A few years before 1820, Andrew McCaslin, a young Irishman, poled up the Allegheny River on a flatboat in search of building stone and settled at the site that later became the Borough of Emlenton, drawn by the beauty of the surrounding hills. Settlement in the area had already begun, especially across the river in Scrubgrass Township, after 1798 when the U.S. Congress opened the land for settlement. McCaslin was soon joined by others, and a wharf and tavern helped create a village. By 1834 homes were being built and lumbering was thriving, and by 1839 twenty iron furnaces operated within a sixteen-mile radius, with barges carrying pig iron downriver. Emlenton was named for Hannah Emlen, wife of Joseph Fox, a wealthy Quaker from Philadelphia who owned extensive acreage in Venango and Clarion Counties, including much of the town site. Incorporated as a borough in 1859, Emlenton was already an established trading center when the first oil well was drilled near Titusville that same year. Oil development soon spread south, and in 1867 Emlenton's first oil well was drilled on Ritchey Run. Although natural gas was first seen as a hazard and nuisance during the early oil boom, local men recognized its potential as a dependable commercial source of light and fuel. In 1881 the forerunner of the Emlenton Gas Light and Fuel Company was organized as the first natural gas company in Venango County, and in 1882 it became one of the first chartered in Pennsylvania and the third such company in the United States, marking the earliest beginning of the Columbia Gas System. Local oil producers later organized the Emlenton Producers Oil Company in 1891, and in 1931 a merger of nineteen regional firms created Quaker State Oil Refining Corporation. The local Quaker State plant was sold in 1990, and the refinery, then owned by Honeywell, closed permanently in January 2000.