Hamilton McClintock Sr. arrived in the Oil Creek valley in 1796 and bought a 400-acre farm whose natural oil spring yielded several barrels each year, allowing him to supplement farm income by selling oil as medicine and lubricant for 50 cents to one dollar a gallon. Like the Seneca before him, he recognized the value of the oil bubbling from the spring. After the Drake Well launched the modern petroleum industry in August 1859, the farm's productive oil spring made the property highly valuable. Jonathan Watson, a partner in the company that leased land for Drake's well, quickly rented land on the H. McClintock Farm and began drilling, and Brewer, Watson and Company struck oil in November 1859, setting off a drilling bonanza. More than 60 wells were drilled in 1861, and by mid-1862 the farm had produced over 82,000 barrels of oil. Hundreds of people came to drill for oil or support those seeking it, and in 1860 McClintockville began to grow on the flatlands beside Oil Creek with a hotel, boarding houses, stores, oil company offices, a blacksmith, refineries, and a toll bridge. Men such as Henry H. Rogers got their start there as oil refiners before becoming influential industrialists, and in the spring of 1864 the McClintockville Petroleum Company purchased the farm. Early oil pioneers favored drilling near Oil Creek and natural seeps, so Hamilton McClintock's oil spring in the middle of Oil Creek became the site of the region's third producing well.