Following a presentation given last Wednesday to the Orange County Historical Society on some history of the Olinda Ranch and oil field, a seven-part post on Olinda's predecessor, Petrolia, which was located at the mouth of Soquel Canyon where it meets Carbon Canyon—just behind the Hollydale mobile home park in Olinda Village—has just been finished on The Homestead Blog, published by the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry.
The post goes back to 1865 and the earliest known efforts to prospect for petroleum in the area, including the Cañada de la Brea, or Brea Canyon, which was the original name for what is now Tonner Canyon, extending from where the 57 Freeway is today northeast into the Tres Hermanos Ranch. The next big push for oil came in the early 1880s when Burdette Chandler, a veteran of oil fields in Canada, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and recently a partner in the Puente oil field a few miles to the west, acquired former public lands at Soquel Canyon and began his efforts at Petrolia.
After a significant amount of money and effort, Petrolia largely faded by the end of the Eighties, but Edward Doheny's discovery of oil just a short distance to the northwest (where the Olinda Oil Museum and Trail is now) brought Olinda into existence. The post might be of interest to those wanting to know more about the early oil industry in our region and in and around Carbon Canyon specifically.
Check it out with this link.
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