A View of the Olinda Oil Field, ca. 1910

This post highlights an interesting cabinet card photograph of part of the Olinda oil field taken about 1910.

Given the topography of the hills and similar views, as well as the likelihood that the dirt road in the foreground is Carbon Canyon Road, it is apparent that the image shows a portion of the Santa Fe lease.

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, under its subsidiary, the Southern California Railway, obtained land in the Olinda Ranch and partnered with Edward Doheny, whose Los Angeles City oil field project with Charles Canfield, was a major success in 1892 and afterward.

In 1897, Doheny drilled a well that became a major producer (and still is "on the pump" today as part of the Olinda Oil Museum) and inaugurated Orange County's first oil field.

Known as the Santa Fe lease, the property at the foothills of the Chino Hills range along the north end of Olinda was a successful field for many decades, and is now the location of the Olinda Ranch housing subdivision.  Santa Fe Road, a main road through the tract, is a reminder of the oil heritage there, along with the museum, which is located at 4025 Santa Fe Road in the upper reaches of the development.

The image shows a few dozen wells, associated pump houses and other structures.  The road is a simple dirt one with piles of dirt forming the shoulder.  Around this time, as noted in the last post, the roadway was fully built through to Chino and opened on 9 January 1915 and so has reached its centennial year.

The term "cabinet photograph," refers to a paper photo mounted (or glued) onto a stiff paper board--which were often stored in cabinets.  They were popular from about the 1880s through the 1920s.  This image was provided courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry, which collects material relating to the oil history of the Los Angeles region because the Workman and Temple families had oil-related projects in the 1870s and 1920s in the area.

Here is a circa 1910 cabinet card photograph of a section of the Olinda oil field, most likely the Santa Fe lease with Carbon Canyon Road in the foreground.  Click on the image to see it in an enlarged view in a separate window.  Courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.

Carbon Canyon Historical Artifact #46: Olinda Oil Field postcard

A postcard with a colored photograph of "Oil Fields near Fullerton, Calif.," published by M. Kashower Company of Los Angeles and showing the Santa Fe lease at Olinda.  The date is circa 1910.   Click on the image to see it in an enlarged view in a separate window.

In 1897, the discovery of oil by Edward Doheny on land leased on the Olinda Ranch by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad ushered in the Olinda field, the first oil-producing area of Orange County and, at the time, one of the major fields in California.

Yet, for years, this area was known instead as the "Fullerton Oil Field," almost certainly because of the fact that the nearest town to the site was Fullerton.  This unused postcard, probably dating to around 1910, reflects that through its title of "2.  Oil Fields Near Fullerton, Calif." as well as the short description on the reverse, which slightly amends the title to "2.  VIEW OF A SECTION OF THE FULLERTON OIL DISTRICT,' and adds the observation that "the wells of which have returned untold millions to their owners."

Why these riches had to be "untold" is an interesting semantic question, but the fact is that the earlier producers did quite well, including Doheny, the Santa Fe railroad, and other players like Graham and Loftus, the Fullerton Oil Company and the Bailey family, whose Olinda Ranch was considered a failure as a subdivision project until black gold was located a decade after they bought the land.

In any case, the card shows the hillside location north of Carbon Canyon Road and east of Valencia Avenue where the Santa Fe-held area, much of which was known for years as the C.C.M.O. (Chanslor-Canfield Midway Organization) lease, was located.  Wooden derricks, sheds, storage tanks, what may be homes as well as outbuildings, and power lines are in view.

Once the wells were basically played-out and operations shuttered, the site, which underwent an extensive cleaning operation, became the Olinda Ranch subdivision.  The original Olinda oil well, brought in by Doheny nearly 120 years ago, is still operating and the Olinda Oil Museum exists to tell the story of the field.

Carbon Canyon Historical Artifact #44: "Map of the Whittier-Olinda Oil Field," 1912

The portion of a 1912 map of the "Whittier-Olinda Oil Field" focusing on the Olinda section at the center and nearby areas, including Carbon Canyon to the upper right.

This is another great map, supervised by Paul W. Prutzman and issued by the California State Mining Bureau and corrected to June 1912, showing a wide-ranging area of oil-producing fields from Whittier to Olinda.  Of particular interest for Carbon Canyon s the section at the lower right section of the map showing the very busy Olinda field fifteen years after its first well came in.

Shown snaking its way up from the mainline (off the map) is the spur line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, which went from Atwood to the Olinda field, emerging through what is now Carbon Canyon Regional Park and splitting into a "Y" in today's Olinda Ranch subdivision.  The map clearly shows the terminus as within the "A.T. & S. Fe. R.R.G."

A closer look from the map at the Olinda field showing major oil producers of the time, including Columbia, Graham-Loftus, Puente Oil, Olinda Land Company, Industrial Oil and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad.  The railroad's spur line from Atwood is showing coming up the center and splitting off into a "Y"

To the east of that, in section 9 (of 3S9W of the San Bernardino Meridian) are the leases of the Olinda Land Company, Fullerton Oil Company and the Puente Oil Company.  The Olinda concern was the brainchild of William H. Bailey, who bought several hundred acres in the late 1880s and created the Olinda Ranch, named after his family's sugarcane plantation on Mau'i and Hawai'i.  The Puente Oil Company, meanwhile, was organized by William R. Rowland, former Los Angeles County sheriff and scion of the family that owned half of the massive Rancho La Puente, shown at the top center of the map and the Puente's 1885 field is dotted with oil wells on land Rowland owned.

