Oil and Gas Museum

Covering the history of the oil and gas industry in West Virginia and Ohio Hello, Col. Drake? Are you sitting down for this? As early as the 1820s, oil drilled from West Virginia wells was used as a light source and an industrial lubricant marking the first documented commercial use of oil in this country, says the author of a new history book on West Virginia's early oil and gas business. David McKain, a Parkersburg, W.Va., businessman whose great-grandfathers participated in the oil boom of the 1860s, has authored a book that challenges Col. Edwin L. Drake and his neighboring Pennsylvanian long-time claim as the birthplace of the oil business. "This is an old oil producing area," McKain said. "West Virginia was at the very forefront of the oil business - but we had the Civil War to contend with in the first five years."