Page 6 - sz2901

4 Among Ourselves

much enthusiasm over the project (Right) The scarcity of water in Taft and
as his superior. They went into the Jack of proper facilities for supplying it at
the beginning of operations in the sur-
fastnesses of the Santa Susana rounding oil fields made it necessary to
Mountains, into the Minnie-Lottie bring it in by train. This picture, taken in
Canyon, through which tumbled 1909, shows an oil train loaded with water
Pico Creek, and there built a tiny on the return trip from delivering
oil to Bakersfield
community - "Mentryville," they
called it. It's there today, still
shut off from the rest of the world
and almost forgotten. At the very
head of the steep Pico Canyon,
where seeped the black stuff that
had intrigued the sheep-herder,
they sunk their tint well - not
with a tall steel derrick, nor
powerful steam apparatus, nor
rotary equipment such as you and
I know of today, but by a primi-
tive spring-pole device, consisting
of a sapling secured beneath a tri-
pod derrick. A bit, hung on a cable
from the sapling, made depth by
being sent forcibly to the bottom
of the hole by the weight of two
men applied to the cable, the (Above) A group of pioneer oil mariners
of 1908, ashore in Astoria, Oregon. Left to
spring-pole raising the bit for each right, they are J. C. Rohlfs, the present
succeeding stroke. A hand-oper- manager of the Company's Marine Depart-
ated windlass furnished more cable ment; Captain R. L. Hague, then engineer
of the Marine Department; the late Captain
as the hole deepened. A month's George Bunting; and Dan Ford,
time showed thirty feet of hole, construction engineer
with the happy result of a daily
production of two barrels of oil
of 32 degrees gravity. Across the
canyon a second well went down by
the same crude means, and again
oil came in - good, high-gravity
oil. A third well proved to be a dry
hole. Elated with the results of
the first two wells, Scofield in-
creased his forces ; another well
was drilled. That was No. 4, the
pride of all time. This same No. 4
well exists today, and has faith-
fully produced from the begin-
ning.
Scofield, in the meantime,
brought Jim Scott out from Titus-
ville, Pennsylvania, to build a re-
finery. One still was hurriedly set
up at Lyons Station on the stage
road that crossed the Tehachapi
Mountains and led into Los An-
geles. Another refining unit was
erected at San Buenaventura on
the coast. The three years follow-
ing, these "refineries" had a daily
capacity of sixty barrels. It was
in 1878 that the single still at
Lyons Station was moved a mile (Above) The beginning of operations at what was destined to become one of California's
greatest oil-refining plants-Richmond Refinery I This is how the site appeared in the
or so north to Elayon. Here two early part of 1902
additional stills were built and
(Below) This group, dressed in the attire of a past day, represents the first office
the output increased to one hun- force of the newly-completed Richmond Refinery and several executives responsible
dred barrels daily. Crude oil was for its construction