Pictured is the Pithole Visitor Center.

PLEASANTVILLE – Historic Pithole City is opening for the summer season. The site’s Visitor Center will be open to the public every Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and lasting through Aug. 30.

Learn about the Oil Region’s most notorious boomtown – its quick ascent and just as fast demise, its interesting residents, and the important place it holds in the history of the early oil industry. The Pithole Visitor Center features an orientation film and interpretive exhibits, including a detailed diorama of the famous city. Guided walking tours of the site are also available upon request. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for children, and free for members of Friends of Drake Well.

New for the 2026 season is the completion of the site’s updated interpretive signage on the outside grounds of Pithole. This project, started in 2022, called for the creation and installation of fifty different signs that would replace the older signage at Pithole.

The first round of new signage was installed in 2023 with the second round installed in early spring of 2026. The entire project was funded by Friends of Drake Well, Inc., the nonprofit organization that supports the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) in the operation and administration of Historic Pithole City. “We are beyond excited for the new signage at Pithole, it was very much needed,” says Emily Weaver, Executive Director of Friends of Drake Well, Inc. “With these new interpretive signs, visitors to Pithole will be able to easily identify where certain businesses were located during the city’s heyday as well as learn more about the city’s every day life and culture,” says Weaver. Perhaps the best thing about the signage, continues Weaver, is that visitors can view them any day of the week throughout the year, from dawn to dusk, at no charge. This will greatly help for those who cannot get to the Visitor Center in the summer months.

Historic Pithole City will continue hosting smaller living history demonstrations on select weekends during the summer season. Demonstrations will showcase some of the important trades and crafts that were prevalent in Pithole and the Oil Region at large during the early petroleum industry – blacksmithing, coopering, wood carving, sewing, and more. Pithole will also host local author Cynthia Friend Crytzer on June 20 and July 11. Crytzer will present on her book, A Civil War Husband, which follows the letters of Crytzer’s great-great grandfather, Thomas D. Nelson, who fought in the Civil War and died at Andersonville Prison. A full schedule of Pithole demonstrations and speakers is available at https://www.drakewell.org/plan-your-visit/what-to-see-and-do/pithole or by calling (814) 827-2797.