When I think of oil wells in the U.S., I envision the large oil derrick towers dotting the landscape in Texas and Oklahoma and on platforms in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Ohio was the nation’s leader in oil production until the 1920s!

My foray into Ohio’s energy history came from a most unlikely place: a painting we recently acquired by Columbus, Ohio, artist Emerson Burkhart titled Oil Field Cardington Ohio 1964.

The first oil-producing well in North America was drilled in 1814 in Noble County, Ohio, in the southeastern part of the state. Demand for oil skyrocketed during the American Industrial Revolution that began in the 1870s, and Ohio answered. Companies including Standard Oil Company in Cleveland and the Ohio Oil Company in Lima were established to produce, refine, and sell Ohio’s oil. You may be familiar with their successors, which include ExxonMobile, Chevron, BP, and Marathon.

Burkhart’s painting depicts Ohio’s oil boom in the 1960s when a large oil reservoir was discovered in Morrow County. Residents of the central Ohio county profited from leasing their land to speculators. Even local schools cashed in: a drilling rig was set up to extract oil at home plate on one school’s baseball field, forcing the baseball team to play all of its games away that year. In February of 1964, 162 wells were producing 27,000 barrels of crude oil each day.

Today, Ohio continues to be a major producer of oil. However, new technologies have unlocked additional energy sources in Ohio, making the state one of the biggest producers of natural gas in the country.