The nearest town, Fort McMurray, Alberta, was a small fur buying and selling publish, other markets were distant, and transportation prices were too high to ship the raw bituminous sand for paving. In 1915, Sidney Ells of the Federal Mines Branch experimented with separation methods and used the product to pave 600 toes of road in Edmonton, Alberta. Other roads in Alberta were paved with material extracted from oil sands, but it was typically not financial. Most of the bitumen was used for waterproofing roofs, but different makes use of included fuels, lubrication oils, printers ink, medicines, rust- and acid-proof paints, fireproof roofing, road paving, patent leather, and fence submit preservatives.
Exposure to mild hardened the bitumen and made it insoluble, so that when it was subsequently rinsed with a solvent solely the sufficiently mild-struck areas remained. At first naturally occurring "bituminous rock" was used, corresponding to at Ritchie Mines in Macfarlan in Ritchie County, West Virginia from 1852 to 1873. In 1876, asphalt-based mostly paving was used to pave Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, in time for the celebration of the national centennial. Bitumen was thought in 19th century Britain to include chemical compounds with medicinal properties. Extracts from bitumen were used to treat catarrh and a few forms of bronchial asthma and as a remedy against worms, particularly the tapeworm.