[gentle music] NARRATOR: "Our Town: More Stories From Oil City" is brought to you in part by Gates and Burns Realty, helping people buy, sell and rent homes for more than 130 years, with offices located in Oil City, Franklin and Clarion.

Home listings, commercial properties and additional services are available at gatesandburnsrealestate.com.

Gates and Burns Realty, serving the Oil Region since 1889.

Franklin Oil-Region Credit Union.

Founded in 1974 by the employees of Franklin Steel, the Franklin-Oil Region Credit Union has grown to more than 6,500 members.

Anyone who lives, works, worships, volunteers, attends school or owns a business in Venango County qualifies for membership, offering a wide variety of electronic services, 24/7 telephone banking, and notary service for members.

Learn more at for-cu.com.

Rossbacher Insurance, serving the communities of Erie, Warren, Crawford and Venango counties since 1928.

To learn more about business protection for all types of companies, manufacturers, and service organizations, or family protection for home, auto and life, visit teamrossbacher.com, or call 814-677-4095.

P.S.

equals personal service since 1928.

"Our Town: More Stories From Oil City" is also brought to you in part by Karma Coffee Company and viewers like you.

Thank you.

[gentle music] My name's William Moon.

I'm the current Oil City mayor, and I'm here to talk about the Oil City 150 celebration we had this year on April 11th of 2021.

How we got to where we are today in the city of Oil City, 150 years from the day it was incorporated.

What was a problem here was that the people were forming their own little towns around town.

One was Venango City, one was Oil City, and they started to see where things weren't happening the way they wanted it to happen.

So things were laid out haphazardly through town, roads wouldn't match with other roads, and they decided to sit down and start platting a new city, so to speak, for everyone to make sure the roads connect, water and sewer lines were put in the ground correctly, and things like that.

So we've found old wooden water lines that are, have been buried in the city for water lines.

And as we're finding those things, we replace them with new, modern technology as we move forward.

As they were working on, working on these plat maps and stuff, they'd find out that everything wasn't functioning, [laughs] so they decided to get together with the two different cities and start working on putting this thing to a master plan, the master plan.

So then it was submitted to the state and the state approved everything, and then the city got incorporated on April 11th of 1871.

This is where we come to 150 years this year of 2021.

We had a great celebration on April 11th.

We had many people here that were involved with the program, a lot of community members and city workers, and we had dignitaries from the State, Congress, and local representatives and former living mayors and our current councilmen.

We had a wonderful program, lasted about an hour.

We also had the local music, Oil City High School band and music come down.

We had the current honor guard from the vets.

We had the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts that participated in the program that day.

One of the good things about this happening this year was, kinda because of COVID, we had some parameters we had to meet during COVID: we had to do everything outside, we couldn't do anything indoors.

But we had great participation from the community to come to the program.

Before we had did the program, we opened a time capsule.

So we received word from a local historian that was doing the Drake Well time capsule.

And what they found out, the time capsule was not there.

So the historian told us to check and make sure your time capsule was where it was supposed to be.

We pulled the plaque off where it was located in Justice Park.

Had a hard time pulling the capsule out of the ground because of the weight of the time capsule.

And once we pulled it out, we found out that partial, the capsule was not in the concrete, it was laying in the ground, so when we, once we got the time capsule open, we had found that water had gotten into the time capsule and ruined a lot of the items in there.

So it took us about a week to maybe a month for all this stuff to dry out.

Once we got that dried out, we were able to pull everything out and take photos of what we had taken out of the capsule and provide that to the community during the day of the celebration down there.

People were kinda upset because of what happened, but being in the ground for 50 years, we had no control over what happened.

We'll continue to have that on display for people to look at, and also for when we, we're gonna be burying a new time capsule up in Hasson Park.

We'll be doing that, reburying of that time capsule on October 9th of this year during OC O.C.toberFest festival that we'll have in town.

So we're very excited.

We are gathering things together to put in a new time capsule.

We'll be vacuum sealing these items in, it'll be in a fiberglass vault that was donated by a local couple that live here in town.

Also, we're doing the extensive selling of merchandise and other things that we have produced during our Oil City 150 celebration.

So those items are available to purchase for the community if they wanna a souvenir from the program of that year.

We're very proud of our heritage.

People call this the valley that changed the world, due to the oil industry and the technology that came out of here to take care of the oil industry back in the day.

So, I'm very proud of our heritage, and we'd like to see us move forward through the future with our community.

I'm Judith Etzel, and I'm gonna tell you some of the quirky history, and we all know about the oil wells on the hills and all of that early, but that spawned incredible stories, the wealth and the generosity and the culture.

And so we've been exploring those stories and we call, they're quirky.

Oil City is unusual in the sense that it became wealthy overnight.

Only one other town in the United States did that, and that was Bradford when the Bradford Oil Field opened.

So we're talking 1859 on, and the wealth was so immense that they invented the industry on the fly.

Every single thing about the oil and gas industry was invented as they went.

So give that a couple years and then those men, and some women, were making a lot of money.

The unusual thing about it is that they believed in two things.

They believed that it should enrich your life, that money, and second of all, that they had a commitment to their hometown, Oil City, and you can see the largesse of that all through town.

But they also instilled in their children the fact that you have a responsibility to your town, and that you will become well-educated and you will come back and you will invent things, you will foster culture.

And so the legacy of this city is immense, and I think we can bring it back.

I think we have the talent and I think we have the desire, I'm not sure we have the wherewithal, but we'll try.

But some of the history is unusual, and the oil...

There was a fella called Ludvig Nobel.

He worked at Oil Well Supply, which made pumping jacks, which invented the pumping jack.

He asked his brother from Sweden to come over and visit him.

He said, "You know, Alfred, why don't you come up and learn the trade, go back to Sweden and open the oil fields."

So Alfred came back and came to Oil City, lived in Siverly, a small neighborhood, stayed with his brother for a while, learned the trade, went back to Sweden.

