Main Street Buildings: Just before Frederick St and set back from Main St is the former elementary and continuation school. It was built in 1904 to replace the original school, which burned. Fires were a constant threat and fire destroyed many buildings in Oil Springs while others were moved away when the first oil boom ended in the mid 1860s.

Morningstar Oil Producers Ltd: The white frame building directly across Main St. was constructed in 1862. It was formerly the office of the ‘Oil Springs Chronicle,’ Lambton County’s first daily newspaper. The paper championed the interests of the oil men and published until 1867. It was revived in 1893 and finally ceased publication as a weekly in 1914.

The Oil Springs Hotel (that never rented a room)

By 1865, following the discovery of oil, Oil Springs had become a leading centre of trade and commerce, with a population exceeding 4,000. In comparison, Sarnia in 1861 was home to only 2,091 residents. At the best of times, in Oil Springs, there were 12 large general stores, many small shops, a daily newspaper, and several taverns. The main street was planked for a mile and a half, and was called by some, the finest paved street in all of Canada. Four stages ran each day down the new plank road to Sarnia, 19 miles distant in a straight line. There were nine large hotels in Oil Springs, but the draw to men from both Canada and the USA who wanted to be a part of the rush for oil led to a shortage of space in these hotels, which resulted in men paying for a place to sleep in four hour shifts, sometimes on a blanket spread out on a hotel room floor. There was intense activity everywhere with so many men involved in digging, drilling and refining the oil. At one point, there were 27 refineries operating along the creek banks. Up to 500 teams each day hauled stone boats the 12 miles to Wyoming, each loaded with two barrels of oil, as they traveled up a narrow, slick wet clay road, in a ditch known as the “Canal” beside what is now Highway 21. The return trip brought supplies, food and equipment to Oil Springs. In 1866, at the height of the oil fever, a company from Chicago, anxious to cash in on the oil boom, built a great hotel which would contain, according to a newspaper of the day, “108 bed rooms and a proportionate number of other kinds.” The hotel boasted that, when completed, it would be the largest wooden structure in Upper Canada. However, about the same time, the Fenians conducted their first raids into Canada. The Fenians were American Irish who conceived a plan to capture Canada and hold it for ransom in return for the freedom of Ireland. Even though none of the Fenian raids were made into Lambton, the Americans in Oil Springs, fearful of an outbreak of war between Canada and the United States, fled. News of the Fenian raids broke just as the plasterers were finishing the work on the interior of the hotel. The new hotel was never even swept out. Almost overnight, the population in Oil Springs dropped to less than 1,000. For years, this building stood empty, with parts of the material gradually removed for other use. This 108 room hotel had as its only tenants bats, rats and owls, instead of speculative travellers and oil workers. (Courtesy of Bob McCarthy)

Taylor House, 275 N. Brock St

Paton House, 283 N. Brock St

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