Further east, in section 10, are the holdings of Olinda Land, Continental Oil, Soquel Canyon Oil and Edward Gaines.  Some small amount of oil prospecting took place in this vicinity, though without success.  Gaines, however, was the recent owner of property in what is now the Olinda Village community and a creek ran through his property, emptying into Carbon [Canyon] Creek, which also ran through the southern end of his ranch. 

With very little oil prospecting activity, the Carbon Canyon area east of Olinda does show a wagon road (the dotted line) wending its way along Carbon [Canyon] Creek and passing the Orange/San Bernardino County line at the top right, where the thick black line coming from the center and then turning to the right center is the divide between San Bernardino County and the counties of Los Angeles and Orange as well as the western boundary of Rancho Santa Ana del Chino.  The line heading left of the Chino boundary is the dividing line between Orange and Los Angeles counties  At the bottom left are the properties of the Soquel Canyon Oil Company, the Olinda Land Company and the ranch of Edward Gaines, where Olinda Village is located.

Northeast of that and well into Carbon Canyon at the lower left corner of section 2 is the lone well of the Carbon Canyon Oil Company, which about a decade before the map, drilled without striking oil.

To the west of the Santa Fe spur, in section 8, is a very crowded area of development with firms like Graham-Loftus, one of the early players at Olinda starting in 1898, the Santa Fe itself, Olinda Land, Industrial Oil Company, and Columbia Oil Production Company, whose part-owner William B. Scott, along with William Rowland and Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, constituted the "Tres Hermanos [Three Brothers]" who owned the ranch of that name in Tonner Canyon to the north of Olinda.

Actually, as shown on earlier maps, this one again shows Brea Canyon as being what is now called Tonner Canyon, while today's Brea Canyon is listed as "Canada del Rodeo."

Another detail of the map shows the Olinda field at the right and areas to the west and south.  The thick line moving from the bottom right to the left center is the line of the Pacific Electric Railway streetcar--this right-of-way still runs through Brea and part of it in Yorba Linda is a multi-purpose trail.  At the top is "Brea Cañon", which is today's Tonner Canyon and at the top left is "Canada del Rodeo," now Brea Canyon.  The black lines at the top from just left of center to the top left corner, within sections 1, 6 and a little of section 5 are the southern boundaries of the Rancho Rincon de la Brea.

By 1912, a little activity was found in what is known now as Tonner Hills between Olinda and Brea Canyon, this being on land held by the Union Oil Company.  The Brea Canyon field was represented by Graham-Loftus, Fullerton, Puente and the Pico Oil Company, Orange Oil Company and Brea Canyon Oil Company.

Other transportation routes denoted on the map include the line of the Pacific Electric Railway, which ran from Los Angeles and on through was called East Whittier, the future Brea (a year off from incorporation) and Yorba Linda.  Part of the right-of-way still exists in Brea with plans for recreational use, a concept long ago incorporated for some of that easement in Yorba Linda.

Carbon Canyon Road did not really exist yet as we know it, but the term "wagon road" is used for a route that passed through the Olinda field and into Carbon Canyon.  Notably, there were no such roads in either Soquel and Telegraph canyons, though a wagon road moved through "Brea Canyon" now Tonner, and into the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino.  Another such road went into the "Canada del Rodeo, or modern Brea Canyon as it wended its way into the Diamond Bar and Walnut areas.

This map is a great snapshot of the Olinda area a little over a hundred years ago when the oil industry was in full swing and has enough familiar landmarks to be relatable even today.

A 1925 Photo of C.C.M.O. Workers, Olinda, Part One

Typically, photos of oil fields are heavy on the physical characteristics of the site, whether these are broad panoramas or focused views, including derricks, associated structures, open or closed tanks, and so forth.  Occasionally, people might be included in a view celebrating the "gusher," commemorating an oil fire or a tank explosion, or perhaps a shot of workers "on the pump" to demonstrate the workings of a particular well.

The 1925 image, from the collection of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum in the City of Industry, in this post, though, is probably somewhat rare and unusual, with the focus exclusively on the nearly sixty people pictures on the lease of the C.C.M.O., or Chanslor-Canfield Midway Oil Company, at the Olinda oil field.  While portions of the physical site are in the background, the subject are workers.  No company executives are to be found, but there are plenty of truck drivers, derrick workers, gaugers, tool dressers, roustabouts and other common laborers. 

Fortunately, someone took the time to write the surnames and the first initial of the given names of everyone, excepting the one child found in the image, totaling fifty-seven men.  While information could not be found on some of those pictures, most can be identified through census and other records, and a snapshot of what the oil field's population was like about ninety years ago.

The image was simply titled "C.C.M.O.—Olinda" and was taken by C. C. Duffey of Long Beach and was taken in September 1925.  The Chanslor-Canfield Midway Oil Company was founded in 1899 by Joseph A. Chanslor and Charles A. Canfield to develop oil wells in the new Midway field of Kern County.  First, some background on the company's founders.

This September 1925 panoramic photo shows nearly sixty employees and others of the C.C.M.O. (Chanslor-Canfield Midway Oil Company), which operated at the Santa Fe Railway-held property of the Olinda Oil Field.  Courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.  Click on the image to see it enlarged in a separate window.