And because we had used nitroglycerin here to break open the well, he went over and thought, I can do better than that, so [chuckles] he invented dynamite.

Couple years later, he founded the Nobel prizes, but he lived here.

The Hershey family started here.

They had a confectionary store and decided to move to the center of the state.

H. J. Heinz had a business here, went to Pittsburgh instead.

So it was a place that just fostered the idea that you can make it in any trade you want.

We also had a huge immigration, both after the civil war, when we had all of those veterans flock to the oil fields 'cause they knew they could make money, but also from Europe.

And so we have a huge Polish tradition, German tradition.

We had a very large Jewish community.

So it was really a very thriving town, but the history behind all of that, it's just... You know, when you have that much wealth and you can have businessmen say, you know, we need to have a circus in town.

Well, they don't just get a little circus, they get Barnum and Bailey, they get Ringling Brothers.

I just came across a story from 1941 that was about a parade, celebrating, having a war bond drive.

And [laughs] they had 50,000 people visit Oil City to see giant balloons, 15 foot high balloons going down Seneca Street.

That predates any New Year's Day parade, but because they could pay for it.

We had one family, the Baum family, made their money in the oil fields, and the father said to the son, "I know you don't wanna work in the oil fields, you wanna write, so I've made enough money to give you the leisure time to do that."

So Frank Baum wrote "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz."

[laughs] He was from here.

And the Tin Man reflects the Oil Valley.

It's wearing an oil funnel on its head and it constantly has to be oiled, his body has to be oiled.

So that started here.

It's that kind of history though that, and I'm sorry that the younger generation doesn't know, man, this was a fun town.

This was a good place to live because it still is, and we still are making history.

Perhaps not in the oil industry, but in other ways.

The wealth still stays here in some ways.

Many, many of these families established endowments, and so we have some funds, the Justice Fund, that Tracks Fund, that still funds scholarships.

This is 150 years later, they're still paying for things.

I worked as a journalist for 51 years, and when there would be a news story that I didn't wanna do, I would go over to the microfilm machine and just go through it.

So you find it that way, but you also find it just with an obscure picture.

When I left my job and I still wanted to write, so a retired teacher said, "Let's do something."

She showed me a black and white picture of elephants in the river.

[laughs] That just sent us down a rabbit hole, I was like, "Why are they in the river?"

Well, in the Western part of town, that's where they had the circus grounds, it was a hot day, stuck all the elephants in the river.

So we started looking at those, and then we just came across enormous, just enormous, wonderful, quirky stories.

I didn't wanna write about the same old stuff.

I'm glad it was here, and obviously it spawned all of this, but it's the things that it generated, it's the inventions it generated, it's the culture that had generated which is fascinating.

[gentle music] My name's Dan Flaherty.

I'm the executive director of the Oil Region Library Association, and we'll be discussing the Oil City Library.

Well, there's been great support for public libraries in the city since 1871.

People would gather weekly for essays and discussions, but there was no physical library until, coincidentally, the building we're in, Belles Lettres Club, was established in 1890 with that goal in mind, to build a library.

And one of the active members, Cora Hull Ramage, led a campaign to reach out to Mr. Andrew Carnegie to help fund a library building in the city of Oil City, and that was the beginning of where our library was erected and still stands today.

Carnegie promised that he would fund the building of a library if the community promised to have a space for where the library would be built, staff it, provide it with the collection of books, and then that there would be regular maintenance contributions from this community to keep it going.

And so once the Belles Lettres Group provided the staffing and the collection, and The City of Oil City promised to fund the library moving forward, Mr. Carnegie contributed $40,000, roughly, to build our magnificent library, and services have remained there since July of 1904.

It lasted for 50 years until there some major renovations again.

And so we've seen some renovations throughout the years, but the external shell of the original Carnegie look that appeals to so many is still there today.

So we've experienced plenty of changes throughout our history, both in terms of the physical space and the nature of the services that we provide.

So regarding the space, in the 1950s, through local trust and fundraising, we renovated the space to meet modern needs, but it was very popular and heavily used, so up in the '70s, they found they needed more physical space.

So there was another huge fundraising campaign, over 800,000 was raised.

And this time around, Isabel Ramage Maddox, Cora's daughter, was a major contributor that helped build a physical wing onto the library that has extended it and almost doubled the space.

And that has remained mostly intact till today.

But regarding service changes, we've always been a heavily-used library, an important resource in the community and gathering space, but today it is expanded well beyond the classical checking out books and research study space.

Today, we are diving into, still, our base roots of providing connections to the community and to individuals with resources and information.

But beyond the book, it is checking out experiences, equipment, providing programs of STEM related activities, and all kinds of opportunities for people to learn and enhance their personal experiences.

So it's made us a lot more robust institution than what we are classically recognized as.

We have a local heritage room that has been intact for a number of years, and we expect will be popular moving forward, but we... As many communities have changed, and what we're celebrating, our 150 year history now, of all the changes that have gone outside of our walls, the library has been a staple in the community, and regularly recognized as a community gem or a community hub, is what we hear a lot.

Within the walls, we've maintained a quality set of resources and staffing and programs that we offer to people.

But today, in order to meet the ever-changing societal demands and expectations, it is still the basic principle of providing access to people, but what that looks like includes 24/7 access to digital resources, STEM-related educations.

We recently had a music garden installed outside the library to provide people with their own unique experiences in that regard.

So we like to see ourselves as the center of the wheel with the spokes expanding out beyond that so we can be that community connector, and help our residents in their needs, but also help other organizations and city services thrive as well by connecting our users with them.

[gentle music] My name is George Cooley, and I'm here today to talk about the gallery scene in Oil City.

Oil City had a arts revitalization program, and we brought about probably 40 artists to town to move here over a decade.

And some have stayed, some have left, but what has happened is that there's now five galleries, primarily as a result of that.

