The commercial development of natural gas closely followed northwestern Pennsylvania’s nineteenth-century oil excitement, and for Emlenton it proved an even greater boon. In 1882, the Emlenton Gas Light and Fuel Company became one of the first licensed in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and through it local men gained an early understanding of the unique problems of reliable delivery from inherently unsteady sources. They used that understanding to merge small, often struggling, independent gas companies into pipeline networks while maintaining continuous exploration and drilling operations in often distant fields. Emlenton native George W. Crawford, with the early guidance and partnership of his older brother-in-law M.C. Treat, became a leader in expanding those efforts. From the 1880s into the first quarter of the twentieth century, George’s brothers Fred and Carroll, Thomas B. Gregory, Harry J. Crawford, and others cooperatively pursued this work throughout western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.