Pico Canyon Oilfield
Well No. 4, Pico Canyon Oilfield, located about seven miles west of Newhall, California, in the Santa Susana Mountains, was the first commercially successful oil well in the Western United States and is considered the birthplace of California's oil industry. Drilled in 1876, it turned nearby Newhall into a boomtown and spawned a smaller boomtown called Mentryville adjacent to the drilling site. Well No. 4 continued in operation for 114 years until it was capped in 1990. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966, the Mentryville ghost town is now open to the public as a historic park. Following the oil strike at Drake Oil Well in Pennsylvania in 1859, there was a short-lived oil drilling boom in California, but this was wiped out in 1867 when eastern oil could be sold cheaper. At the end of the first boom, 75 companies had drilled 60 wells in California, spending $1 million to produce $60,000 worth of oil. Oil seep locations, in present-day Pico Canyon area of the northern Santa Susana Mountains, were known and used for centuries by the local Tataviam and Tongva Native Americans for medicinal and healing purposes.
Various accounts exist about the Spanish-Mexican era rediscovery by non-indigenous people of oil in Pico Canyon. Some accounts credit Andrés Pico with discovering oil there in the 1850s, but the Los Angeles Times reported in 1882 as follows: The Pico Oil Spring was discovered in January, 1865, by Ramon Peria, a Mexican hunter. One day while hunting for deer he wounded a buck, he found it dead near the spring. The quality of the oil in the spring attracted his attention, being of a dark, green color and thin, so different from anything that he had seen, that he concluded it must be valuable. So he notified a friend of his, Jesus Hernandez, they located the oil claim. According to a account, Peria gathered some of the oil in his canteen and brought it to others who recognized its value, yet another account indicates that Perea brought a small amount of the curious substance to the Mission San Fernando, where a Dr. Gelsich recognized it as petroleum and at once formed a company to stake out claims.
Perea was granted an ownership interest in an oil company for making the discovery, but he traded his interest in the company for a barrel of spirits and a $20 gold piece. After the discovery, claims were staked out, but it was not until five years that the first well was struck and still before the first commercial success. In 1875, the Star Oil Works reorganized as the California Star Oil Works Company, hired Charles Alexander Mentry to supervise its drilling operations in Pico Canyon. Mentry was born in France, moved to Pennsylvania at age seven, worked in the Pennsylvania oil fields, moved to California in 1873. Mentry drilled three wells in 1875 and 1876 that showed promise, but the "gusher" came with the fourth well. Mentry began drilling Well No. 4 in July 1876 and struck oil on September 26, 1876, at a depth of 370 feet. Well No. 4 was drilled with great difficulty since "the railroad had not been completed, there was no road into the canyon, water was unattainable, there were no adequate tools or machinery to be had."
Mentry used his mechanical skills to create improvised tools, including a drill-stem he built out of old railroad car axles, which he purchased from the Southern Pacific and welded together. When Mentry drilled the well to a depth of 560 feet in 1877, the oil spurted to the top of the 65-foot derrick, increasing the production to 150 barrels per day. After Well No. 4 proved to be a success, Mentry constructed the first oil pipeline in California from Pico Canyon to the refinery in Newhall extending it 50 miles to the ocean at Ventura, California. Well No. 4 continued producing oil for 114 years before it was capped in 1990. It was the longest continually operating oil well in the world; when a reporter from the Los Angeles Times visited the site in 1962, the caretaker's son took the reporter to old Well No. 4, turned the valve and reported: "Still producing after all these years... only about a barrel a week, but look how rich the oil is." Well No. 4 was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1966.