Five galleries in town are Art on Elm, Gallery BC, Graffiti Gallery, 180 Degree Art, TAGG and Touch of Art.

Additionally, we are lucky enough to have also the Venango Museum and The Oil City Library, which also have art on display.

Art on Elm is on Elm Street.

It's a gallery in the Karma Coffee Company, and they have changing exhibits, and Marie and Sean Elkhorn run that, and they would like you to come see the art and see their menu.

Graffiti Gallery is close by, across the street, and it's in the National Transit Building annex, and it's a...

They have changing exhibits.

They do about four or five a year, and could be any kind of topic.

It's open to the public, and they have calls for artists, and they've tackled environmental things, they've tackled music, they've done all sorts of different themed exhibits.

180 Art is three artists, and they're at 305 Wilson, I believe.

And it's a house that they've turned into their studios, and they have an exhibit space and a casual environment to talk about art and whatnot.

TAGG is the Transit Art Gallery and Gifts, and it's in the National Transit Building.

It's on the first floor, and that's right at the corner of Seneca and Center streets.

And it's a, there's 24 member artists that are there, and they all volunteer and run the facility.

That's been open, I believe, since 1996, so they've been running quite a while.

Touch of Art is our newest gallery in town, and it's also on Seneca Street.

And it provides environment for new artists to present their work to the community.

My gallery is Gallery BC that I own with my partner, Margaret Brostrom.

And we've taken an old Victorian house in Oil City, and 900 square feet of it is the gallery.

And then we also live there, and another 2,400 square feet of it is our studios.

Currently, we have an exhibit called Human Targets, which is our take on NRA silhouette human targets and what we think of those.

We're reluctant activist artists, Margaret and myself, and we've taken on the children being separated from their families at the southern border, we've taken on the NRA, and then we also have our own individual things that we take on within the rest of our art.

But we consider ourselves to be professional, and this is our way of displaying what we do.

Everybody at all these galleries wants people to come to Oil City and see them.

It can be one trip or many.

I know in our case, we're open to individuals and groups, and I think all the galleries are.

So it's just a matter of people coming and doing that, see what we're up to.

[gentle music] My name's Kathy Bailey.

I am the manager of the Oil City Main Street Program.

We are a downtown revitalization initiative that's been on the ground since 2011.

We are through a formal partnership with the city of Oil City and the Oil Region Alliance, and we do a variety of initiatives to revitalize downtown Oil City.

We really focus on creative placemaking, things to make our town more attractive, a place where people want to visit, want to work, want to live in.

And so we do various things like business support and physical improvements and promotional events.

But we do spend a lot of time on brightening up our downtown through different means.

And one of the strategies from our original five-year plan, which was back in 2010, one of those ideas was to pursue a mural initiative, to create a mural program, and another was to add lights to a bridge to improve lighting downtown.

Back in 2013 is when we first started our conversations about murals.

We have an artist initiative here in town, and through one of those meetings, our city manager at the time said, "You know, why don't you think about pursuing murals?"

And we remembered that we had that on our strategy.

And so that's when we knew that this was the time to start looking into it.

So we did three murals in the summer of 2013.

We had contracted with these artists earlier for different buildings in different areas of town, and we, that first year, we had two put on the south side of town and one on the north side of town.

And that actually was right before the Oil Heritage Festival.

We did a mural walk to celebrate those three murals being completed.

And it brought folks out to see these murals, and it really started to create some more excitement in town after we finished the first three.

We did a fourth mural in the fall of 2017, and then we did three more in 2018.

And we also did a touch-up project that year, in 2018.

So within a few years' time, our program had commissioned seven mural projects in downtown Oil City.

And they range in size, they range in location and in subject matter too.

Some of them are historical in nature, some of them have an oil and gas theme based on our history, a few others have recreation or are more, a little more artsy on the subject.

But essentially, they're colorful, they're vivid.

And we are still continuing that program.

What was our mural review panel has evolved into a public art committee.

That public art committee is exploring more opportunities for public art, different types of things to do.

So we plan on continuing to add color and variety through our downtown.

So in 2014, while we were still in the middle of planning for murals and working on our mural initiative, we also learned of another opportunity.

Again, an initial element on our first five year strategy is to add lights to a bridge.

Well, we learned that our local PennDOT Office had plans to rehabilitate the Center Street Bridge, which is on the north side of downtown.

They planned on doing that within a few years, this was in 2014.

And that particular bridge has arches, it's an iron truss bridge.

It's got very distinctive architecture.

It's a historic structure and a contributing resource in our downtown.

At the same time that we learned that they had this project in mind, we heard about a bridge in another town in Western Pennsylvania, where uplights were added to the bridge to illuminate it at night.

And so then we started to connect the dots, and then we realized, okay, this might be the lighting project that we had been talking about.

And we started researching a little bit and looking at a possibility for a lighting designer.

And we ended up pursuing a plan to illuminate the Center Street Bridge with color changing LED lights.

So it wouldn't just be white lights, it would be color changing, and it would be something that could be programmed.

So this was early 2017 that we began the construction phase.

The project itself was actually completed, so the lights were actually installed on the Center Street Bridge by July of 2017, late July.

And then we had already been planning that once we got completed on this project, once this project was finished, we wanted to have a party on the bridge to celebrate the project's completion.

Because we always do ceremonies when we complete something.

So we planned for what we called at that time, an Illumination Celebration.

And so this Illumination Celebration was a combination street party, just to have fun, bring people out on the street.

We actually closed down Center Street from Main to Seneca, so a whole block was closed there.

And we had a DJ, we had some children's activities, and it brought people out from all ages.

So the Center Street Bridge illumination project features color changing LED lights attached to the bridge itself, on its arches, on its rail.

And there are some uplights also, but they are changed according to seasons, holidays, special events, sometimes causes.

The lights are on every night from dusk until dawn, and each one of those light show programs is written and programmed individually.

