Indoor Exhibits

There’s a Drop of Oil and Gas in Your Life Every Day!

Visitor Center and Museum

Nearly every aspect of our lives is saturated with petroleum. It’s used to power vehicles, to heat homes, to create medicines that keep us healthy, and to make the plastics, cosmetics, and other personal products that enhance our daily lives. Discover how the 1859 Drake Well oil strike launched the global industry that has forever shaped our modern world.

Chronicling over 150 years of petroleum industry development, Drake Well Museum’s new 10,000 square-foot exhibit highlights over 530 unique artifacts in sections on finding, producing, storing, moving, refining, business, using and the future of petroleum. Visitors begin their multi-sensory experience in the Charles Suhr Orientation Theater before moving into the gallery where eye-catching displays and engaging interactives immerse them in the sights, sounds, smells, and feel of petroleum from its discovery to the present day and beyond.

There’s a Drop of Oil and Gas in Your Life Every Day! explores the technological, scientific, environmental, and social history of the petroleum industry and demonstrates how oil and natural gas have come to affect our daily lives. A story of determination, innovation, and ingenuity; it is also a cautionary tale about petroleum’s far-reaching impacts. Learn about the world’s petroleum roots and reflect on complex questions about the future of energy consumption.

Moving Oil!

Oil Transportation Building

Explore the petroleum industry’s evolution from horses to horsepower. This 1,800 square-foot exhibit features 6 historic vehicles once used in drilling, well maintenance, and oil transportation operations, including an 1880 tank wagon and a 1927 GMC Big Brute Truck.

Moving Oil! employs captivating oral histories, photography, documents, and interactive displays to engage visitors in the story of how people, animals, and machinery worked together in Pennsylvania’s oil fields.