Along with the Rómulo Pico Adobe in San Fernando, Well No. 4 has the distinction of being the first site in Los Angeles County to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places and one of only two sites in the county to be so designated during the 1960s. The success of Well No. 4 was by far the greatest of any well drilled in California and led to the state's second oil drilling boom. As a result, the state's oil production rose to 568,806 barrels in 1879, 1,763,215 barrels in 1880, 4,194,102 barrels in 1881. In 1882, the editor of the fledgling Los Angeles Times traveled on horseback to see the celebrated Pico Canyon oil wells; as he approached the camp, he noted that his horse refused to drink from the canyon's rivulet, which he found was "about half crude oil and half water." The editor described the booming oil region as follows: There are eight wells now yielding oil, three more in process of sinking, some in the canyon, some on the hillsides and some on the tops of the peaks, five hundred feet perpendicular from base to top... large boilers, heavy machinery and all the etceteras for oil mining and the comfort of the miners, have been hauled up these perpendicular roads... the deepest well on the mountains is a little over 1,500 feet in depth, none have yet been sank but what have yielded oil in remunerative quantities.
A 2-inch iron pipe, about seven miles long, runs from Pico canyon to t
Chevron Corporation
Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation. One of the successor companies of Standard Oil, it is headquartered in San Ramon and active in more than 180 countries. Chevron is engaged in every aspect of the oil, natural gas, geothermal energy industries, including hydrocarbon exploration and production. Chevron is one of the world's largest oil companies, it was one of the Seven Sisters that dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the 1970s. Chevron's downstream operations manufacture and sell products such as fuels, lubricants and petrochemicals; the company's most significant areas of operations are the west coast of North America, the U. S. Gulf Coast, Southeast Asia, South Korea and South Africa. In 2010, Chevron sold an average 3.1 million barrels per day of refined products like gasoline and jet fuel. One of Chevron's early predecessors, Star Oil, discovered oil at the Pico Canyon Oilfield in the Santa Susana Mountains north of Los Angeles in 1876.
The 25 barrels of oil per day well marked the discovery of the Newhall Field, is considered by geophysicist Marius Vassiliou as the beginning of the modern oil industry in California. Energy analyst Antonia Juhasz has said that while Star Oil's founders were influential in establishing an oil industry in California, Union Mattole Company discovered oil in the state eleven years prior. In September 1879, Charles N. Felton, Lloyd Tevis, George Loomis and others created the Pacific Coast Oil Company, which acquired the assets of Star Oil with $1 million in funding. Pacific Coast Oil became the largest oil interest in California by the time it was acquired by Standard Oil for $761,000 in 1900. Pacific Coast operated independently and retained its name until 1906, when it was merged with a Standard Oil subsidiary and it became Standard Oil Company or California Standard. Another predecessor, Texas Fuel Company, was founded in 1901 in Beaumont, Texas as an oil equipment vendor by "Buckskin Joe"; the founder's nickname came from being aggressive.
Texas Fuel worked with Chevron. In 1936 it formed a joint venture with California Standard named Caltex, to drill and produce oil in Saudi Arabia. According to energy analyst and activist shareholder Antonia Juhasz, the Texas Fuel Company and California Standard were referred to as the "terrible twins" for their cutthroat business practices; the Texas Fuel Company was renamed the Texas Company, renamed Texaco. In 1911, the federal government broke Standard Oil into several pieces under the Sherman Antitrust Act. One of those pieces, Standard Oil Co. went on to become Chevron. It became part of the "Seven Sisters", which dominated the world oil industry in the early 20th century. In 1926, the company changed its name to Standard Oil Co. of California. By the terms of the breakup of Standard Oil, at first Standard of California could use the Standard name only within its original geographic area of the Pacific coast states, plus Nevada and Arizona. Today Chevron is the owner of the Standard Oil trademark in 16 states in the western and southeastern U.
S. To maintain ownership of the mark, the company owns and operates one Standard-branded Chevron station in each state of the area, although its status in Kentucky is unclear after Chevron withdrew retail sales from Kentucky in July 2010; the Chevron name came into use for some of its retail products in the 1930s. The name Calso was used from 1946 to 1955 in states outside its native West Coast territory. Standard Oil Company of California ranked 75th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts. In 1933, Saudi Arabia granted California Standard a concession to find oil, which led to the discovery of oil in 1938. In 1948, California Standard discovered the world's largest oil field in Ghawar Field. California Standard's subsidiary, California-Arabian Standard Oil Company, grew over the years and became the Arabian American Oil Company in 1944. In 1973, the Saudi government began buying into ARAMCO. By 1980, the company was owned by the Saudis, in 1988, its name was changed to Saudi Arabian Oil Company—Saudi Aramco.