This is all volunteers.

So we try to keep up on requests, we do take requests from time to time, but it's really, it's a symbol of community pride.

It is a nighttime public art feature.

And again, it highlights a historic structure in our downtown, so it's something that we're very pleased with, and a lot of folks in town have been very pleased with also, but the illumination celebration itself was so much fun.

People came out, kids were using hula-hoops and we had bubbles and everyone had a good time.

So that night we knew we wanted to do that every year.

Well, we're gonna make this an annual event.

We want to have this party on the bridge every year.

Well, we ended up, through a collaboration with the Oil City Arts Council, seguing into what is now known as Bridge Fest and Bridge Fest is held in August every year, and it is two evenings on two separate bridges, coordinated by two separate organizations.

So you can imagine the logistical challenges on that, it can be a little bit of a challenge, but it's one of our favorite events in downtown Oil City.

And Bridge Fest brings people out from all over, not only in town, but the surrounding area.

And it's a lot of fun.

It's a combination of just, music, street party, food, artists and vendors.

We do a lot of children's activities, again, on our evening.

So again, it's collaboration in progress.

But the most important thing to realize is that we've brightened downtown Oil City through color, through lighting.

And all of that was really the result of partnerships and collaborations, because none of these projects happen with one organization doing it on their own.

You really need to come together and reach out to your other local organizations.

And when you're working together on things, you can really move things forward.

[gentle music] Hello, my name's Evelyn Wheeler, I'm president of Oil City Arts Council.

And I'm here to let you know about Arts Council.

So Arts Council began 29 years ago in Oil City.

It's a nonprofit organization, board members, 12 in total, but our mission is to propagate the arts in the region, not just in Oil City, but in our area.

So in propagating the arts, we bring all types of arts to the community.

And I think a lot of our community doesn't realize how much we really do throughout the year.

And some of the events that we sponsor are starting when the New Year, first night.

So we celebrate the New Year with live events and offer that to the community.

And then into programming.

And that would be January, February, March, in the Transit Building downtown.

and that's live music in the Transit Building upstairs.

And then during the year we have the gallery, which is the Transit Art Gallery and Gifts, which is open all year round, has 23 members, and it currently, artists from throughout the region and people can purchase art of all types there, they could also purchase online at our website.

And then, let me see, June would be Oil Region Indy Fest.

July is the Oil Heritage Art Show.

We co-sponsor that with Arts Oil City and usually about 300 pieces of art is hung.

And it lasts through our Oil Heritage festival, but about 1000 people view that every year.

In July we have Jolly July 3rd.

And we thank the Oil City fireman, actually, for collecting monies to support the fireworks, but that's in Justice Park.

And it's a wonderful event with live music as well.

Pipeline Alley concert series, also in July, live music between the National Transit Building and the Transit annex.

And that's usually every Wednesday, in the evening, it was a beautiful year this year in the summer, we could kick back and relax with live music there.

August is Bridge Fest, the two day event.

And we co-sponsor that with Oil City Main Street.

And let me see.

And as we head into the fall, there are many other things that we do with Arts Council.

Art space available at Graffiti Gallery, which is another gallery open to artists.

They can exhibit their work all year.

And also, I don't wanna forget Earthworks pottery studio, which is available summer and into the fall.

So all of those events are sponsored by Arts Council and co-sponsored, as I've mentioned, and how that's funded is by grants that we write, federal and state grants, as well as partnerships, people just like you and I who say I'd like to fund the arts so that we can bring some entertainment to the community.

So we have partnership applications available to anyone who's interested, both personal or student or artist or corporate sponsorships.

And they're available at our website, and that's created this past year, it's a brand new website offering classes from the Oil Valley Center for the Arts, which are year round as well.

You can register there and pay for the classes.

And also all the other venues to become a partner.

I'm very grateful for the board of directors working out the ins and outs of things despite COVID and still being out there 100%, volunteering at every cost, recruiting volunteers as well.

We're always welcome to have people.

I think the reason people don't volunteer is they think they have to do everything and that is not true.

So with Arts Council, if there's a specific interest, you like to update things on Facebook or make phone calls or bring cookies, all of those things are the one things that, those are the things we need.

We just need people to do that one thing.

[gentle music] So, hi, I'm Mitch Littler.

I'm here.

I'm from Oil City.

I'm here to talk about Operation Good Vibes.

It's kind of my musical project I've been running around.

A lot of time spent in Oil City playing music, Franklin and Northwestern Pennsylvania.

Okay.

So Operation Good Vibes.

The name makes me smile when I say it.

It's like, when I was kind of looking for a name, and for some reason that's what came to mind and it still makes me smile.

When I'm out on the street and I tell people Operation Good Vibes, I kind of smirk because I don't know if I'm serious or joking, but that's the idea, make you smile.

But so what it is about mid-March, I'm going into my senior year of college and is at the end of this semester, and I really needed to like do something else, I needed to like get out and play music, 'cause it is such a part of me, I was not playing a lot of music, I was just kind of in school and like everybody else, a lot of sitting around being stuck in your own mind, like, headspace for past year or so.

And I decided like I had enough and I had to get out and I figured...

I kind of did it for myself as I wanted to play more music.

But if I could go out on the street corner and play music and make, like, one person smile, then I would just, that would make my day.

I mean, in a way, with music, you do it for yourself, just a little bit, make it a little bit better for someone, even just a little bit would be great.

And it's just actually kind of exploded from there, it's been a lot more than that.

So I went out on the street corner and I started playing music, street performance.

And so for the past 153 days now, since about mid mid-March, I've been running around, finding a street corner, mostly street performance.

I've had a couple other things.

I've had real gigs now, but mostly street performance.

And I've just been picking a town in Northwestern Pennsylvania to play at.

And I was, I had big plans.

I'm still going south a little bit.

