The Institute for the History of Technology & Industrial Archaeology

2001 IA Field School

West Virginia University

The University of Western Ontario

Wilfrid Laurier University

Industrial Archaeology Field School
Summer 2001: Ontario, Canada

Digging into the recent past--researching and documenting industrial remains in the region where the North American oil boom started in 1858!

During summer, 2001, a student and professional research team from the United States and Canada combined for IHTIA's 2001 field school.  We were out to document one of the earliest petroleum industry sites in North America.  Instructors from the fields of Industrial Archaeology, Historical Archaeology, North American History, the History of Technology, Public History, Geography (& Historical GIS), Petroleum Geology, Architecture, Cultural Resource Management, Engineering, Landscape Architecture, and Historic Preservation provided students with lectures and training, and directed the students in documenting the sites to HAER standards.

About the Sites and Fieldschool:
 An unparalleled collection of structures related to the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century oil industry stands in Southwest Ontario's Lambton County. Moreover, much original equipment is still used commercially here, near the towns of Oil Springs and Petrolia. IHTIA's interest in this area culminated with a field team from West Virginia University visiting Canada in 2000. This team began documenting the 1870s jerkerline system of pumping oil. They also documented one of the 1930s powerhouses at Fairbank Oil that runs the jerkerline system. Because of the remains' historic importance, this year's IHTIA field school partnered with numerous other entities to return to the area.  This was the third IHTIA summer field school, and more are planned. The IHTIA field school experience provides opportunities for students to learn methods of historic site documentation and interpretation using the techniques of industrial archaeology. Research and documentation produced by the teams of students and professionals will aid historians for generations to come.

Students from a wide variety of disciplines learned site recording techniques while documenting the ca. 1900 Fitzgerald Drill Rig, the remains of the ca. 1910 Fairbank Central Powerhouse, and the 1915 Baines Machine Shop. With guidance from the instructors, each student laid-out and completed a basic pencil drawing for one of the three structures and assisted in another aspect of the documentation related to his or her field of study.

With the 2001 field school over, IHTIA staff are incorporating the summer's results into a HAER documentation package bound for the HAER collection at the Library of Congress.

Field Trips:
During their stay in Canada the team took weekly field trips. These excursions explored regional archives, museums, and historic sites including Hamilton and its nineteenth-century water pumping station, the 1858 site of the first oil well dug in North America, the Oil Museum of Canada, the Petrolia Discovery, Toronto’s nineteenth-century railroad roundhouse, the Niagara Gorge, the Canadian Drilling Rig Museum, and the Welland Canal.

Major U.S. and Canadian Supporters:
 West Virginia University
U.S. National Park Service
Parks Canada
Fairbank Oil
University of Western Ontario
Wilfred Laurier University
Sarnia Lambton Environmental Association

Additional Participants:
Several additional partners made this field school a success, including historical geographer Christopher Andreae, architect Richard Anderson and Cultural Resources Documentation Services, Louise Trottier and the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa, the U.S. ICOMOS summer intern program, Pat McGee, Albert Baines, and Clouse Photography.

In-Kind Partners:
Also, in-kind partnerships provided tours of the Oil Museum of Canada, the Petrolia Discovery, the Canadian Drilling Rig Museum, the Hamilton Museum of Steam and Technology, the Ontario Workers Heritage and Arts Center, and the Made in Hamilton industrial heritage tour.