The main commercial street through town, Petrolia Line, retains an extraordinary concentration of late-Victorian buildings — most of them designated heritage structures. Walk slowly: the detail on the cornices, the iron-work, and the stone trim repays close attention.
Petrolia's oil money paid for the boom; the loss of the boom (and the absence of redevelopment money since) is what kept the streetscape intact. Few small Canadian towns preserve their 19th-century main street this well.