I'm getting ready for school, so now I'm just kind of in a little city, but I started out in Oil City, been through most of Venango county, Crawford county, Erie county, Lawrence county, and now Butler county.

I've started that too.

Well, actually, something that's interesting happens is you'll find out there's a lot of stuff that happens a lot, so that you've never imagined, like, one thing is people will come up and start rapping with me.

Like, I think I've been, that's happened at over five times or more, like, that's something that's actually kind of common, people come up start rapping with you.

I've had guys come up, start playing guitar with me.

I did have a lady come sing and dance.

People come and start singing and dancing with you.

Actually that reminds me, I was in Meadville once and there was a lady, and this has happened, this is something that happens too.

And it's all part.

And it's something that touches me kind of, like, in my heart.

And it's hard to even, like, vocalize, 'cause it does mean a lot.

And I actually had a lady come up and she was, like, singing and dancing with me.

I have a tambourine I carry around.

She took the tambourine to shake it.

And she's done, she grabs my hand and she says, "Thank you.

I was having a horrible day and this was absolutely amazing."

And I have moments like, this, actually, that was a really, I think, something there, I really helped her.

I don't know.

I mean, with music, you just present it to people and they do their own thing and they take it in and it helps them however they want.

But that was something that just made it clear to me.

Like, that's why I'm doing it.

I think all musicians wanna play in front of a large audience.

Everybody wants the good gig like that, but I've done stuff.

And I've played a lot of music, a lot of different venues and things.

And I found that playing on the streets, I mean, maybe for some musicians is not the most fiscally rewarding thing, but it is probably the most rewarding type of performance you will ever do.

If you can learn how to enjoy it and talk to people and open, you have to be able to open up to them too.

And, because otherwise it doesn't work that well.

But it is one of the most enjoyable types of performance.

[gentle music] My name is Kat Thompson and I'm here to talk about FLEX.

FLEX is the young professionals group based out of the Venango Area Chamber of Commerce.

It's a group of young professionals that are focused on the sustainability of Venango County.

And we have a lot of different events and things that we do to promote and help our young professionals in the area.

Our members in FLEX are an incredible group of people.

They do so many wonderful things in this area, the jobs that they have, the careers that they have, but not only that, the involvement that they have in the community, we have board members, we have business owners, entrepreneurs, FLEX stands for Future Leaders and Entrepreneurs Exchange.

We have those entrepreneurs, those business owners.

We have people just doing all kinds of wonderful volunteer work.

Some of it with FLEX.

We have a lot of volunteering that we incorporate into our events and activities that we do, but our members are anywhere from working as a park naturalist in the local state park to working in finance, in accounting, in the city, in all kinds of aspects.

So we have just an absolutely amazing group of people.

I say this a lot in the different speaking engagements that I've had a chance to do, where, when people say, there are no young professionals here, I say, yes, we are here, and we're working here, we're living here, building houses, adopting pets, raising families and starting businesses, all kinds of things.

So our members are just an absolutely incredible group of people that I feel so lucky to get to work with throughout this organization.

FLEX has all kinds of events that we do.

We have socials where we just get together and hang out, whether it's doing karaoke or going for hikes or kayaking.

We do volunteer work, which includes anything from cleaning up the streets during Oil City cleanup day to painting a pavilion at our local county park.

We also have professional development events, where we do speaker series and have local professionals come in and teach us about a lot of different topics.

We try to pair a young professional with a seasoned professional to get different perspectives.

So we wanna give our members opportunities for professional development.

And then we also have a lot of events that we host as well.

We also have our biggest event is FLEX Presents where we ask the community for nominations for young professional of the year and we recognize a young professional of the year.

We also have a pretty big event is our FLEX annual meeting, which we elect our new leadership, and do some business and then also have a really nice event and some dinner and some networking events as well.

We have our bike and brew event, which is our biggest fundraiser, where in the past it's been a full-on brew fest in the park.

The last two years, we've done curbside bike and brew, which has been pretty cool to be able to pivot and has been also a great learning experience, so talking about professional development, we're learning how to shift and learn new things.

And then we also just have other events throughout the year that we wanna see what our members are interested in, we're doing a food tour coming up.

One of our local young professionals set up a business, so we are doing the food tour.

And then we also do the ice cream social for Oil Heritage Week here in Oil City.

That's one of our fundraisers as well, where we sell ice cream to the community.

And that's a lot of fun to be able to serve up some happiness throughout that event.

So we have a lot of different kinds of events that we hold.

And then also we try to attend community events as well.

We call it FLEX in the community where we try to support other organizations by attending their events as a group.

When I think about the future of FLEX and where we're going, I think about the OC 150 that we just had, it's 150th anniversary of Oil City.

We had a big event in the park when they revealed the time capsule, they dug up the time capsule and showed us what was in there.

And there were three keynote speakers.

And we talked about the past, the present and the future.

And again, talking about professional development, that was one of the opportunities I had for some public speaking.

I was the keynote speaker to talk about the future on behalf of FLEX.

And what I talked about was our members and the amazing things that they're doing, I called them out by name and I talked about the wonderful things that they're doing in this area and our members moving from big cities to come live here in Oil City because of the amazing community we have.

And that was my take on the future of Oil City is the people that we have, the young professionals, it's literally in our name, future leaders and entrepreneurs exchange.

We are the future.

And so when I think about the future of FLEX, I love to picture me, Lord willing, coming back to the OC 200, maybe I'll get to be the past speaker, but I'll get to see that future FLEX member, the future future FLEX member, talking about the incredible things that are happening and I can only imagine after the last year that we've been through how we had to pivot and get creative and change and grow, with the way that technology is and just the way that the world is, I can only imagine the incredible things that the future leaders are going to be doing.

So whether it's all crazy technology or bringing it back to the roots and just spending time together and networking together, I think the future of FLEX will be amazing, whatever it is.

And it's probably something that I can't even picture in my mind.

