A 1914 Map Showing the Olinda Oil Field and Surrounding Areas

In 1914, the California State Mining Bureau issued Bulletin 69, titled "Petroleum Industry in California," as well as a Map Folio set to accompany the work.  Part of the state government's effort to identify and report on the growing importance of the natural resource, the bulletin and folio are excellent sources about the early years of the oil industry in California.

The Map Folio includes sixteen plates with depictions of fossils found in oil fields, geologic maps of field areas, more standard maps showing oil well locations, plans for oil rigs and reservoirs, and a map of pipelines.  One of the geologic maps is Plate II covering portions of Los Angeles and Orange counties.  On this is the area in and around the Olinda field.

This detail from Plate II, a geologic map of part of Los Angeles and Orange counties from the Map Folio of the California State Mining Bureau's "Petroleum Industry in California" (1914) shows the area in and around the Fullerton-Olinda Oil Field.  The image is courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.

At this date, the field was approaching two decades in operation and there were many companies working leases or owned sites.  While the Los Angeles basin had yet to see the great discoveries of Santa Fe Springs, Signal Hill and Huntington Beach, among others, the Fullerton-Olinda field (once known only as Fullerton), was one of the major ones.

At the top of the first detail above is the area that later became the cities of Walnut, Diamond Bar and the City of Industry.  Note that at the upper left is the name and boundary of Rancho Rincon de la Brea (rincon meaning corner and brea denoting tar.)  Crossing that vertical line at about the center is the boundary line between Los Angeles and Orange counties running horizontally.  At the right side, the jagged boundary separating Los Angeles from San Bernardino counties comes in from the upper right and disappears just below the center.

A light brown area running left to right is the geologic section constituting at the west end the Brea Canyon Oil Field and, at the center, the Fullerton-Olinda field.  It moves through much of what is now Chino Hills State Park before terminating at some dark lines at the bottom right corner showing where Santa Ana Canyon is located.

Note that under this, the place names of Placentia and Olinda are placed and there are thick black lines throughout that denote roads.  In the further detail below, we can pick up on more specifics within the Olinda and Catbon Canyon areas.

Another detail from Plate II showing the geologic formation area for the Fullerton-Olinda Oil Field and other local aspects.

From where the word "Placentia" is, there is a road leading up to the "Fullerton-Olinda Oil Field" phrase and then this road makes an abrupt turn right, or east.  This would seem to be Valencia Avenue transitioning in that quick change of direction to Carbon Canyon Road.

Significantly, the road goes into Carbon Canyon, enters into a three-fingered geologic area marked by the letters "Tm" and then crosses the county line.  This, of course, marks where Sleepy Hollow would be developed just under a decade later.  It is quite clear, however, that the road simply ends not far over the county line, perhaps at the actual geological back of Carbon Canyon where the Western Hills Country Club more or less is and just below the Carriage Hills subdivision.

Early on in this blog, an excerpt from an oral history of former Olinda oil field residents conducted in the 1970s by Cal State Fullerton personnel included one by a man who remembered working on the building of Carbon Canyon Road at just about this time (that is, 1914.)  At that time, though, the road not only stopped where this map indicates, but it also wasn't paved.  Whether it was all-dirt or had some composite or oiled surface remains to be discovered.

Getting a little more "zoomed in," the dark line moving from center left to upper right is that of Carbon Canyon Road, abruptly turning east from Valencia Avenue and terminating not far into San Bernardino County (the county line is the one running at an angle at the upper right), probably at the true geological end of Carbon Canyon just below the Carriage Hills tract and near Western Hills Country Club.

Note, too, what is, in the further detail just above, the denoted "Fault Line" running from the upper center left to the lower center right.  It may very well be that this is the fault which, over the last five years, has yielded some fair-sized seismic activity, a few of which have been chronicled in this blog, that have been identified as taking place in the southern end of Chino Hills State Park and are usually noted as "Yorba Linda" quakes.

 

Meantime, the map does extend east over towards Chino and the detail shown below takes in the town of Chino and its straight lines of streets at the upper right.  It also, however, indicates existing roadways, all probably within private ranches with the Rancho Santa Ana del Chino (the name of whicjh is emblazoned across the center of this detail) in what is now Chino Hills. 

