This is a view from a bike trail in Oil Creek State Park from under a railroad trestle.This is the area where the oil boom all started. Titusville was a slow-growing community until the 1850s, when petroleum was discovered in the region. Oil was known to exist here, but there was no practical way to extract it. Its main use at that time had been as a medicine for both animals and humans. In the late 1850s Seneca Oil Company (formerly the Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company) sent Col. Edwin L. Drake, to start drilling on a piece of leased land just south of Titusville near what is now Oil Creek State Park.