[gentle music] Hi, my name is Ashley Sheffer.

I'm talking today about the opportunities I've had an Oil City as a young professional from when I grew up here to now being an adult here.

So in 2011, I went to Cranberry High School but in 2011, I got to enter the Oil Heritage Festival queen contest and ended up being named Oil Heritage Festival queen that year.

So as Oil Heritage Festival queen, I got to really be involved in the community and I lived right on the border of Cranberry and Oil City.

So I spent some time in Oil City, but that's really when I got to get involved in Oil City and meet the people here.

And that's when I became introduced to the Venango Chamber who hosts the Oil Heritage Festival.

And at the Chamber, I started volunteering then as a high school student.

And then I got the opportunity to have an internship during college when I was home for the summers.

And then that led eventually to a full-time job at the Chamber in 2016, once I graduated college.

So at the Chamber, my job really focuses on two areas, Be Here, and FLEX.

So Be Here is an initiative that a lot of small towns, you hear people say, there's, you have to get out of here, there's nothing to do, there's no jobs.

And Be Here is really about changing that narrative and getting people to appreciate all there is here.

So it's a lot of promoting the amenities in the region and I get to meet all the awesome people and really, just get people to be more positive about it here and spread the word about all there is to do in the Venango County area.

And then the other side of that, FLEX is our young professionals group.

And it's for people under 40, around the time you graduate to when you're 40, and it's just a great way to engage and have fun and volunteer and develop professionally as well.

So I help, I do mostly marketing communications work with both of those areas, in event planning, public speaking, help with like social media and everything like that.

So I get to be heavily involved in the community with my everyday job.

With the Chamber, I made a lot of connections in the community, and that led me to building a relationship with Shaun and Marie Alcorn who owned a couple of existing businesses already.

And so I... Backtrack a little bit.

I, in college, became interested in food and wellness and started a blog called The Small Town Foodie.

And I loved cooking and I loved gardening and I was really just sharing tips to help people do that themselves.

Then I moved home, I continued the blog a little bit, but I was having trouble shopping, how I wanted to shop, I couldn't find, I got really interested in zero waste and also local food.

And I was having a really hard time shopping that way.

So I was going to Pittsburgh and Erie and trying to find foods I wanted, but I was having to go outside of the area.

So, Shaun and Marie, I approached them, they had an open storefront, thinking, maybe they would let me open or rent from them and have a space there but they were really interested in wanting to go in it with me.

So we partnered and opened September 28th, 2018.

So Core Goods is a market where we have four values, local, sustainable, quality and nourishing.

And we really try to just connect people with their food and where it comes from.

So we have products from over 20 local businesses, and it's not just fruits and veggies, it's chocolate, bites, it's bread, we have dairy products, kombucha, all from around the 100 mile radius.

And we don't sell, not all of our products are local, but we get as much as we can locally.

So the one side of the store is actually all bulk bins where you can bring your own container in and shop for nuts and seeds and dried fruit and granola, and a lot of fun products like that.

And then we have the fresh grab and go meals, whole produce cooler and a variety of other products as well.

So since I've opened the business, it's really given me a different perspective of the region.

I really knew a lot about the area before I opened it from my work at the Chamber, but it really let me, someone said to me when we opened, "Wow, you're not just talking the talk, you're walking the walk now."

So it let me really be a part of that, have my own business and really see what it's like, because I was helping businesses at the Chamber, but now I have on myself and have that different view of what it's like.

So there's some businesses around where Core Goods is and it's really nice, it's a nice kind of business culture where we have the yoga studio and the coffee shop and there's art studios across the street.

And we, it really seems to work together.

Like, I see people on the weekend get brunch at Karma Coffee and attend a yoga class and then come get a few things before they head home.

So it's really been neat to be a part of really helping the downtown thrive in Oil City.

So when I think of Oil City, I really think of the people and how supportive they are.

Probably in a bigger town it would be much harder for me to open a business when I was 24 and really just being great in the community and be on boards of directors and have the opportunities I've had.

And it's really the people who are supportive and welcoming and really want to help you make your dreams happen here and it's been a fun journey and I can't say it's been easy, but it's been fun and I've learned and I'm continuing to learn and I'm excited to see what I can do and what the whole community can do to continue to grow.

[gentle music] Hi, my name is Caleb Carrow, and I'm here to talk about the Oil Valley Disc Golf Society.

The Oil Valley Disc Golf Society started this year in 2021.

The course that we play at is called Hasson Park Disc Golf Course that was originally put in in 2011.

That's when I was introduced to the sport, a friend of mine bought me a starter set for my birthday, and I went out and I was hooked ever since, but the founding members of our course eventually moved out of the area, and over the last few years the course started to be a little neglected.

So that's when we stepped in and formed our society.

Our goal as a society is to grow the sport of disc golf and to continuously make improvements to our course at Hasson Park.

At Hasson Park, it's actually the 125th anniversary of the park itself.

So this year we put a lot of work in on the course.

We even teamed up with the Oil City Garden Club and we work to preserve the rhododendrons that were planted at the park over 60 years ago.

And we worked with them to get rid of an invasive species like multiflora rose and barberry, but ultimately we had the course looking in tip-top shape.

As a group this year, we ended up raising over $10,000.

And one of our main objectives was to get rid of our old rubber tee pads and put in new cement tee pads and we were successful with that.

Over quarantine, the sport absolutely exploded.

More people are playing now than ever.

So future plans for the course, we would like to put in more tee pads, front, middle, and back tee pads to make the course more accessible for everybody.

We look to get more signage up of the course, put more walkways up, but we wanna make this course a top premiere course on this side of Pennsylvania.

So disc golf is a sport for everybody, and it can be played at any time of the year.

So ideally you wanna be playing in the middle of summer, but it is possible to go out and play disc golf in the middle of winter, as long as it's not too cold or the snow is not too high to lose your disc.

