History of Kern County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 19

Author: Morgan, Wallace Melvin, 1868- [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1682

USA > California > Kern County > History of Kern County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present > Part 19

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Oil Land Withdrawals

During the summer of 1909 the news of bringing in of great flowing wells on land only recently taken up from the public domain under the placer mining laws began to drift east and acting in conjunction with the great popular demand for the conservation of natural resources and the retention of the title to natural resources by the government, prompted the summary withdrawal from further entry of all the public land in the San Joaquin valley which was held to be oil bearing by the government geologists. This with- drawal order was dated September 27, 1909.

Strange or not, as the reader may consider it, little attention was paid to the withdrawal order except to stimulate claimants under locations made prior to the order to begin drilling or to induce others to begin drilling on their account. It was variously held that the executive department exceeded its authority in making the order without express authority from Congress, or that the order did not forbid drilling on lands which had been covered by previous locations. Most of the larger companies took leases on with- drawn land from men who held it under these previous locations, and either began drilling or indicated their intention to do so by building cabins or other improvements thereon and establishing guards or "lease herders" in charge. Smaller companies, assuming that the big fellows were acting under competent legal advice, did the same.

The Pickett Bill

The ensuing Congress passed what is known as the Pickett bill, which gave to the President authority to withdraw oil lands from entry, but which contained the following provision :

"Provided, That the rights of any person who, at the date of withdrawal heretofore made, is a bona fide occupant or claimant of oil or gas-bearing lands and who, at such date, is in diligent prosecution of work leading to discovery of oil or gas-shall not be affected or impaired by such order, so long as such occupant or claimant shall continue in diligent prosecution of such work."

Following the passage of the Pickett bill, President Taft made a new withdrawal order, dated July 2, 1910, which included all the lands covered by the previous order. Subsequently other withdrawals were made, estab- lishing the fact that the administration's policy was to withdraw all land in

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the public domain on which there was any reason to suppose that oil might be found.

The Yard Decision

Further adding to the rigors of the situation as affecting oil land locators, a ruling was made by the general land office officials to the effect that there could be no valid location of land under the placer mining laws prior to the actual discovery of the oil or other mineral for which it was taken up, and another (known far and wide as the Yard decision) to the effect that "a placer location for 160 acres, made by eight persons and subsequently transferred to a single individual, invalid because not preceded by discovery, cannot be per- fected by the transferee upon a subsequent discovery."

Smith Remedial Bill

By the spring of 1911 the number of acres included in the oil land with- drawals had reached the enormous aggregate of nearly four and a half million. It should be at once understood, first that hundreds of thousands of acres included in the withdrawals probably will never yield a drop of oil, and second that the withdrawals were made in blanket fashion and included in the de- scriptions of land sent out great tracts which had been patented under home- stead claims, railroad grants and otherwise many years before. Nevertheless the withdrawals included an immense amount of undoubted oil land, the title to which remained in the government, and by far the greater part of this land is in Kern county. In very many cases oil companies had spent from $10,000 to $100,000 and upward in development work on land to which they would have not the slightest title under these rulings and withdrawals, and the question of legislation for the relief of these companies and of locators of oil land generally became the most urgent public matter in Kern county and among oil men throughout the state. A committee of oil men was sent to Washington to present the case of the locators and developers to the federal authorities and with their aid Congressman S. C. Smith of the Eighth Cali- fornia district, whose home was in Bakersfield, succeeded in securing the passage of the Smith remedial oil land bill, which nullified the effects of the Yard decision so far as oil lands are concerned and also cleared away in part some of the other complexities which had clouded the decision.

But while the Smith bill rescued from jeopardy millions of dollars in- vested in legitimate development on the public domain and enabled many oil companies to perfect title to lands which they otherwise would not have been able to retain, the great bulk of the withdrawals remained in full force, and constituted an effectual bar to further development or extension of the producing oil fields. In view of the present overproduction of oil this arbitrary restriction of development has not been generally regarded as a thing to be regretted except by men who would like to assume the hazard of prospecting for oil on the public domain. When the withdrawn land will be restored to entry and under what conditions is a problem for the future. It is not likely. however, that withdrawn land will again be subject to entry under the placer mining laws, these laws having been abundantly shown to be inadequate and unfit for application to oil lands.