Canfield, born in May 1848 near Buffalo, New York, migrated to Colorado in 1869 to try his hand at mining and struggled for over fifteen years in the industry, including in places like Ruby Hill, Nevada, a claim in the desert some 120 miles west of the Utah border and, finally, Kingston, New Mexico, where Canfield worked with Wisconsin native Edward L. Doheny.  When the latter declined an invitation from Canfield to work a mine there, Canfield hit pay dirt in 1886.

In 1887, with his newfound riches, Canfield migrated to Los Angeles, then undergoing a massive real estate boom known as the "Boom of the Eighties" and following the completion by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad of a direct transcontinental line to the town.  As the boom mushroomed Canfield invested in the real estate market, only to see his investments disappear in the inevitable bust that came by the end of the decade.  Another failed project during that boom was the Olinda Ranch, created in 1887 by William H. Bailey of Maui, Hawaii.

Meanwhile, Doheny made his way to Los Angeles and was flat broke, but met up with Canfield again and convinced him to invest a small sum on a hunch that there was petroleum to be found in the hills northwest of downtown Los Angeles.  With a $400 stake and primitive drilling equipment, Doheny hit it big in December 1892 with the first successful well in Los Angeles city limits, inaugurating the Los Angeles City Oil Field.  The Doheny-Canfield Oil Company became a successful concern for several years and the two men were instrumental in convincing the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, known commonly as the Santa Fe, to convert their engine fuel from coal to oil.

By 1897, however, Doheny, in partnership with the Southern California Railway Company, a subsidiary of the Santa Fe, turned his attentions to Olinda and Canfield took his interests north and opened the Coalinga Oil Field in 1896 with Joseph A. Chanslor. 

Chanslor was born in May 1868 in Fishing River, Missouri, just northeast of Kansas City, and his family appears to have come to Los Angeles during the same fabled boom of the 1880s that brought Canfield.  His father, John, had a successful grocery business and Joseph worked there as a clerk and, for a time, as an Internal Revenue Service collector, before joining forces with Canfield as vice-president of the Coalinga Oil Company.  How exactly he became partner with a man twenty years his senior is not known, but Chanslor, Canfield and Doheny also had a gold mining operation in the Mojave Desert of San Bernardino County, though this proved unsuccessful.

The three men formed separate oil companies, but kept their alliances intact.  Doheny's Petroleum Development Company drilled wells at Olinda under lease from the Southern California Railway, which was eventually disbanded by its parent company, so that the Santa Fe operated in name at Olinda from the first decade of the 20th century onward.

Meantime, Canfield and Chanslor formed their Chanslor-Canfield Midway Oil Company in 1901 for their new enterprise in the Midway field, on the west side of the lower San Joaquin Valley, southwest of Bakersfield.  The two operated the company for just a few years and the two men were instrumental in major deals like the purchase of 108,000 acres of oil and mining lands in Wyoming, Utah and Colorado in 1902, before it was purchased by the Santa Fe Railway, which then merged it with Doheny's Petroleum Development Company.  The Santa Fe's Olinda operation was under the auspices of the C.C.M.O. name for many years.

Meantime, Doheny and Canfield continued their alliance, especially as Doheny expanded his oil empire into Mexico in 1902 and sold off his interests in California to pursue his projects in the Tampico area, though he did return to California oil endeavors within several years.  Doheny's Pan-American Petroleum Company was wildly successful in Mexico, with one well, the "Casiano" producing 75 million barrels of crude in just under a decade.  Canfield was a partner in the Mexican oil project and his 1913 "Who's Who in the Pacific Coast" entry made a point of noting that he was involved in the paving of "all streets" in Mexico City, as well as work to install gas lines in the capital.

Canfield was also an investor in the early 1900s with a syndicate including railroad tycoon Henry H. Huntington and others in buying the Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas, on which Beverly Hills was later developed.  He also had a major interest in developing the San Diego beachfront community of Del Mar, where he built a palatial residence in 1910.  Canfield did endure the tragedy of having his wife, Chloe, killed at their Los Angeles home in 1906 by a former coachman employed by the family when she rebuffed his attempt at a loan.  Canfield later moved to his Del Mar home, but died there only a few years later, in 1913, at age 65.

As a sidenote, his daughter Daisy was married to the Pan-American Petroleum vice-president, and an attorney, Jay Danziger, and she inherited a quarter of her father's $8 million fortune.  Later, she sold about 1,700 acres of Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas land she inherited to real estate and oil magnate Alphonzo Bell, who established the tony subdivision of Bel-Air.  After separating from her husband, on grounds of "cruelty" (meaning she alleged he had affairs) in 1918 and securing a divorce a few years later, she married film star Antonio Moreno (known for his staring role in the Clara Bow smash "It" in 1927.)  They resided in a massive mansion in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, which still stands, but later separated.  In 1933, Daisy Canfield was killed when the car in which she was being driven, rolled off Mulholland Highway in the Santa Monica Mountains.

As for Joseph Chanslor, the sale of the C.C.M.O. to the Santa Fe allowed him to move to San Francisco, though he maintained an interest in the company for some years afterward.  Later, he was president of a coal company in Monterey County, was a founder of the Associated Oil Company in 1902, and was a director of the Tidewater Oil Company (later purchased by oil tycoon J. Paul Getty) until just before his death in San Francisco in 1946.

