Bob, the docent at the museum, refers to Santa Paula as California's first place of discovering oil. I told him I thought Placerita Canyon near Newhall was first but Bob amended it by saying that Santa Paula was the "first" commercial oil field...oh, whatever! The museum is housed in the old Union Oil building which is downtown.
One of the first exhibits upon entering the museum are these beautiful glass tubes showing you the different types of crude oil. Bob contends that the Santa Paula oil would be classified as one of the darkest oils...commonly used in asphalt. The docent further stated that a number of the early streets in town were paved with just a mixture of the heavy oil and rock. The dark heavy oils are not quite 50 percent less per barrel than the "sweet" crude, which is much lighter.
These are a collection of drill bits used prior to the 1960's.
Unfortunately I have the caption for this bit out of frame. I have my hand on the bit just to give some reference of size. This is a deep core 17 1/2 inch bit that will drill down to 4000 foot if necessary. A heavy mud and chemical mixture is forced thru the center of the bit while drilling to one, keep it clean and two, to line the walls of the well with the mud slurry.
The centrifuge is one way to separate the water from the oil.
The rig room had a number of miniature rigs that showed or demonstrated the properties of a drill site.
There was even a full sized working replica of drill site.
I love the older memorabilia from the 50's with pumps, glass oil bottles and squirt cans but I did notice one glaring absence...those spouts we used to shove into an oil can to fill the engine. Bob said he'd get right on it!
This is but a small part of the "older" signs that were prevalent in California...way back when!
Before I left the area I had asked the docent "with increased oil prices are they doing anymore drilling in Santa Paula"? Bob said "come outside and look at the SP on the hill"...ya?
"Now zoom in", those pumpjacks are brand new. They have had lights up on the hill for two months now putting in a total of 7 pumps on top of the hill...Ok, I guess that answers my question.
Santa Paula has much more to offer and I will post more soon.
1 comment:
Oh dude, cool….. more good stuff on early oil history. Dawg gone it, don’t think ol Huell Howser could have done a better job. That was very informative, got to put that museum on my list, for next trip through Santa Paula.
Jack
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