Standard Oil of California and Gulf Oil merged in 1984, the largest merger in history at that time. To comply with U. S. antitrust law, California Standard divested many of Gulf's operating subsidiaries, sold some Gulf stations and a refinery in the eastern United States. Among the assets sold off were Gulf's retail outlets in Gulf's home market of Pittsburgh, where Chevron lacks a retail presence but does retain a regional headquarters there as of 2013 for Marcellus Shale-related drilling; the same year, Standard Oil of California took the opportunity to change its legal name to Chevron Corporation, since it had been using the well-known "Chevron" retail brand name for decades. Chevron would sell the Gulf Oil trademarks for the entire U. S. to Cumberland Farms, the parent company of Gulf Oil LP, in 2010 after Cumberland Farms had a license to the Gulf trademark in the Northeastern United States since 1986. In 1996 Chevron transferred its natural gas gathering and marketing operation to NGC Corporation in exchange for a 25% equity stake in NGC.
In a merger completed February 1, 2000, Illinova Corp. became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dynegy Inc
Los Angeles
Los Angeles the City of Los Angeles and known by its initials L. A. is the most populous city in California, the second most populous city in the United States, after New York City, the third most populous city in North America. With an estimated population of four million, Los Angeles is the cultural and commercial center of Southern California; the city is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic diversity and the entertainment industry, its sprawling metropolis. Los Angeles is the largest city on the West Coast of North America. Los Angeles is in a large basin bounded by the Pacific Ocean on one side and by mountains as high as 10,000 feet on the other; the city proper, which covers about 469 square miles, is the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated county in the country. Los Angeles is the principal city of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second largest in the United States after that of New York City, with a population of 13.1 million. It is part of the Los Angeles-Long Beach combined statistical area the nation's second most populous area with a 2015 estimated population of 18.7 million.
Los Angeles is one of the most substantial economic engines within the United States, with a diverse economy in a broad range of professional and cultural fields. Los Angeles is famous as the home of Hollywood, a major center of the world entertainment industry. A global city, it has been ranked 6th in the Global Cities Index and 9th in the Global Economic Power Index; the Los Angeles metropolitan area has a gross metropolitan product of $1.044 trillion, making it the third-largest in the world, after the Tokyo and New York metropolitan areas. Los Angeles hosted the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics and will host the event for a third time in 2028; the city hosted the Miss Universe pageant twice, in 1990 and 2006, was one of 9 American cities to host the 1994 FIFA men's soccer World Cup and one of 8 to host the 1999 FIFA women's soccer World Cup, hosting the final match for both tournaments. Home to the Chumash and Tongva, Los Angeles was claimed by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo for Spain in 1542 along with the rest of what would become Alta California.
The city was founded on September 4, 1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve. It became a part of Mexico in 1821 following the Mexican War of Independence. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican–American War, Los Angeles and the rest of California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, becoming part of the United States. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4, 1850, five months before California achieved statehood; the discovery of oil in the 1890s brought rapid growth to the city. The completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, delivering water from Eastern California assured the city's continued rapid growth; the Los Angeles coastal area was settled by the Chumash tribes. A Gabrieleño settlement in the area was called iyáangẚ, meaning "poison oak place". Maritime explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the area of southern California for the Spanish Empire in 1542 while on an official military exploring expedition moving north along the Pacific coast from earlier colonizing bases of New Spain in Central and South America.
Gaspar de Portolà and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2, 1769. In 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra directed the building of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the first mission in the area. On September 4, 1781, a group of forty-four settlers known as "Los Pobladores" founded the pueblo they called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles,'The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels'; the present-day city has the largest Roman Catholic Archdiocese in the United States. Two-thirds of the Mexican or settlers were mestizo or mulatto, a mixture of African and European ancestry; the settlement remained a small ranch town for decades, but by 1820, the population had increased to about 650 residents. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the historic district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street, the oldest part of Los Angeles. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, the pueblo continued as a part of Mexico.
During Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico made Los Angeles Alta California's regional capital. Mexican rule ended during the Mexican–American War: Americans took control from the Californios after a series of battles, culminating with the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga on January 13, 1847. Railroads arrived with the completion of the transcontinental Southern Pacific line to Los Angeles in 1876 and the Santa Fe Railroad in 1885. Petroleum was discovered in the city and surrounding area in 1892, by 1923, the discoveries had helped California become the country's largest oil producer, accounting for about one-quarter of the world's petroleum output. By 1900, the population had grown to more than 102,000; the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, under the supervision of William Mulholland, assured the continued growth of the city. Due to clauses in the city's charter that prevented the City of Los Angeles from selling or providing water from the aqueduct to any area outside its borders, many adjacent city and communities became compelled to annex themselves into Los Angeles.
Los Angeles created the first municipal zoning ordinance in the United States. On September 14, 1908, the Los Angeles City Council promulgated residential and industrial land use zones; the new ordinance established three residential zones of a single type, where industrial uses were
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
California chaparral and woodlands
The California chaparral and woodlands is a terrestrial ecoregion of lower northern and southern California and northwestern Baja California, located on the west coast of North America. It is an ecoregion of the Mediterranean forests and scrub Biome, part of the Nearctic ecozone; the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion is subdivided into three smaller ecoregions. California coastal sage and chaparral ecoregion: In southern coastal California and northwestern coastal Baja California, as well as all the Channel Islands of California and Guadalupe Island. California montane chaparral and woodlands: In southern and central coast adjacent and inland California, covering some of the mountains of: the Coast Ranges. California interior chaparral and woodlands: In central interior California surrounding the California Central Valley cover the foothills and the Transverse Ranges and Sierra Nevada. Most of the population of California and Baja California lives in these ecoregions, which includes the San Francisco Bay Area, Ventura County, the Greater Los Angeles Area, San Diego County, Tijuana.
The California Central Valley grasslands ecoregion, as well as the coniferous Sierra Nevada forests, Northern California coastal forests, Klamath-Siskiyou forests of northern California and southwestern Oregon, share many plant and animal affinities with the California chaparral and woodlands. Many botanists consider the California chaparral and woodlands, Sierra Nevada forests, Klamath-Siskiyou forests, Northern California coastal forests as a single California Floristic Province, excluding the deserts of eastern California, which belong to other floristic provinces. Many Bioregionalists, including poet Gary Snyder, identify the central and northern Coast Ranges, Klamath-Siskiyou, the Central Valley, Sierra Nevada as the Shasta Bioregion or the Alta California Bioregion; the ecoregion includes a great variety of plant communities, including grasslands, oak savannas and woodlands and coniferous forests, including southern stands of the tall coast redwood. The flora of this ecoregion includes tree species such as Gray or foothill pine, Scrub oak, California buckeye, the rare Gowen cypress, the rare Monterey cypress, a wealth of endemic plant species, including the rare San Gabriel Mountain liveforever, Catalina mahogany, the threatened most beautiful jewel-flower.
Hesperoyucca whipplei, colloquially known as Chaparral Yucca, is commonplace throughout the lower elevations of the climate zone. Species include the California gnatcatcher, Costa's hummingbird, coast horned lizard, rosy boa. Other animals found here are the Heermann kangaroo rat, Santa Cruz kangaroo rat, the endangered white-eared pocket mouse. Another notable insect resident of this ecoregion is the rain beetle It spends up to several years living underground in a larval stage and emerges only during wet-season rains to mate. Chaparral, like most Mediterranean shrublands, is fire resilient and burned with high-severity, stand replacing events every 30 to 100 years. Native Americans burned chaparral to promote grasslands for textiles and food. Though adapted to infrequent fires, chaparral plant communities can be exterminated by frequent fires with climate change induced drought. Today, frequent accidental ignitions can convert chaparral from a native shrubland to nonnative annual grassland and drastically reduce species diversity under global-change-type drought.