Next, details of this great photo and of the men depicted in it.

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway Spur Line to Olinda

As has been detailed in this blog previously, the discovery of oil by Edward Doheny in the late 1890s in partnership with the railroad giant, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, on what became known as the Olinda field, inaugurated the oil industry in Orange County.

In 1896, just before Doheny's first Olinda well came in, he signed a five-year agreement with the Santa Fe, through its subsidiary the Southern California Railway Company, which completed a line from the east through Santa Ana Canyon and to Los Angeles in 1887, to provide the railroad fuel from his oil endeavors, including that in Olinda, which was usually known as the Fullerton Oil Field.  Light crude oil, such as that extracted from Olinda, proved to be a new way to fuel locomotives, and, just as importantly, it could do so without refining.  Consequently, when producing wells started to come in after 1897, efforts to ship the crude were quickly engaged in. 

The July 17, 1898 issue of the Los Angeles Times, for example, reported on new wells put down on the Olinda Ranch and that, "if expectations are realized, plans made for an extensive pipe-line system will be put in effect at once."  This line was to "extend from the ranch to Richfield station on the Santa Fe, which will be the shipping point" to Los Angeles and, strangely, south to Los Alamitos, "where, it is said, the sugar factory will be supplied with oil for fuel," a contract with the sugar firm having been nearly completed.  Richfield, by the way, was an area now in the city of Placentia named by the Richfield Oil Company, later Atlantic Richfield or ARCO, and which became a major oil producing area a little later than Olinda.

This mention of sugar, in fact, has an interesting sidelight, as the expansion of sugar beet farming, introduced in southern California by Richard Gird, owner of the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino, the western boundary of which was just slightly east of Sleepy Hollow within Carbon Canyon, and developer of the town of Chino.  Gird enticed the Oxnard brothers to come out from the midwest to work at Chino before they went on their own in Ventura County, where the city that bears their name is today.  Meantime, sugar beet production also developed in other regional locales, such as southeastern Los Angeles County, including at Hynes, now Paramount, and southwestern Orange County, including the aforementioned Los Alamitos, where Montana copper mining magnate William Andrews Clark opened, in 1897, his factory, which continued to operate until 1926.

Returning to Olinda, the Times reported on 13 August 1898, that the Santa Fe's chief engineer Fred T. Perris, for whom the city in Riverside County is named, and chief clerk F. B. Henderson from the railroad's Santa Ana office, visited Olinda to check on the progress of the wells in which the company had its interests.

By August 1899, the paper sent a reporter out to Olinda to describe the scene.  This person stated that "the Santa Fe group of wells . . . are named from the fact that the Santa Fe Railroad Company controls the major part of them, E. L. Doheny being a partner in their ownership."  With respect to what was done with the crude once it was extracted, the reporter stated that, "the entire output is hauled to Richfield Station, four miles distant, where the company takes it for fuel for their locomotives."  The piece went on to note that Santa Fe had ten operating wells and four more were drilling.  Also noted was the fact that there were several competitors, including Columbia Oil Company, Graham-Loftus Company, Charles Victor Hall, Easton-Eldridge and Company [who were involved also in Chino, as noted in this blog elsewhere], and the Olinda Oil Company. 

In its 8 November 1899 issue, the Times reported that

The Southern California Railway Company has petitioned the Board of Supervisors of this county [Orange] for a right-of-way across certain public highways running from Richfield in a northerly direction—a distance of about four and one-half miles.  It is the intention of the railroad ro construct a branch from the Santa Ana Cañon to the location of the company's oil wells in the vicinity of Olinda.

It might be of interest to observe here that during the famed boom of the late 1880s that spawned William H. Bailey's Olinda Ranch and the failed townsite of Carlton nearby,  there was also a proposed railroad, that never got past the idea stage, called the Anaheim, Olinda and Pomona Railway, that would have gone from the first-named city to the last through, presumably Brea Canyon or, perhaps, Tonner Canyon.



This 1920s map detail shows the spur rail line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway coming up through the failed townsite of Carlton, passing the Pacific Electric Railroad interurban line moving from La Habra off to the left down to Yorba Linda at center right and then turning slightly before entering the Olinda Oil Field where Carbon Canyon Dam and Carbon Canyon Regional Park are now located.  The short spur to the right led to the tank car  loading area and the one to the left went to the depot and freight facility.  From a map in the collection of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry, California.  Click on the map to see an enlarged view in a separate window.

As detailed in an information-packed article by Dennis White (with assistance from Bryan Hunnell and Donald Cole) in the Hot Rail! Newsletter's Fall 2004 issue, the 4.2 mile spur line ran up a grade from Richfield to Olinda, where several spur tracks branched out from the main spur (this is shown in the image provided here from an early map.)

White explinaed that, "at Olinda, a 10x20 wooden depot with platform was ready for business when the line opened, but the volume of freight required an expansion to 20 x 20 within the first year.  The first freight agent at Olinda was Mr. F. S. Weber."

He also pointed out that, while the elevation change seemed minor, going from about 250 feet above sea level at Richfield, which was renamed Atwood in 1920, to 440 at Olinda, the terrain was somewhat rugged and the grade not insignificant.

