When the drillers first began to look for oil in the Bear Creek flats in what is now Petrolia, no one expected a town to be founded on the site. Certainly, the report of the Toronto Globe (September 2, 1861) did not offer much encouragement to prospective settlers.
Nearly every shanty has its quantum of boarders, for the most part Americans, or men who had lived long in the United States, though of late a very considerable number of Canadians have been added to the population. As is to be expected there is a strange mixture of trades and professions. There are not a few California miners, whose experience in gold mining materially assists them in their search after "grease" as they call the oil. There are doctors and tailors, colonels and cobblers, all sorts and conditions of men. Although liquor is sold at most of the houses, there is scarcely any drunkenness. Those who have been there from the commencement bear witness to the fact that the community is a very quiet one, no rows having taken place; knifings and shootings being entirely unknown. There is a very great scarcity of petticoats. Ladies desirous of admiration had better emigrate to Enniskillen As they pass the "hotels" of an evening after work is done, the boarders will turn out to look at them, and should they stick in the mud, or otherwise get into difficulty, plenty of stalwart arms will be ready to help them out. Another thing they will please note is, that the "greasers" have plenty of money. Though their exterior be rough, and their garments oily enough to fry "they've got the dollars".
Following the discovery of the King well in 1866, the town's population grew to 2,300 almost overnight. The shanties of the Globe report were soon replaced by homes, stores, hotels and churches which were springing up among derricks and refineries.
By 1874, the year these photographs were taken, settlement had spread beyond the main thoroughfare. Petrolia was still a town of wood and mud but it is interesting to note the number of family dwellings. Unlike the California gold rush which came before and the Klondike which came after, the boom in Petrolia produced an orderly community.
