Emlenton, Pennsylvania: Named for Hannah, Found Oil Instead

Emlenton sits where the Allegheny River cuts through the hills of Venango and Clarion counties in northwestern Pennsylvania. The land was held by the Fox family of Philadelphia, who named the settlement for Hannah Emlen Fox, the wife of Joseph Mickle Fox. The borough formally incorporated in eighteen fifty-nine, just months before Colonel Edwin Drake drilled the world's first commercial oil well near Titusville.

Emlenton had been a small river trading post; it soon found itself inside Pennsylvania's roaring Oil Region. The town rode the oil boom before settling back into river-town quiet. Today it is a borough of about six hundred people where the hills drop steeply to the water.