In early 1906, the Santa Fe decided to retire the Southern California Railway Company and the line through northern Orange County and the Olinda spur were officially known as Santa Fe ones.  White's article included some interesting technical information concerning the operation of the line, especially at the crossing with the Pacific Electric Railway Company's interurban line that came from La Habra to Yorba Linda and ran from 1911 to 1938 (portions of the old PE line are now a multi-use trail in Yorba Linda, while the portion in Brea exists as a right-of-way with the tracks removed in recent years.)

This detail from a ca. 1920s Auto Club of Southern California road map also shows the Santa Fe spur line, noted as A.T. & S.F. R. R., just east of Rose Avenue (now Rose Drive), but note that the spur and Rose Avenue went together into Olinda through what is now Carbon Canyon Dam and Carbon Canyon Regional Park.  The entirety of the spur is also shown from the main line of the Santa Fe at Atwood in Placentia to its Olinda terminus.  From a map in the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum collection.  Click on the map to see an enlarged view in a separate window.

As noted by White, the Olinda field began to decline in the 1940s, so the Santa Fe shuttered its spur line in 1945 as piplines replaced rail service for the shipment of oil (recall above that a pipeline had been discussed in 1898.)  Then, the construction of the Carobn Canyon Dam in the late 1950s and early 1960s took place on some of the old spur line and some of the rail material remaining was used as fill for the dam.  In 1975, Carbon Canyon Regional Park opened on the canyon (or north) side of the dam and further park development altered the landscape where the line once ran.

The path of the rail spur south of the dam also disappeared over time as suburban development took hold in the post-World War II years.  As noted by White, the wye at Atwood that marked the junction of the spur and the mainline was gone by the late 1980s.

Still, White identified in his piece seven areas where the track once ran using modern GPS coordinates, streets, and other landmarks.  For example, he noted that the Olinda spur and the PR line met between Prospect and Rose Drive at Imperial Highway, the PE running along the south side of that latter thoroughfare.  He even specifies a Mobil Oil pipeline sign, stating that the pipeline ran just to the east, but parallel to the spur.  From Imperial, the sput moved northwest for a half mile or so before turning north toward the center of Carbon Canyon Dam.

Finally, he observed that the Olinda depot and freight dock were located at where the East Gate ranger office for the regional park sits and that the tank car loading area was a half-mile east and south of Carbon Canyon Road.

Notably, directly across from the newer entrance to the regional park, installed several years ago, is a signalized main artery, intersecting with Carbon Canyon Road, in the Olinda Ranch subdivision called Santa Fe Drive.  Take that road north from Carbon Canyon and take a right turn after curving to the west and you come to the Olinda Oil Museum and the still-operating well #1 drilled by Edward Doheny in 1897.

Much has changed and the physical evidence of the Santa Fe's Olinda spur rail line are all but disappeared, but there are still some tangible pieces of the history that made Olinda a famed place name for its oil industry for decades.

Olinda Oil Field History: Origins of Olinda, Part 6

After the first oil well at Olinda was brought into production in April 1897 by Edward Doheny in association with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad's Southern California Railway subsidiary, matters moved rapidly toward the development of the area, which was called the Fullerton field.

In June 1898, the Los Angeles Times did a brief profile on the Olinda Ranch, noting that the 4500-acre parcel was subdivided during the great Boom of the Eighties a decade before "with a townsite in the middle of the tract, named Carlton."  It referenced founder W. H. Bailey and his transfer of the ranch to the Olinda Ranch Company.  Yet, as the paper pointed out, "few sales were made, and most of the townsite has now been transformed into acreage," meaning larger lots of probably the 5, 10 and 40 acre ones promoted for the ranch outside the Carlton townsite.

Of note, however, was the fact that a new entity was entering the field at Olinda (fortunately, the name "Oil Center" proposed in April 1897 went nowhere!)  As reported by the Times, this was the "Richfield Oil Company," which, the paper continued, "has secured extensive rights of development, pipe-line privileges, etc., from the Olinda Ranch Company, and proposed operating not only directly, but by subleasing lands for oil development . . ."  Observing that "the Olinda Ranch lies south and west of the Santa Fe wells," which was not technically the case, as the "Santa Fe wells" were within the original Olinda Ranch property, the paper noted that W. L. Watts of the California Mining Bureau had visited the ranch to assess its oil-bearing potential.  Because of Watts' favorable report, the Richfield Oil Company, later the Atlantic Richfield Company now known as ARCO, was formed to work the field.

Also of interest is the fact that Richfield was then composed of "San Francisco and local capitalists" and that oil men in the Orange County and surrounding areas would have the opportunity to sublease from Richfield.  Readers of this blog's posts about the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino will recall that, during the 1890s, a San Francisco-based real estate firm, Easton, Eldridge and Company, were hired to market and sell sections of that ranch.    When the incorporation papers for the Richfield Oil Company were filed, this was done by Easton, Eldridge and Company, thus providing another tangible link between Olinda and Chino.

On 3 July, the Times reported that the Mining Bureau's Watts as back in the area reviewing oil properties from Puente Hills to Olinda and further east and south along what is now known as the Chino Hills, but then considered part of the Puente chain, to the Santa Ana River.  Watts, however, believed that there was no indication of oil bearing lands anywhere east of Olinda, which has proven to be the case.  As a sidenote, some attention was paid in the article to Watts' investigations in a canyon near the Southern California Railway's Gypsum side track (this, of course, being Gypsum Canyon) and that a favorable indication of coal was located where existing efforts to mine the material had already been made.  Coal Canyon, naturally, is where Watts was conducting his investigation.  In 1900, Watts completed a report, including a series of maps, that were the first comprehensive effort to examine and interpret the oil lands of southern California generally, including the new Olinda segment of the Fullerton field.

