There is no substitute for a firsthand report on local conditions, as this description of the road to Oil Springs in the Toronto Globe (September 2, 1861) delightfully attests:
To the city of grease there are more ways than one, but which way you may select you will wish you had taken the other. The road most commonly travelled is the one leading from Wyoming on the GreatWestern Railway, and running due south. To be compelled either to walk or ride twelve and a half miles [20 kilometres] between Wyoming and Oil Springs is a dreadful calamity, of which no one can appreciate the extent except those who have suffered by it. The number of mud holes is something wonderful. Not little paltry affairs, giving to the vehicle a slight jerk and a twist, but "big things", large enough for a horse and wagon to swim in. But swimming is prevented by the stiff clay mixed in with a promising,firm-looking crust on the top, seemingly capable of bearing the weight of the greatest man "in this magnificent province etc. etc.", but deceptive, gifted as it would appear with powers of suction, burying horses up to their shoulders, and retaining wagons firmly in its grasp. Skilful driving is required to evade the stumps; broken wheels here and there tell tales of collisions and smashes, said stumps upon all occasions coming out of the contest unhurt. Wagons pushed aside into the bush, or still sticking in the mud, and piles of lumber on the road, tell where attempts to reach Wyoming, or Oil Springs have been abandoned in despair. But matters will soon have assumed a more civilized aspect. A contract for making a plank road has been taken, and men are vigorously at work digging accessary ditches and eradicating the stumps.
There are no surviving photographs of the road through the Enniskillen swamp but this photograph, taken in 1863 at an oil field in Oil Creek, Pennsylvania, gives an accurate impression of what it was like to travel roads littered with stumps and pitted with mud holes.
Courtesy: The Drake Museum, Titusville, Pennsylvania