So disc golf has the same premise as traditional golf.

So you're taking a disc, a frisbee, and you're trying to see how many throws it takes you to put the disc into the basket.

So just like in traditional golf, there's many different clubs, in disc golf there's many different disks.

So drivers are very sharp and they go the farthest, but they turn the hardest, mid ranges are a little bit thicker, so they'll go a little bit slower, but they'll also go a little bit straighter, and then putters are the thickest of the disks and they go the slowest and the straightest.

And that's what you would generally want to use to try to put the disk into the basket up close.

So there is a Professional Disc Golf Association and they hold sanctioned tournaments.

So many people in our society ended up joining the PDGA this year.

And we've been going out and going to tournaments in Pittsburgh, Ohio, New York, West Virginia.

And this year we will be having our first PDGA sanctioned tournament at Hasson Park since 2016.

There's disc golf courses popping up all over the country and all over the world, as a matter of fact, but there's an app that you could download on your phone called UDisc, and you can actually look at the area around you and you can see all the disc golf courses and they have different ratings on them.

So as people are traveling, I know I especially like to get on this app and see what courses are around me and what they're rated.

And we've had a lot of people stop at Oil City this year.

So we've talked to people from New York, Ohio, people from all over the United States that just happened to be kind of crossing the state or going somewhere and they make sure to stop at our a disc golf course and play around.

So the local community has been 100% onboard with the disc golf course.

We've reached out to numerous people and local businesses, and ultimately we raised over $10,000 for the course.

So what we did is we decided to do sponsorship sign.

So we had people come out and they ended up paying $300 to sponsor a hole.

So there's people that sponsored holes in memory of loved ones.

We had local businesses, such as Grandview Grille's Fat Dogs, where they sponsored holes and people also see those signs for the local businesses and it's nice that at our last tournament we had a Fat Dogs say that a lot of people ended up coming out and supporting their business.

So I think disc golf and the community kind of worked hand in hand.

[gentle music] Hi, my name's Devin, I'm here to talk about Oil City and how my business fits in it.

My business is Seven Foot Productions and Marketing.

And what we're really focused on is giving local people access to resources that they have in the big city or that bigger companies have and bringing their business to an online presence.

Seven Foot Productions for me really started after I graduated college, and my senior year happened during the COVID pandemic.

And so I come home to a town that was completely different than it was before and in a world that was definitely different than it was before.

And so businesses that were thriving before, just like all over the country, here at home are shutting down or struggling because they didn't, there wasn't the traditional person to person interactions like we're used to, as there's always been.

And so what Seven Foot Productions wants to do is push advertising and push local businesses, small local businesses towards using more digital media and digital marketing.

And to that end, COVID has accelerated that process rapidly.

I mean, even our grandparents are using computers just to talk to us now or Zoom meetings.

And so it's kind of brought in a whole 'nother generation into the fold of using digital media.

And it's also created almost a necessity for it, whereas before you could get by without it.

They, traditionally, in the past, a lot of businesses would use like classified ads or the Yellow Pages or a phone book.

And that has changed.

And it's not as simple as that any more.

I mean, print media and print advertising is still a real thing today and an important part of a holistic marketing plan, but it's important to utilize digital marketing as well because everything and everyone is moving towards online.

For local businesses, what video can really do for you as well is it becomes a 24/7 salesperson or a 24/7 information provider where you can describe your services or describe a process or a how to, or whatever fits your business.

And it enables people to access it, people can access it 24/7 if you have it on the right platforms.

And a video will work for you and your business 24/7, basically, it's the gist of it.

So I guess some of the work I've done is film for Oil Heritage Festival.

That was really fun.

I really enjoyed that.

Being down there with the camera and seeing everyone have a good time, as well as getting like the little detail shots of all the little vendors and what I really like about videography as well is being able to capture those moments and those memories and history, really.

Also, the reason I wanted to come back to Oil City is because of the beautiful nature of it.

The nature of the river runs through it, the hills, just the fresh air in the spring and the winters where you can see clear through the trees, to the hills and the river ice is over.

And it's just beautiful and there's so much history here as well.

And I think there's a unique point right now where a lot of people are moving out of the city and wanting to get away from that lifestyle, and wanna move to areas like this.

And so I think there's a real opportunity right now to kind of revitalize the city, bring in new people.

And I'd like to be a part of that.

[gentle music] Hi, my name is Andree and I am the co owner of Scierka's Tavern along with my husband, Greg and my daughter, Hannah.

My Tavern came about in 1930s in the Palace Hill area of Oil City, Pennsylvania.

And at one time Palace Hill was filled with many different stores, grocery stores, also several other taverns and a Catholic church.

The history of the neighborhood a little bit is it was filled with Polish immigrants, which my grandparents were two of them.

And they came to America in the early 1910s.

And they actually both came to America separately, but met here in America and then finally ended up settling in Oil City and they had a family of seven children.

And then my grandfather opened up Scierka's Tavern in 1936, shortly after prohibition.

I've been going in and out of that building pretty much my entire life.

I started helping out in the kitchen when I was 16 years old and I'm the third generation owner of Scierka's Tavern, but I have had a lot of different experiences in there and a lot of people that have come and gone over the years and, but we still have a real nice crowd of people that come in.

Some are new.

There are some that have been coming in there, probably, for the last 40 years, that still enjoy coming in, faces have changed, but I think the atmosphere is still kind of the same.

My family and I became the owners of Scierka's Tavern back in 2016.

And what had happened is my aunt had been running the place since probably the 1990s, after her brother passed away and he had been a previous owner.

And so she passed away and she left everything to her one brother, but he no longer lives here in town.

He lives out in Minnesota.

So between the three of us, we decided that we were going to step in and buy the place and start this new adventure in our life.

We tried to change things a little bit.

We serve a lot more craft beer than we had... Well, actually there was no craft beer served when my aunt was alive and it was just kind of coming into existence.