As to Richfield Oil Company's efforts, an article in the same paper from two weeks later, noted that "work on the first of a series of wells to be put down on the Olinda ranch commenced this week."  Commenting that oil experts were favorably impressed with the potential at Olinda, the Times reported that "if expectations are realized, plans made for an extensive pipe-line sustem will be put in effect at once."  This system was projected to run "from the ranch to Richfield station on the Santa Fe [Southern California Railway]."  This refers to the station at what became Atwood, along today's Richfield Avenue in Placentia, where the railroad track still runs parallel to Orangethorpe Avenue.  From that point, the article continued, "from Richfield, over an easy route, the line will be run to this city [Los Angeles], coming in at the west-end depot of the Southern Pacific.  From there it will be run to Los Alamitos, where, it is said, the sugar factory will be supplied with oil for fuel," a contract apparently being imminent.  By sugar factory, this was a sugar beet facility like the one Richard Gird established at Chino, though, eventually, sugar beets as a source of sugar dissipated in favor of protected tariffs for production from Louisiana and Hawaii's sugar cane fields.

As to the wells owned by the Santa Fe Railroad, an August 1898 feature in the Times noted that 8000 barrels of crude were extracted and shipped from Olinda by the company in July and that expectations were for a larger proportion in August.  Well #1 continued to be the best producer, at 125 barrels per day, but an unspecified number (probably a few) were also in production.  Of course, Well #1 is still in operation today and is a feature of the Olinda Oil Museum within the Olinda Ranch housing subdivision on the old Santa Fe property.  Another tangential tidbit:  the article referred to two officials from the Santa Fe being at Olinda looking over the situation, one of these men being Chief Engineer for the company, Fred Perris.  He, of course, is the namesake for the Riverside County city of Perris, a station stop on a company-owned line (once on the California Southern Railway) from San Bernardino to San Diego.

More on early Olinda oil fields next time!

Olinda Oil Field History: Origins of Olinda, Part 5

As noted last post, the Olinda Ranch, as established by William Hervey Bailey in the late 1880s, was promoted as an agricultural subdivision and struggled to do so through depression and drought for most of the 1890s.  Fortunes changed dramatically in 1897, however, thanks to the efforts of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad and oil man Edward L. Doheny.

Doheny, born in Wisconsin in 1856, became a government surveyor while still in his teens, working in Kansas before leaving the profession to become a mining prospector in South Dakota, New Mexico and Arizona.  While living in Kingston, New Mexico, he met Albert Fall and Charles Canfield, who both figured prominently in Doheny's later exploits.  Doheny and Canfield worked together in mining, but did not experience financial success, so the latter went off on his own to another mining area nearby and made a small fortune.  Canfield then went off to Los Angeles about 1887, the same time that William H. Bailey made his purchase of the land that he named Olinda Ranch.  Although Canfield lost most of this money during the ensuing bust of the real estate boom, Doheny caught up with him in Los Angeles, arriving there in the Spring of 1891.

Hearing about the presence of asphaltum in the area, Doheny used a $400 investment from Canfield to hand-dig a primitive oil well just west of downtown starting in Fall 1892.  Within months, the well proved to be successful, though a small producer, and it inaugurated the Los Angeles Oil Field.  Despite his initial success, however, Doheny struggled to keep himself as a player in the rapidly-emerging and evolving industry, until he formed a partnership with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad and its local subsidiary, the Southern California Railway.  This latter had a new line which went into Los Angeles through Santa Ana Canyon, passing through the area on what is now the track that parallels Orangethorpe Avenue through much of northeastern Orange County.

Doheny convinced the Southern California Railway that the emerging regional oil industry would allow the railroad to move to oil-powered engines rather than coal.  Because of the success of the Puente Oil Company, a company founded by William R. Rowland, former sheriff and scion of an early ranching family in the eastern San Gabriel Valley, with William Lacy and Burdette Chandler, which, in 1885, made a discovery of oil on the north side of the Puente Hills in what is now Rowland Heights, Doheny looked to nearby areas as possible sources of oil.  It should also be noted that surface appearances of asphaltum or tar were so common in the general area that the canyon dividing Los Angeles from Orange County on the eastern end of the Chino Hills had been known in the Spanish and Mexican eras as Cañon de la Brea, and a Mexican-era rancho of that name was created there.  Local ranchers used the raw brea to cover the roofs of their adobe brick homes long before any thought of drilling for oil was considered.

Doheny settled on the area in and around the Olinda Ranch and worked to obtain a lease for some 3,000 acres of the ranch from Bailey.  By the end of 1896, a test well was started at the hilly northern end of the ranch.  Readers of earlier posts in this series will recall that, in 1888, when Bailey began promoting the Olinda Ranch, advertisements noted the presence of oil in this area, but it was completely untested.  At least, until Doheny and the Southern California Railway entered the picture.  Working with an executive from the Santa Fe, the SCR's parent company, named Almon Maginnis, Doheny sited the well and began drilling.

