baton Rouge in 1930. The company also built a giant, all-welded 80,000-barrel oil storage tank in New Jersey.

Since its first sphere in 1923, Chicago Bridge & Iron by 2013 had fabricated more than 3,500 Hortonspheres for worldwide markets in capacities reaching more than three million gallons — reportedly the world’s top spherical storage container builder.

Poughkeepsie Hortonsphere

Fascinated by geodesic domes and similar structures, Jeff Buster discovered a vintage Hortonsphere in Poughkeepsie, New York. In 2012 he contacted the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.

A Hortonsphere viewed in 2012 from the “Walkway over the Hudson” in Poughkeepsie, New York. It was dismantled in 2013. Photo courtesy Jeff Buster.

Buster wanted the agency to save Horton’s sphere at the corner of Dutchess and North Water streets. He asked that an effort be made “to preserve this beautiful and unique ‘form following function’ structure, which is in immediate risk of being demolished.”

Buster posted a photo of the Poughkeepsie Hortonsphere on a website devoted to geodesic domes. “The jigsaw pattern of steel plates assembled into this sphere is unique,” he wrote.

“The layout pattern is repeated four times around the vertical axis of the tank,” Buster added. “With the rivets detailing the seams, the sphere is extremely cool and organic feeling.”

Although the steel tank, owned by Central Hudson Gas and Electric Company, was demolished in late 2013, Buster’s photo has helped preserve its oil patch legacy.

Liquefied Natural Gas at Sea

Sphere technology became seaborn as well. On February 20, 1959, after a three-week voyage from Lake Charles, Louisiana, the Methane Pioneer — the world’s first LNG tanker — arrived at the world’s first LNG terminal at Canvey Island, England.

Ships began transporting liquefied natural gas as early as 1959. Modern LNG tankers are many times larger and protected with double hulls.

The Methane Pioneer, a converted World War II liberty freighter, contained five 7,000-barrel aluminum tanks supported by balsa wood and insulated with plywood and urethane. The successful 1959 voyage across the Atlantic demonstrated that large quantities of liquefied natural gas could be transported safely across the ocean.

Most modern LNG carriers have between four and six tanks on the vessel. New classes have a cargo capacity of between 7.4 million cubic feet and 9.4 million cubic feet. Each ship is equipped with its own re-liquefaction plant.

In 2015 — about 100 years after Horace Ebenezer Horton died — Mitsubishi Heavy Industries initiated construction of the next-generation of LNG carriers for transporting shale gas produced in North America. Rapid growth of U.S. natural gas production resulted from hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) of the shale formations of North Dakota and other states.

In 2024, there were about 700 LNG storage vessels operating worldwide.

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Recommended Reading: The Extraction State, A History of Natural Gas in America (2021); Sheer Will: The Story of the Port of Houston and the Houston Ship Channel (2014). Your Amazon purchase benefits the American Oil & Gas Historical Society. As an Amazon Associate, AOGHS earns a commission from qualifying purchases.

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The American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) preserves U.S. petroleum history. Please become an AOGHS annual supporter and help maintain this energy education website and expand historical research. For more information, contact bawells@aoghs.org. Copyright © 2025 Bruce A. Wells. All rights reserved.

Citation Information – Article Title: “Horace Horton’s Spheres.” Authors: B.A. Wells and K.L Wells. Website Name: American Oil & Gas Historical Society. URL: https://aoghs.org/transportation/hortonspheres/. Last Updated: September 18, 2025. Original Published Date: December 14, 2016.

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