Pithole: The Boom Town That Lasted a Year

About two miles northeast of this spot, in eighteen sixty-five, a patch of Pennsylvania forest became one of the most astonishing cities in American history, and then vanished almost as fast as it appeared.

When drillers struck oil at Pithole Creek, the rush was immediate. Within months a full city of fifteen thousand people had materialized in the wilderness, complete with banks, churches, hotels, a daily newspaper, a post office, its own water system, and a railroad spur to ship the crude.

At its peak, Pithole briefly ranked as the third busiest post office in all of Pennsylvania. Speculators paid absurd prices for lots that had been farmland weeks before.

Then the wells began to fail. Within a year of the peak, production collapsed. Businesses closed, residents fled, and structures were sold off board by board. Within a decade almost nothing remained. Today the site is preserved as a state historic site, its only visible features a few foundations and the mowed lines of the streets that once held a city.