Nonetheless, thanks to the modern techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, there has been an 1860s-like growth of shale drilling in Pennsylvania throughout the northern counties and southwestern part of the state. According to Mark Price, a labor economist with the Keystone Research Council in Harrisburg, in 2005, there were only eight wells dug in the state’s Marcellus region. By 2008, the state had 335 new wells, and three years later, nearly 2,000 wells were drilled. He said there was not a big explosion in new wells right now, but he expected the industry to stay at its current levels for a while.

In the 19th-century Pennsylvania oil boom years, cities would be founded, grow exponentially in a short time, then become almost ghost towns as prices rode the roller coaster down. Titusville, site of Mr. Drake’s well, went from 250 residents in 1859 to 10,000 five years later. Pithole was four huts when the boom came in early 1865 and had 50 hotels or rooming houses by the year’s end.

Pennsylvania’s current boom is similar, if more modest.

“Certainly, no matter how you feel about shale drilling, where it has been concentrated, you can point to some economic benefit,” said Mr. Price, offering the far southwestern corner of Pennsylvania as an example. “Greene County has seen an explosion of R.V. parks, where workers have come to live at least temporarily. In the course of the Great Recession, where the rest of the economy was thrashing around, these communities thrived, but then could be threatened when the drillers moved on.”

Mr. Price estimates that about 20,000 people work in the fuel-mining industry in Pennsylvania. “It is a good amount, but only 1 percent of all workers in the state. Nice to have, but it’s not transforming the state’s economy.”

During the 19th-century boom, the domestic output of crude went from 2,000 barrels in 1859, the year of Mr. Drake’s well, to four million barrels in 1869 and 10 million in 1873.

“Around that time, Bradford County had the first billion-dollar field,” said Samuel Slocum, manager of the Penn Brad Oil Museum in Custer City. “They had drilled 40,000 wells producing 82 percent of world’s oil.

“But then when the electric bulb came around, there was no need for kerosene, and the car had not been invented, so it all just died.”