At 400 feet, a shallow depth, oil was encountered, but the well was deepened to twice that depth.  Although the pump encountered typical levels of sand in the well, there was such enthusiasm for the potential of a major strike that the Los Angeles Times trumpeted the project before it was fully determined to be a producing well.  Indeed, in its 28 April 1897 edition, the paper announced that there were plans to have oil extracted from Olinda taken eight miles by a pipeline to Fullerton and the Southern California Railway line.  Addtionally, it was noted that timber was already being gathered about 500 feet away from the first well for a second one.

Interestingly, the paper wondered whether or not it was accurate to label this newly-discovered oil field as part of the Puente field, which was not only several miles to the northwest, but was part of a different geological setting.  Ironically, it was decided in short order that the new field should be referred to as the Fullerton field, though it was several miles from that small, emerging town.  The fact that there was a plan to send oil from the new wells to Fullerton seems to have encouraged state mining officials and others to refer to the new field by that name.




This is a ca. 1920s photograph of the Olinda oil field, which, upon the April 1897 announcement of the first well dug by Edward Doheny for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad's Southern California Railway subsidiary, was first called by the inelegant name (even for an oil field) of Oil Center.


Meantime, the Times also pointed out that Union Oil Company, which got its start in Santa Paula in Ventura County, had obtained some nearby property for oil prospecting, while, up in Tonner Canyon, a tract owned by the People's Bank of Pomona was involved in negotiations for sale and development for oil, as well. 

In these early days when the geological formations and the science of examining and identifying these was still in a primitive stage, the paper reported that there was some confusion and uncertainty about the nature of the new field's structure. Lacking familiar means such as examining rocky outcroppings, prospectors would have to deal with the fact that "the whole country is upturned," presumably meaning not uniform as to surface indications.  Doheny's first well was sited close to an area in which brea was seeping to the surface and the second well was placed near another like tar deposit, in the expectation "that the rocks slope downward to the north" and thus indicating a direction where oil would be most likely to pool.

Two days later, on 30 April, another article promoted that new oil discovery, particularly noting that the Southern California Railway had its own source for oil, independent of middlemen, for its newly-emphasized reliance on the product for fueling locomotives.  While the first well was described as at 900 feet and not complete, there were already some 40 to 50 barrels of crude being extracted daily.  The railway, which had a twenty-year lease, was planning its pipeline, which, thanks to the geography of the new field, would allow oil to simply flow down to the company's tracks by gravity.

Interestingly, the paper reminded readers that, because oil prices had skyrocketed a few years before, the SCR had switched its use of fuel from oil to coal, but, now that there was every expectation of an oil bonanza at the new site, it was looking to return to oil.  The Times also noted that, as the orange industry comtinued to blossom (!), the need for more trains to ship the product out of the area was becoming more pronounced.  It also pointed out that, unlike in Los Angeles, where oil promoters had to deal with the lease of many small lots, the discovery of oil in the hinterlands of Olinda Ranch meant that developers could lease or buy larger tracts and not have to deal with the smaller parcels that could bring a host of issues.  Finally, the paper also stated that older maps, from the 1870s or so, indicated that the area consisted of "coal lands" because of the knowledge of existing tar seeps at the surface.  Of course, the adjacent "Carbon Canyon" also was part of that earlier identification of "coal lands" for the Olinda area.

By late May, another feature was issued by the Times, which, on the 25th, stated that the first well was still not done, but the output from the current apparatus was yielding some 50-60 barrels of crude per day.  However, the second well was in the process of being dug and "will probably be producing oil before many days."  There were immediate plans to begin the digging of the third and fourth wells, too.  In discussing the desire of the railroad to move back to oil-fueled engines, the paper reported that the advantages included less smoke, no cinders, and the resulting cleanliness of the cab meant "that the engineers can almost wear their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes without fear of getting soiled."  The work of the locomotive firefighter would also be materially easier with oil than coal, while other workers on the cars would benefit from not having "to shovel coal till your back breaks."

As to the very earliest name of this new oil field, the first Times article of late April was eager to note that "this new metropolis has sprung unheralded upon the world, and probably this is the first time its name has been seen in print."  Even though there wasn't yet a proven well on the property, the paper saw fit to note that "yet the possibilities of the location seem unbounded."  Consequently, it was announced, the new name of the field was Oil Center and the by-line was so indicated.

Fortunately, the very direct, but clunky name of Oil Center did not stick and soon the Olinda appelation came to be accepted, even under the broader field designation of Fullerton!

Olinda Oil Field History: Origins of Olinda, Part 4

From its creation during an immense southern California real estate boom in 1887-88, William Hervey Bailey's Olinda Ranch was intended as an agricultural subdivision, promoting "fertile farms" and "beautiful villa sites."  Early ads, as noted in a previous entry here, promoted the raising of fruit, grain, alfalfa and other products with an "ample supply of water for irrigation and domestic use."  In addition, promotional materials trumpeted the "now building" Anaheim, Olinda and Pomona Railroad, which, evidently, was going to go north and south through Brea Canyon between the established towns of the former and latter.  Notably, there was mention of a $50,000 plant to develop "immense deposits of asphaltum" found on the northern portion of the tract.

The great boom went bust, however, by the end of the Eighties and the 1890s proved to be a long, dreary decade of drought and depression.  As noted in other posts here about Richard Gird's struggles to develop his new town on the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino, the real estate marked remained moribund for that period.  But, like Gird, Bailey made efforts to promote his subdivision despite prevailing conditions.

