There was a time you could find this Lambton County village by following the stream of crude oil pouring across Enniskillen and Moore townships all the way to the St. Clair River and down to Detroit.

Owners of white yachts docked there had a word or two to say about Oil Springs when the village was earning its name with Canada's first gusher, struck in 1862. It was the first international oil spill and one of the many oil-industry firsts Oil Springs recorded.

First gusher, first refinery, first oil exchange, first kerosene-lighted main street. The list goes on and on.

STRIKE IN 1858: Oil Springs and Canada's petroleum industry sprang up after James Miller Williams struck oil here in 1858. By 1861 there were 400 wells producing from 50 to 800 barrels a day.

But things really went overt the top a year later when Hugh Nixon Shaw broke through the bedrock with primitive drilling equipment and hit the world's first oil gusher. Oil - more than 2,000 barrels a day - shot above the treetops. More than 100 gushers were brought in that year, says Lambton Heritage Museum's Bob Tremain, but the technology to control them didn't exist.

The prospectors held barrels under the falling oil to fill them. Oil was everywhere, on everybody and everything, including the flow down the St. Clair River, he said. But the technology to control and refine the oil developed fast and that, as much as the oil rush itself, put Oil Springs on the map.

POPULATION: The village's population skyrocketed to more than 4,000 - some say as high as 9,000 - as people flooded in from across Canada and the United States to make their fortunes. Nine hotels opened, but they couldn't handle all the businesses and began to rent out beds by the half day, with people sleeping in shifts. Land prices soared to $100 an acre from $2. By 1863, the village had telegraph service, five blacksmith shops, five cooperages (barrel makers), and 25 carpenters working constant overtime.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. By 1865, the price of oil dropped and Oil Springs' gushers slowed down or dried up all together. Almost overnight, the village's population dropped to 300 and the hotels, shops and Klondike-like atmosphere shifted down the road to Petrolia where oil flowed from freshly drilled wells.

BOOM ENDED: When Petrolia's boom ended 30 years later, many oil men and their families traveled around the world as major oil fields opened up. With them they took the cutting edge technology developed in Oil Springs and Petrolia.

You can't follow the flow of oil to Oil Springs anymore. But you can follow the oil heritage signs down Highway 21 and see some of the several hundred still-working oil wells in and around the village.

On a really quiet night, say Mayor Owen Byers, you can hear the gentle creak of the jerker lines powering the jerkers, or pumps, going up and down at each well.

The village still draws its identity from its oil boom - in the Oil Museum here which tells its story, in the oil properties and other oil-related businesses here and in the employment many of its 800 residents find in nearby Chemical Valley.

But Oil Springs isn't just looking back to its glorious history, says Byers. It's a thriving community with a small business area which includes a general store, a grocery store, a bank, a Royal Canadian Legion and a post office, among other amenities. The envy of many rural areas, the village even has cable T.V.

These days when the locals gather at the village restaurant for morning coffee, the price of oil is not likely to be a hot topic. Talk lately has been about a county restructuring plan which would see Oil Springs merged into the surrounding Enniskillen Township. But while Byers admits he's worried what effect such a merger would have on Oil Springs residents' strong civic pride, he swears the community will survive this.

"If this happens, it could be the first step to the downslide of the community. Could be. I'm saying could be," says Byers. "But we've survived worse. We've defended ourselves before, and we'll do it again."

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