10/24/2026
A Franciscan friar named Joseph De La Roche D'Allion is accredited as the first white man to acknowledge the existence of a natural spring upon which oil also bubbled up with the water. The year was 1627.
The spring and the nearby creek - now known as Oil Creek - had been used by Native Americans for decades prior. The Indians would collect the oil from the spring and the creek and use it primarily for medicinal applications.
Twenty-nine years later a Jesuit Father, Paul Le Juene, wrote of the spring in his journal.
In 1767, oil from the spring was sent to Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to treat wounds he had endured years before during the French and Indian War. Johnson was considered the land agent and governor of land extending from central New York to Michigan.
After several treaties, the land upon which the spring is located was formally "given" to the Seneca in 1797.
In 1833 Yale University professor of chemistry Benjamin Silliman described the spring as part of a geological survey of the land.
Presently located in the one-square mile Oil Springs Indian Territory as part of the larger Seneca Reservation, the spring is accessible of off Cuba Lake Road, just south of Cuba Lake in southwestern New York state.
The spring is accessible by a footbridge across Oil Creek and is protected by a fence. The entrance to the historic park is marked by stone pillars erected on both sides of the entrance off of Cuba Lake Road.
Southwest of the spring, along the Oil Creek Valley, the existence of oil was later discovered in the 1850s and wells were sunk to mine for the black gold. Towns along the northern Pennsylvania border such as Bradford, Knapp Creek, Eldred, Warren and the aptly named Derrick City all prospered from the oil boom.
(c) Visual Ronin Photography
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