Asphalt and Oil Refining

Paradoxical as it may appear. the business of manufacturing the products of crude petroleum in Kern county antedated the commercial production

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HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

of the crude oil itself. As has been noted, in the early '70s a number of Italians began quarrying asphaltum from the great deposits which were formed in the McKittrick hills by the evaporation of the lighter elements of the crude oil that seeped from the exposed edges of the broken oil-bearing strata. And from this time down to 1898, when the oil boom reached Kern county, the primary object of the development in the West Side fields was the production of asphaltum. Oil was desired only as a flux for handling the heavier product.

There is an interesting legend, however, to the effect that kerosene, not asphaltum, was the very first commercial product of the Kern county oil fields. Far back, about the time of the Civil war, some old chap, whose name the legend fails to preserve, stretched woolen blankets over the pools of thick, tarry oil that oozed out of the ground about Old Sunset and got a pretty decent quality of illuminating oil by wringing his blankets over a bucket after the vapors rising from the pool had saturated them. Such is the legend. The writer does not vouch for it.

The history of the oil refining business in the county, however, begins with the establishment of the Jewett & Blodget refinery at Old Sunset in 1891. From that time until the present the junior member of the firm has been engaged in making asphaltum, and, in later years, many other products of petroleum, including kerosene, gasoline, distillates, and lubricating oils of different kinds.

With the development of the Kern river field refineries were established there, and because of the special aptitude of the Kern county oils for the production of asphaltum the industry developed until, in 1907, ten refineries in the county were producing about 6000 tons of asphaltum per month, valued at about $84,000.

The number of refineries producing asphaltum has not since increased, but there has been a steady gain in the quantity and quality of the output, until now Kern county asphaltum is held in the highest esteem by road- builders in every part of the United States. The National Oil Refining & Manufacturing Company, the Phoenix and others, also, are competing suc- cessfully with the Standard Oil Company in the manufacture and sale of illuminating oil, gasoline, distillate and all grades of lubricants.

Natural Gas Production

As has been noted, the presence of gas in the oil-bearing formation was one of the difficulties which defeated the first efforts to drill oil wells in the West Side fields. Nearly all of the wells of the Sunset, Midway and McKit- trick fields produce a greater or less quantity of gas, and in the former field even the thick, heavy oil from the shallow wells is forced out in intermittent gobs, rather than in a steady stream-by the pressure of the gas in the oil sands.

Natural Gas in Bakersfield

However, it was not until the great gas wells of the Buena Vista hills began to come in during 1909 that plans began to be made for the com- mercial utilization of natural gas on any large scale. The Standard Oil Company began using gas in its furnaces in the West Side fields in the carly part of 1910, and a little later laid a gas pipe line to carry the fuel to its pumping stations on its oil pipe line between Midway and the Kern river field. Toward the last of 1910 the California Natural Gas Company, a sub- sidiary of the Standard, was organized, and the gas pipeline was completed

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HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

to the city limits of Bakersfield, where the gas was turned into the distributing system of the Bakersfield Gas & Electric Company.

During the past year a pipe line has been laid from Midway to Los An- geles to carry natural gas to that city, and late in the summer of 1913 gas was turned into the city mains along with the artificial product. Gas wells in the Buena Vista field when first brought in range in output from twelve million to fifty million cubic feet per twenty-four hours, and the force with which the gas shoots from the ground when first released by the drill is almost irresistible.

For example, a gas well belonging to the Standard Oil Company on section 26, 31-23, one day tore the heavy iron gate from the top of the casing, sent it hurtling through the derrick, knocked over six workmen as though they had been ninepins, and went roaring through the derrick top like a cyclone, while the men lay stunned on the ground, some of them with broken bones, until rescuers came from a neighboring derrick.

The pressure of the gas in one of the Honolulu Consolidated Oil Com- pany's wells on section 6, 32-24. tore away not only the massive iron gate but a section of pipe to which it was fastened extending eighteen feet into the ground. The outer, "stovepipe" casing was uninjured, and around this was dug a pit fourteen feet across and thirty-seven feet deep. This pit was filled with concrete to serve as an anchor for another cap with which the well eventually was controlled. Before the well was finished, however. the gas became ignited, and formed a giant torch, 125 feet in height, which burned until additional boilers could be installed on the lease and pipes laid with which to direct a great stream of steam upon the mouth of the well to smother the flames. Several of the great gas wells have been set on fire accidentally, and their great towers of flame have formed one of the most awe-inspiring sights of the West Side fields, where exhibitions of the power of natural forces are not uncommon.