 

Moving east and north, this detail from Plate II shows the Chino/Chino Hills area, with the town of Chino at the upper right and the undeveloped ranching area which became Chino Hills at the center and bottom.  The road moving toward the lower left corner and ending abruptly is undoubtedly the east end of what became Carbon Canyon Road later.

 It seems pretty obvious that the road curling down towards the bottom left corner and then ending is what would later become Carbon Canyon Road and linked, in the mid 1920s, to the portion of that road noted above from the Orange County side. 

 

Among other notable elements is the roadway that runs from to the right of the top left corner to above the bottom right corner.  This is the old Colorado Road from Los Angeles to Yuma, named from at least 1851, and then, after 1858, denoted as the Butterfield Stage road for that famed, if short lived, line that ran from St. Louis to San Francisco and also became part of the more well-known (and also limited run) Pony Express route.  In later years, it was known as the Pomona-Rincon Road, Rincon being a community that was dismantled when the Prado Dam project was created decades ago and portions of that road still exist in Chino and Chino Hills today.

 

In the not-too-distant future, there will be a post on another map from this folio showing oil wells and landowners in the Olinda Oil Field area--an interesting precursor to the 1924 map detailed in this blog last year.

 

The images shown here come from a copy of the Map Folio in the collection of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.

The Great Brea Oil Tank Fire of 1926

Early in this blog, in July 2009, there was a post (see here) featuring a real photo postcard of a burning open oil tank in Brea, but there wasn't any specific information given.

This post is about a very similar view of the same incident, but, thanks to the wonders of the expanding information universe on the Web, much more is known about what was perhaps the greatest disaster that befell the local industry.

A real photo postcard by Dietrich Studio of Santa Ana showing the massive fire at the Stewart oil tank farm of the Union Oil Company of California, one-half mile west of Brea, which broke out on 8 April 1926.  Click on the image to see a larger view in separate window.  Image courtesy of Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.

First, the image.  Simply titled "Brea — Oil Tank Fire" and including a stamp from Santa Ana's Dietrich Studios, the view shows a massive plume of black smoke rising from a large open oil tank surrounded by a simple earthen berm.  What was notable through magnification was white rectangular pieces lying along the bottom of the berm and these placed by men who can be discerned there.  Because the card was postally unused, meaning there was no message written on it, information had to be located elsewhere.

Fortunately, there were a few sources found on the Net that appear to identify the scene, which was a horrific one.  Namely, on the morning of 8 April 1926, a lightning strike hit the oil tank farm of the Union Oil Company.  This was west of town toward La Habra and not in or near Olinda, as shown by the following sources.

In the June 2001 issue of the Brea Historical Society's Historical Happenings newsletter, there was an interview by Society members Brian Saul and Kathy Canon with 95-year old Walt Bergman, who moved to the city in 1916.  One of his most unforgettable memories was this incident, namely that "Walt remembers standing, facing west [italics added for emphasis], at the counter of the family's Bergman Garage at the corner of Birch and Brea Blvd . . .  All of a sudden, he saw a 'whole wall' of flame shooting into the air . . . The fire, he said, lasted a week . . . [and] that because of the flames you could read a newspaper on Brea Blvd. in the middle of the night . . .  Even at 2 a.m., Brea was full of sightseers."  Note Mr. Bergman's recollection of facing west from the intersection of Birch St. and Brea Blvd.

And, on this interesting site (click here) called "Brea: Old and New," there is a cool aerial view of what was called the Stewart tank farm (Lyman Stewart being the longtime president of Union), a 1/2 mile west of downtown Brea.

The 9 April 1926 issue of the Prescott [Arizona] Evening Courier had a lengthy article about what was headlined "Brea Oil Fire is Fought by 3000 Workers, 2,500,000 Gallons Lost in Conflagration."  The paper reported on three burning reservoirs at the tank farm, involving what was actually 2.5 million barrels (not gallons--there are 42 gallons per barrel, so we're talking over 100 million gallons!) of crude.  Still, it was stated that the massive crew fighting the fire "claimed a victory in part, for it was indicated that they would be able to save three other huge reservoirs of oil and a number of surface tanks from the blaze."