In late Summer 1891, for example, a small article appeared in the Los Angeles Times about Olinda Ranch, subtitled "Where Orange Land May be Had at a Reasonable Price."  The piece noted that, while oranges could not be raised everywhere in the region, it could be done at Olinda for under $200 an acre in 5, 10 and 40 acre parcels.  Described as "beautifully located on gentle, sloping ground, commanding a magnificent view of the surrounding country," the ranch was noted as being "on the Santa Fe line," meaning the railroad line of the Southern California Railway, a subsidiary of the massive Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway then engaged in a storied battle with the Southern Pacific Railroad for control of western America's burgeoning railroad system.  Actually, Olinda Ranch wasn't exactly "on the line," though a spur line was constructed from Atwood (now a neighborhood in Placentia) northwestward to the ranch.

The article also claimed that the parcel was "just far enough from the ocean—about 13 miles—to escape fogs and yet insure [ensure] a temperate climate all year round."   This also tinkered a bit with the truth.  The distance to the Pacific from Olinda is more like 20 miles and while dense fogs may be very rare now, a certain blogger who lived in Placentia thirty years back can well remember heavy blankets of fog in the area.  Still, the temperate climate part is basically the case.  Another example of toying with accuracy was the statement that Olinda "adjoins the celebrated Chino beet sugar ranch," although, of course, a few miles of the Chino Hills and Carbon Canyon separate the two.  While noting that there was an existing "orchard of bearing orange and other trees," the piece went on to say that the tract's land was "adapted to vegetables, grain and stock."

In fact, regarding the last item, there was an attempt to graze cattle on the ranch during this period, but it proved unsuccessful or, at least, not profitable, as the Olinda Ranch Company advertised in the Times in August 1892 for the sale of registered Gallaway cattle, bulls, cows and calves "at a bargain" through an Anaheim office. 



This detail from a 1924 California State Mining Bureau map shows the Olinda area, including the abandoned Carlton townsite, the Santa Fe Railroad spur line from Placentia and parcels still held by the successor to the Olinda Ranch Company, the Olinda Land Company, headed by William H. Bailey, Jr., son of the founder of the ranch.  Courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.



The following year, the Company tried trumpeting some success with a field crop, as the Times noted in a June 1893 issue that "a field of red Texas oats on the Olinda ranch, near Fullerton, has yielded this season the large crop of five tons of hay to the acre, which sells readily at $12 per ton."

Two years later, in December 1895, the Times published an article about castor bean growing, citing The American Cultivator's discussion about the difficulties in raising the crop, used as a "purgative" or laxative, because of the need for very rich soil and "peculiar" and costly machinery to hull the bean from the pod.  Although the Cultivator noted that some farmers in Kansas and Missouri were raising the bean for a St. Louis market, the further expense in pressing the oil from the bean was also viewed as an issue.  Consequently, the journal opined that the bean was better raised in small home gardens for local use rather than on a larger farm-based scale.  Undeterred, the Times offered the rebuttal that "in this region the harvesting of the bean does not entail any such trouble."  It went on to say that, "Mr. Bailey, who owns the Olinda ranch in Orange county, informs The Times that he obtained 2 1/2 cents per pound in San Francisco for the hulled beans which he raised."  The paper reported that Bailey, who offered that growing castor beans was basically like raising corn, simply had the pods spread upon the ground in the hot sun, which effectively hulled the beans without machinery.  Moreover, the Times observed that "Mr. Bailey finds that his castor beans pay about $30 to $40 an acre" and concluded that "this is enough to warrant the farmers in Southern California to pay some attention to a crop which can be easily marketed."

This did not prove to be the case and the difficulties of promoting and selling the land, even as Bailey did so in his native Hawaii, advertising Olinda in the Hawaiian Gazette newspaper, for example, during 1896, led him, in Spring 1897, to transfer the main office of the Olinda Ranch Company from Los Angeles, where it had been for almost a decade, to San Francisco, across the Bay from his home in Oakland.

Still, by Spring 1898, the agricultural and ranching possibilities of Olinda were being touted, as the Times, in early April reported that, due to the efforts of San Francisco real estate firm Easton, Eldridge and Company, sales of two tracts totaling some 90 acres brought in $12,500.  Notably, the connection to Chino comes to the fore here, as Richard Gird hired the same firm to market and sell his ranch during the same period.  Moreover, the buyers of the two Olinda parcels were "cattle men from Arizona, one of whom is feeding cattle on the adjoining [!] Chino ranch, with pulp from the sugar factory."  Gird, as blog readers might remember, bought the Chino ranch with money made at the Tombstone, Arizona mines he helped found and develop and these ranchers were associates of his from that territory.

Whatever may have transpired with this stock-raising activity, the 1898 piece hearkened back to something touched upon, but not heavily emphasized, in earlier promotional efforts about Olinda.  Namely, the piece observed, "in the hill section of the ranch are oil deposits, which are reserved.  Several wells have been sunk here by the Southern California Railway Company" and it concluded by reporting that "another sale of several thousand acres of this ranch is pending." 

Indeed, Olinda was on the verge of a transformation from a stagnated subdivision intended for farming and cattle ranching to a new enterprise that would make it far more famed than William Hervey Bailey or anyone else, for that matter, could have foreseen a decade before.