So we serve a lot of crafts.

We tried to have more of a presence in the local community.

We do more events than ever before.

I can remember when I was a little girl, every year they would have a big Christmas tree at the Tavern and the house that I grew up in, my parents had a lot of different pine trees in the backyard that my dad had planted.

So each year in December, it was a big event.

He could chop down the tree, take it down to the Tavern, and then we'd all have to go down and decorate the tree, whether we wanted to, or not.

[laughs] I've included some old photographs from the bar so you can see the changes over the years.

And there's a few pictures of my grandfather behind the bar, tending bar with some old time patrons.

And then also, as we were cleaning up the building, we found a business card of his, his original business card.

And we found a lot of different treasures that I never knew existed amongst all of the stuff that was stuffed away up in the different parts of the building.

We're very fortunate that we've had a lot of community support throughout the years and especially in the past year with the pandemic.

And it's really a wonderful place to have a bar, everyone that comes in, it's very homey and there's a lot of the same people that come in all the time that seemed to know each other.

And a lot of them will hang out at other places after, when we're not open, and after hours, too.

The customers are really the reason that we're still standing after all the shutdowns and the pandemic restrictions.

[gentle music] Hi, my name is Garey Scott.

I'm here to talk about aerial videography.

I guess you could say that I'm a transplant.

I'm originally from New Mexico, I was born there, and then joined the army and retired from the army, married a woman from Oil City and we came back to help her family out.

And that was in 2014.

I'm still here.

What really drew me, really actually drew me to aerial videography and everything is in the army I jumped out of planes and I've actually jumped out on more planes than I've ever landed in.

So it's a rush when you're above everything, and it doesn't matter how dirty everything is, but when you see it from above, it just makes everything look so much better.

And I guess that's how it really got me into it because you kind of escape from down here and you can fly in and you can show people how really, how beautiful it really truly is.

I call them the guardians, the steeples at St. Joseph's.

Everybody down on Facebook, when I take pictures of this, says that's the first thing they remember when they see, and I've taken a couple of pictures when you're behind this, behind the steeples, to where it looks like it's guarding Oil City.

And so that's how I come to call it the guardian of Oil City.

So that's probably one of my favorite one to take.

I do a lot nature shots and some city stock shots.

I love going out in the woods and just nature around here, around the trails and the bridges, there are some beautiful old, old, old bridges out here that I love taking photos on.

I had a gentleman stop me.

He was hunting.

He stopped me on a trail as I was walking in one weekend.

And he said, hey, can you take some pictures and email them to me, because my wife and I used to live up here and we got, we miss them.

And so, yeah, I did.

And then I love taking pictures of the city because people sometimes have a bad impression on certain places, but when they see it from above, they remember all the fun times they used to have and everything.

Some of the drones I have is I have everything from, we call it Inspire 1 which is, that's more of a cinematic movie drone.

It's about 26 inches wide by 26 inches wide by 13 and a half inches tall.

The nice thing about that is that it can be operated with two people.

So that makes it easier for me to fly and concentrate on flying and he can concentrate with the camera.

So that makes it easier.

Then I also have a Phantom 4, that's my workhorse.

That's what a lot of the pictures that you have or are taken from.

And I do have a Mavic 2.

And then I have a thermal camera on for one of them, and a couple of small cameras, there's a couple of small drones.

So I have about six drones altogether.

The reason why I turned it into my businesses is, in the army I was a Colonel Investigator and what we have is protect, serve and defend.

And I know it's a cliche and everything like that, I'm kind of a strange bird, is that a, my duty is to protect and serve my community as well as my family.

And I saw the drones as an avenue, a tool to solve problems, the versatility of drones is, just, people just don't understand what they can do.

I can help find children or help find somebody lost in the woods with my thermal cameras.

Somebody has never seen the top of the roof, but they have damage, I can go up and take a picture and actually educate them on what their roofing systems are and so forth like that.

Or like a gentleman asked me one time, can you take a picture of this house right here?

And he sent a message back to me crying and saying, that's where he was born, his mom passed away there, and he hasn't been there since.

So I saw a need for the community, the way I could help, roofing systems are, videography of family members are, or the city or whatever the case would be, checking lines are down or anything.

So there's a need.

And so I protect, serve and defend by fulfilling that need to protecting my community and serving.

I started out wanting to do roofs, but videography and photos have turned to be the thing that's gotten recognition.

I just have a passion.

And that passion is to empower people, be it by the pictures of memories in the past or future memories or just explaining to somebody about the roof or showing a property manager their property and that's, I just have a passion, flying is what I do.

And instead of falling out of the sky, now I fly in the sky.

So it's a little more easier.

It doesn't hurt when you fall, unless your drone falls, then that hurts.

[gentle music] NARRATOR: "Our Town: More Stories From Oil City" is brought to you in part by Gates and Burns Realty, helping people buy, sell and rent homes for more than 130 years, with offices located in Oil City, Franklin and Clarion.

Home listings, commercial properties and additional services are available at gatesandburnsrealestate.com.

Gates and Burns Realty, serving the Oil Region since 1889.

Franklin Oil-Region Credit Union.

Founded in 1974 by the employees of Franklin Steel, the Franklin-Oil Region Credit Union has grown to more than 6,500 members.

Anyone who lives, works, worships, volunteers, attends school or owns a business in Venango County qualifies for membership, offering a wide variety of electronic services, 24/7 telephone banking, and notary service for members.

Learn more at for-cu.com.

Rossbacher Insurance, serving the communities of Erie, Warren, Crawford and Venango counties since 1928.

To learn more about business protection for all types of companies, manufacturers, and service organizations, or family protection for home, auto and life, visit teamrossbacher.com, or call 814-677-4095.

P.S.

equals personal service since 1928.

"Our Town: More Stories From Oil City" is also brought to you in part by Karma Coffee Company and viewers like you.

Thank you.