Byron D. Benson and the Long-Distance Pipeline

In the eighteen seventies, crude oil from northwestern Pennsylvania was being hauled to refineries in costly, inefficient ways. Byron D. Benson changed that.

A founder and the first president of the Tidewater Pipe Company, established in eighteen seventy-eight, Benson's company built a six-inch pipeline that carried Pennsylvania crude over the mountains toward coastal refineries, covering distances no previous pipeline had managed. It was the first long-haul oil pipeline in American history, and it challenged the hold that the railroads had over oil transport. Benson lived in this area from eighteen seventy-two until his death in eighteen eighty-eight.

The pipeline he built helped establish the template for oil infrastructure that still underlies the energy economy today.