The Advent of Natural Gas in America

While manufactured gas had become generally accepted as a lighting source toward the late 1800s, commercial uses were very limited.

Natural gas was produced from a salt well in Charleston, West Virginia in 1815. It is thought that the "burning spring" in West Virginia, which was in a natural park dedicated by George Washington in 1775, may well have been natural gas.

The first commercial discovery of natural gas was in 1821 in Fredonia, New York. By 1825, the hotel in Fredonia was said to use natural gas for cooking, which is the first recorded commercial use of natural gas in the Unites States.

In 1840, John Griswell drilled a salt well near Centerville, Pennsylvania and struck natural gas at 700 feet. By burning this gas under his evaporating pans at the salt mine, Griswell marked the first use of natural gas for industrial purposes in the United States.

The first natural gas pipeline was constructed in 1870 out of wood and stretched 25 miles between West Bloomfield and Rochester, two New York cities. The first iron pipeline was a two-inch line stretching 5.5 miles from the Newton Well to Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1872.

It was during the 1880s that companies began to spring up across the country for the purpose of transporting gas.