Carbon Canyon Historical Artifact #65: "Oil Fields Olinda Cal." Looking South Toward Carbon Canyon Road, ca. 1920

As promised a month ago, here is the second of two real photo postcards of the Olinda Oil Field by Edward W. Cochems, a well-known Santa Ana photographer, and taken about 1920.  Whereas the first was taken from at or near Carbon Canyon Road and looked north to the hillside wells of the Santa Fe lease, this one is from the hillside looking south toward the road.

The several wooden structures on either side of wide dirt road on which Cochems stood as well as where the thoroughfare terminated, probably with another street running east to west in front of it, probably are a mix of field offices, dwellings, and buildings associated with wells, with at least two tall wooden derricks in the foreground.

Left of center is a thick stand of trees (perhaps eucalyptus?) behind which is the gap between hills (the one to the right, or west, having derricks upon it), where Carbon [Canyon] Creek, which to the east was joined by the creek emanating from Soquel Canyon, cut through that divide on its way to the Santa Ana River.  In the late 1950s, Carbon Canyon Dam was built in that area, followed in the mid-Sixties by the opening of Carbon Canyon Regional Park.  Out in the distance is Placentia and surrounding areas, mostly comprised of orange groves and very much a rural, agricultural section.

What our friends at the Olinda Oil Museum will have to confirm for us, and we can be sure at least one of them will in very short order (ahem, Chris Farren!), is whether this is, in fact, where the Museum is today, sequestered amid the Olinda Ranch housing tract.  If so, the original 1897 well brought in by oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny, in partnership with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (hence the name of the lease, with Santa Fe Avenue being the main thoroughfare running through the subdivision today), with that well not only launching Orange County's oil industry, but is still pumping today!

If this is not that location, it is still a fantastic view of the oil field.  Given that the remaining wells to the west, including on and around that hill on the right, are soon to be shut down and the land developed as the Brea265 project, one of the last remaining large-scale oil operations, not only in this area, but in the county and region generally, will cease to have a physical presence.  Photos like these will be the only reminders of an industry that long was prominent in southern California, but, with expanding climate change, is becoming more heavily contested with each passing year.

UPDATE, 29 September:  Chris Farren, who is with the Olinda Oil Museum and is a fountain of knowledge on the local field and area generally, confirms that this is where the Museum is today, so this provides additional interest and significance to the photo and also a good opportunity to remind readers to visit the Museum!

Carbon Canyon Fire Safe Council Brush Drop-Off Next Saturday

The Carbon Canyon Fire Safe Council hosts a twice-annual Brush Drop Off, in which the organization, dedicated to minimizing wildfire risk in the Canyon, partners with the City of Chino Hills and Waste Management to provide a roll-off bin for residents of the Chino Hills portion of the Canyon to drop off brush and other plant materials from their properties.

Our fall drop-off is next Saturday, 24 September from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and the location of the roll-off bin is on Canon Lane near Fire Station 64 north of Carbon Canyon Road.  Volunteers from the Council will be there to assist residents in unloading the brush into the bin.  So, Chino Hills residents of the Canyon, take this opportunity to clear plant materials from your property and around your house and help us reduce wildfire risk.  We look forward to seeing you there and then!

Carbon Canyon Historical Artifact #64: "Oil Fields Olinda Cal." Looking North from Carbon Canyon Road, ca. 1920

This real photo postcard and another from a series has been sitting on the desk for months, waiting for its chance to be shared and so it is clearly long overdue for a post on the Chronicle after an eternity of inactivity.

The view is of the Olinda oil field taken from above Carbon Canyon Road, of which a sliver is at the bottom left where the flivver is parked, and looking north into the hills where today's Olinda Ranch subdivision is situated.  The field was discovered by oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny, who partnered with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (locomotives were transitioning to oil at the time) to bring in the first well, which is still operating at the Olinda Oil Museum and Trail, in 1897.

In addition to the large tank at the center, the wooden derricks, the sheds and pump houses, tanks and other components of the intensive petroleum prospecting taking place at Olinda during what look to be the 1910s, there is also the presence of the tanker cars for the spur line, coming up from Atwood in Placentia, of the Santa Fe (the line through north Orange County was built by the its subsidiary, the Southern California Railway, in the late 1880s).

In addition to the row of cars waiting, presumably, to be filled with crude for its return trip down to the main line, another track is visible next to a pole and behind that large tank in the foreground.  In the distance are the crown of the hills where the Olinda Alpha Landfill is now and which is slated, some day, to be an Orange County regional park, not unlike what is slowly transpiring with the shuttered Puente Hills Landfill not too far away.

The photographer was Edward W. Cochems (1874-1949), a native of Chicago born to German immigrants and whose family came to California in the 1885, living first in what is now San Marcos and then in Escondido in San Diego County and then moving to Santa Ana about 1912.  Cochems was a manager of a Los Angeles tailoring company before he relocated to the Orange County seat in 1915.  By the time, he registered for the draft, in September 1918, during World War I, he'd established his photo studio there and he ran the enterprise for some three decades.

We'll share the second Cochems view of the field, looking from the hills southward, sometime in September, so be sure to be on the lookout for that.

Carbon Canyon Road Closure

 Carbon Canyon Road (SR-142) is closed in both directions on the City of Brea side due to a traffic collision. Eastbound and westbound traffic is closed between Santa Fe Road and Discovery Center. There is no through traffic to or from the City of Chino Hills. ETA provided for reopening is approximately four hours. Please avoid the area and use alternate routes.