The burning spring here and a salt lick three miles downstream at the river’s edge were natural phenomena that influenced much of the development of the Kanawha Valley. The spring was agitated by bubbling natural gas that would ignite and burn over the water. Discovered by the Van Bibbers in 1773, it later impressed George Washington so much that he and General Andrew Lewis purchased it. The nearby ancient salt lick was a salt brine seepage that first attracted buffalo, deer, and elk, and Indians used it to supply their salt needs. In 1753, Mary Draper Ingles of Virginia, a white prisoner of the Shawnees, was forced to make salt for her captors when they stopped at the lick en route to Kentucky. Early settlers used the seepage brine for salt manufacture until David and Joseph Ruffner, searching for a stronger and more plentiful supply, completed drilling a well in 1808 to a depth of 58 feet by a method they invented. It was the first drilled well in America. Their drilling technique was used to drill many salt wells, and a thriving salt industry followed. In 1841, while drilling for salt at the edge of the burning spring, William Tompkins encountered a strong flow of natural gas, which he used under his vats for salt manufacture. This was the first industrial use of natural gas. The burning spring and the salt lick excited and inspired early pioneers and their descendants to develop the drilling technique, tools, and skills later used to drill the first oil well at Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859. These methods are still used by the oil and gas industry, and their salt making grew into a chemical industry.