Kentucky’s Great American Oil Well
Cumberland County pioneers drilled for brine, found oil — and bottled and sold it as medicine.
An 1829 well drilled with a spring-pole seeking brine found oil instead. Petroleum from “Kentucky’s Great American Oil Well” would be bottled and sold for medicinal purposes. Also known as the “Old American Well,” the fortuitous discovery was among the earliest commercial oil wells in the United States.
Although drilling specifically for oil would not begin until three decades later in Titusville, Pennsylvania (see First American Oil Well), the Kentucky well struck a highly pressurized geologic formation, making the failed brine well one of the nation’s first oil gushers.
