The Valley of Oil. With Illustrations by Harry Hoehn.
1946 · New York
by Botsford, Harry.
New York: Hastings House, Publishers, (1946). Octavo, dark orange cloth illus. cloth (hardcover), viii + 278 pp. Good+, with slight damp staining to upper cover (interior clean, tight, bright); in a torn (still, attractive), mylar protected dust jacket. From dust jacket: Edwin L. Drake came to Titusville, Pennsylavia in the late fifties and founded the petroleum industry. But he died in poverty after a long and disheartening struggle. “Coal Oil Johnny” inherited more than a million from his Aunt Sarah’s oil lands and squandered it in two years. But he had himself a time renting hotels to the tune of $8,000 a day and leading the parades of a minstrel troupe of which he became the “angel.” Samuel M. Kier, the first refiner, advertised Kier’s Petroleum or Rock Oil, the most wonderful rememdy yet discovered,” as equally good for rheumatism, gout, and neuralgia, and even capable of curing blindness...All these and more are to be found in this vivid chronicle of the early growth of the world’s first commercial oil enterprises and pioneers in Pennsylvania who made the industry what it is today. (Inventory #: bas39)