The extent of the damage was revealed by the fact that "the most spectacular event in the progress of the blaze came late last night when the third tank was ignited as the other two boiled over.  The tan of over 1,000,000 barrels capacity exploded as it caught fire."  In addition, a small refinery and gasoline and oil distillate tanks were engulfed when the overflowing boiling oil jumped the earthen dikes and hit these sites, which "exploded in spectacular fashion, throwing their blazing contents in all directions for many yards."

Concerning the mysterious rectangular items at the bottom of the photo, the Evening Courier noted that the tank farm was "protected by the stiff breeze and dykes of sheet iron and earth [italics added]."  In other words, the above photo appears to show men laying the sheets of iron for prevention of further exposure of other portions of the farm to spreading flammable material.

Interestingly, it was also observed that "a new method of firefighting was given a trial when 20 artificial wind machines were rushed to the tank farm to keep the draft away from the remainder of the storage."  This novel experiment, however, proved unnecessary, because "the wind that held steady through the night proved more satisfactory, however, than its mechanical aids."

In the Miami [Florida] News of 10 April, progress on dealing with the conflagration was reported as the fire "seems to have been isolated, thus preventing it from increasing the destruction."  Burning oil from the three affected reservoirs  were heading toward a fourth, containing three-quarters of a million barrels of crude, but "with dykes erected around the fourth reservoir and around a nearby pump station, those fighting the fire expressed a belief that the fire would not spread further."

In reporting on the destruction wreaked by the tragedy, the News observed that "the Brea fire . . . caused, if it spreads no further, a loss of about $3,000,000.  Three reservoirs, a small oil refinery, 70 acres of walnut and orange trees, three expensive ranch homes, and several houses on tank farm property were consumed by the flames."

The Milwaukee Sentinel, also of 10 April reported that "three miles of galvanized iron barricades diverted the blazing oil into a pool where it will burn itself out without endangering the town."

Locally, at least one journalistic enterprise found a way, somehow, to make light (pardon the pun) from the disaster.  The Jaysee Torch, the student newspaper of the "Fullerton District Junior College," now Fullerton Junior College, had an editorial titled "Optimism."  In this piece, it was stated that

Last week the famous Brea oil fire burned up two million dollars worth of gummy asphalt.  It is an ill wind that blows no one any good.  In this case it was the flaming youth who profited from the disastrous conflagration.  Sheiks from all the colleges south of San Luis Obispo stepped the beloved to the hillsides adjoining the blaze and proceeded to enter upon the gentle art of caressing.  'Twas indeed a rare sight to behold, when all was illuminated by a sudden burst of flame, the hillsides adorned for miles about with the world's largest collection of petting parties.  The flame ascended neavenward through billows of black smoke like a pale moonbeam shimmering through the rafters of a deceased horse [house?!]; and while the earth was sprinkled with the star duest of romance — he slipped a kiss to her waiting lips.

          Blessings on thee, Union Oil,
          With thy tanks of blazing oil.

Regardless of the quality of the prose (and the poesy), it might help to know that "sheiks" were the hip young dudes of the day and that the "gentle art of caressing" and "petting parties" involved sheiks and shebas (these being the female paramours) going to at least second base in a flivver (car) parked on "Lovers' Lane."  In this case, the orange glow of flame seemed to be a metaphor for the heated passions of the young collegiates enjoying the relaxing social mores of the Jazz Age during the Roaring Twenties.  Wasn't that the "bee's knees" or the "cat's meow"?

Notably, a similar event occurred on a Union tank farm in San Luis Obispo on the morning of the 7th, the day before the Brea event, but the damage there was double, about $7,000,000, of the latter and involved about 8 million barrels of crude.  The insurance payout of some $9,000,000 was the single largest in California since the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of twenty years before.

Of interest, as well, is the fact that more than eighty years later, there are still environmental risks involved.  In San Luis Obispo's tank farm at the southern edge of town, oil was still bubbling to the surface in hot weather and Chevron, owner of the site, was proposing a cleanup preliminary to development of light industrial parks in the vicinity of the tank farm.  Chevron was actually using large nets, propane-powered noise guns and reflective tape (as used in vineyards) to scare away birds and other wildlife from the seepage of the old oil.

The real photo postcard above was obtained courtesy of the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, City of Industry.