Titusville Oil Exchange: Where the Petroleum Market Was Born

When Edwin Drake struck oil just south of Titusville in eighteen fifty-nine, the industry that erupted around him had no organized market. Prices were set by rumor, panic, and whoever shouted loudest. That changed in eighteen seventy-one when producers, refiners, dealers, and brokers organized here on this spot, in the American Hotel, to create the nation's first permanent oil exchange.

The exchange moved to several locations over the years and eventually returned here in a new three-story brick building completed in eighteen eighty-one. At its peak, it set prices that rippled through the entire American oil economy. The exchange dissolved in eighteen ninety-seven as Standard Oil's dominance made open-market trading largely irrelevant. The building was razed in nineteen fifty-six, but this address is where the modern oil market first took shape.