The region has been affected by grazing, logging and water diversions, intensive agriculture and urbanization, as well as competition by numerous introduced or exotic plant and animal species. Some unique plant communities, like southern California's Coastal Sage Scrub, have been nearly eradicated by agriculture and urbanization; as a result, the region now has many endangered species, including the California condor. World Wildlife Fund: California Chaparral and Woodlands ecoregion California Chaparral Institute website California Coastal Sage and Chaparral images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu California Interior Chaparral and Woodlands images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu — California Montane Chaparral and Woodlands images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu —
Summit
A summit is a point on a surface, higher in elevation than all points adjacent to it. The topographic terms acme, apex and zenith are synonymous; the term top is used only for a mountain peak, located at some distance from the nearest point of higher elevation. For example, a big massive rock next to the main summit of a mountain is not considered a summit. Summits near a higher peak, with some prominence or isolation, but not reaching a certain cutoff value for the quantities, are considered subsummits of the higher peak, are considered part of the same mountain. A pyramidal peak is an exaggerated form produced by ice erosion of a mountain top. Summit may refer to the highest point along a line, trail, or route; the highest summit in the world is Everest with height of 8844.43 m above sea level. The first official ascent was made by Sir Edmund Hillary, they reached the mountain`s peak in 1953. Whether a highest point is classified as a summit, a sub peak or a separate mountain is subjective; the UIAA definition of a peak is.
Otherwise, it's a subpeak. In many parts of the western United States, the term summit refers to the highest point along a road, highway, or railroad. For example, the highest point along Interstate 80 in California is referred to as Donner Summit and the highest point on Interstate 5 is Siskiyou Mountain Summit. A summit climbing differs from the common mountaineering. Summit expedition requires: 1+ year of training, a good physical shape, a special gear. Although a huge part of climber’s stuff can be left and taken at the base camps or given to porters, there is a long list of personal equipment. In addition to common mountaineers’ gear, Summit climbers need to take Diamox and bottles of oxygen. There are special requirements for crampons, ice axe, rappel device, etc. Geoid Hill – Landform that extends above the surrounding terrain Nadir Summit accordance Peak finder Summit Climbing Gear List
Mission Point (California)
Mission Point, better known as "Mission Peak" to locals, is a spur of Oat Mountain. It is 2,771 ft high. In Los Angeles County, Southern California, it is the second highest peak of the Santa Susana Mountains after Oat Mountain. Mission Point is located in the eastern edge of the Santa Susana Mountains. Newhall Pass lies to the east, separating the Santa San Gabriel mountain ranges. Mission Point is located above Aliso Canyon, north of California State Route 118 between Porter Ranch and Granada Hills in the San Fernando Valley. Mountain hiking and mountain biking are popular in this area; the view from the top of Mission Point is taking in most of the San Fernando Valley. In clear weather, one can see Downtown Los Angeles. Once at the top, there is a monument dedicated to Mario A. Decampos M. D. with the inscription: "Share this peaceful retreat and enjoy the beauty.—Mario's Friends 5/26/1984"There are at least two trails up to Mission Point. One begins at the end of O'Melveny Park. Continue until you reach a split and take the trail going up.
The other trailhead is at the end of Neon Way. Watch for a pond to the east of the trail near the beginning. From that trailhead, you will see a gas line that goes up to Mission Point. For those eager for a challenge, it is possible to go directly up in parallel with the gas line; as of October 2007, the Southern California Gas Company has gated off areas near the top of Mission Point, although it is still accessible via a newly cut trail. The area northeast of Mission Point is part of the 500-acre Michael D. Antonovich Open Space Preserve, dedicated August 12, 2002. Sand Rock Peak Rocky Peak Mount Wilson Chatsworth Peak "Mission Point". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey
Santa Susana Mountains
