by Bruce Wells | Dec 14, 2025 | Petroleum Art
Cartographer visited petroleum boom towns to draw popular bird’s-eye views.
Thaddeus M. Fowler created detailed, panoramic maps of America’s earliest petroleum boom towns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His popular cartographic depictions of oil patch communities in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Texas offered “aero views” seemingly drawn from great heights.
More than 400 Thaddeus Fowler panoramas have been identified. There are 324 in the Library of Congress, including this one of Oil City, Pennsylvania, in 1896. Source: Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, Washington, D.C.
Fowler has the largest number of panoramic maps in the collection of the Library of Congress (LOC) in Washington, D.C. His hand-drawn lithographs have fascinated viewers since the Victorian Age. Being depicted in one of Fowler’s maps, also known as “bird’s-eye views,” was a matter of civic pride for many community leaders. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Aug 21, 2025 | Petroleum Art
U.S. Postal Service commemorates American petroleum history with 120 million four-cent centennial stamps.
A centennial oil stamp commemorating the birth of the U.S. oil and natural gas industry was issued on August 27, 1959, by Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield, who proclaimed: “The American people have great reason to be indebted to this industry. It has supplied most of the power that has made the American standard of living possible.”
As the sesquicentennial of the first U.S. well drilled to produce oil approached in 2009, a special “Oil 150” committee sought U.S. Postal Service approval for a commemorative stamp. The committee and historians in more than 30 petroleum-producing states petitioned for a stamp similar to one issued for the industry’s 1959 centennial of the first commercial U.S. oil well. (more…)
by Bruce Wells | Jan 1, 2024 | Petroleum Art
Brief looks at some history books, personal accounts and biographies from America’s oilfields.
American Oil & Gas Historical Society (AOGHS) website content includes links to just a small sample of petroleum-related history books and some of media resources relating to the history of U.S. energy. Classic historical texts available online include Paul H. Giddens’s 1936 The Birth of the Oil Industry (with introduction by Ida Tarbell).
Because AOGHS also links oil patch artwork featured in Oilfield Artists, many website visitors have asked a post that includes their fiction, research, and personal accounts or biographies. (more…)
