'Pennsylvania Crude: Boomtowns & Oil Barons' Takes Gold ADDY Award

It turns out Pennsylvania crude oil is as good as gold these days.

“Pennsylvania Crude: Boomtowns & Oil Barons,” which tells the story of oil in the Bradford Field, garnered the gold ADDY Award in book design. The awards ceremony was held Friday night at Jr.’s Last Laugh Comedy Club in Erie.

This book, published by The Forest Press, a subsidiary of the Allegheny National Forest Visitors Bureau, features magnificent photos by award-winning photographer Ed Bernik, who worked with the bureau on its previous book, “Pennsylvania Wilds: Images of the Allegheny National Forest.”

The book, which was designed by Bev Verbeke, features local stories and people who are part of the oil industry. Harvey Golubock, former president and chief operating officer of American Refining Group, wrote the foreward. Verbeke was also the graphic designer of the “Pennsylvania Wilds: Images of the Allegheny National Forest.”
ANFVB Executive Director Linda Devlin, along with Bernik and Verbeke, accepted the award.

Devlin spearheaded the project with the desire to tell stories of oil in the Bradford Field, located in western Pennsylvania and extending into southern New York, which had not been told previously. Bradford was once known as the “Oil Metropolis of the World” due to supplying 83 percent of the country’s oil and 77 percent of the world’s oil in the late 1800s.

Last year, “Pennsylvania Crude: The Road Trip,” the companion DVD to the book, won several ADDY awards, including Best of Show, Judge’s Choice Award and a gold ADDY for Interactive Media (CD/DVD).

The DVD is available for purchase at the Allegheny National Forest Visitors Bureau at 80 E. Corydon St., Bradford.

“Pennsylvania Crude: Boomtowns & Oil Barons” was released in August 2010 and was sold out at the ANFVB and the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford by Christmas.
The book is still available at the Zippo/Case Museum gift shop.

The book introduces the reader to such characters as Mary Alford, a woman who ran a nitro-glycerin factory outside of Eldred. And no book that includes the oil industry in McKean County would be complete without Lewis Emery, who fought John D. Rockefeller. The Bradford Club is also featured as well as Music Mountain and Willard Cline, a well-known independent oil producer from Bradford.

There’s also a section titled “Gushers in Tuna Valley” which includes such places as Tarport, Derrick City and the Bradford Oil Exchange.

The ADDY Awards are sponsored by the Advertising Federation of Northwestern Pennsylvania. The ADDY Awards recognizes all forms of advertising.

The Allegheny National Forest Visitors Bureau is the official tourist promotion agency for McKean County. Forest Press has also won several ADDY Awards previously for “Pennsylvania Wilds: Images of the Allegheny National Forest.”

Pictured, North East photographer Ed Bernik and Linda Devlin, executive director of the Allegheny National Forest Visitors Bureau, accept a gold ADDY Award Friday night in Erie for “Pennsylvania Crude: Boomtowns & Oil Barons” that was published last year by Forest Press, a subsidiary of the ANFVB. The book won best book design.
Photo courtesy of the ANFVB