Making Gasoline From Gas

During 1910 experiments were made with a process of extracting gasoline from gas. The method is similar to that employed in making liquid air, and the theory is similar. The gas is alternately compressed and cooled until it is reduced to a liquid form. The pressure required is about 400 pounds to the square foot, and in some instances two gallons of gasoline are taken from 1000 cubic feet of gas. The amount of gasoline contained in the gas varies greatly, however. The extent of the county's proven gas belt has been estimated at seven miles in width and sixteen miles in length, making an area of about 72.000 acres.

Some of Kern County's Famous Oil Gushers

It is the romance of oil, the ever present possibility of sudden wealth and the equally ubiquitous chance of sudden disaster, that moulds the spirit of the oil fields, and the spirit of the oil fields was generally the spirit of Kern county during the period from 1899 to 1913. And there is no better means of setting forth the circumstances that contribute to this romance than by recounting the history of the great gushers that made the Sunset and Midway oil fields celebrated around the globe in the years 1909 and 1910.

Great quantities of gas confined in the oil measures of the Sunset field have made it throughout its history a field of flowing wells. The earlier wells, drilled into the shallower strata of thick, heavy oil, flowed in but very small amounts, compared with the gushers of the later period, and in

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very many cases the flow was the merest trickle over the top of the casing or an occasional gob of thick, tarry substance, thrown up with much guttural sputtering by the imprisoned gas below. But during the year 1909, wells drilled farther out from the hills, and particularly in the northern part of the field, produced a lighter oil and a larger flow. Notable among these were the wells of the Ethel D., the Wellman, the Monte Cristo and the Kern Trading & Oil Company in sections 36, 12-24, and 1, 11-24, a mile northeast of Maricopa.

In 1909, also, came the Santa Fe's famous 10,000-barrel well on section 6, 32-23, in the North Midway field, and in section 10, 32-24, over in the Buena Vista hills, nearly seven miles north of Maricopa, the Honolulu's great gasser, drilled down into the oil sand, became an oil well, flowing between 3000 and 4000 barrels per day. Other wells that prepared the public mind for the big events that came later on the program were the St. Lawrence, on section 35, 32-23, the Crandall on 31, 31-25, and the Standard's big wells on section 30, 32-24, the largest of which flowed for some time at a rate of 10,000 barrels per day.

The bringing in of all these wells proved the whole of the Midway valley to be oil bearing, and the Honolulu's strike demonstrated that the oil sands extended far out under the Buena Vista hills. A strip of territory roughly estimated at sixteen miles in length and five or six miles in width was added to the proven oil belt of the Sunset-Midway field, and the cause was laid for the oil land boom of 1910, which swept over the whole of the Elk and Buena Vista hills, over the North McKittrick front and out along the hills east of Old Sunset, far past San Emidio.

Gushers Start Boom of 1910

By the end of February, 1910, the secrecy which was first observed by the locators who swarmed to the new territory at the beginning of the new vear had been cast aside, and the eyes of the whole state were turned to the Sunset and Midway fields and the great things that were going on there. On March 6th the Mays gusher on section 30, 32-24, broke loose and drenched the surrounding country with a rain of oil. There was the widest variation in the estimates of the amount of oil produced, and no measurements could be made for the reason that very little of the oil was saved during the few hours' flow prior to the first sanding up. The state of the public mind, however, was such as to accept the biggest estimates most readily, and before there was time for a careful decision of the controversy the Lakeview came in and for many months thereafter held the center of the stage. A week after its first performance the Mays well broke loose a second time, tore away a "T" that had been placed on the casing to control the flow, wrecked the upper part of the derrick, wet down the desert sands about it with another shower of oil, and again sanded. Sometime later the well was brought under subjection and became a steady producer of little spectacular interest to the public, but of much greater profit to the stockholders.

Lakeview Comes In

At 8 o'clock on Monday night on March 14, 1910, the Lakeview gusher. at the west end of fractional section 25, 12-24, a mile and a half due north of Maricopa, came in with a rush of gas that hurled the baler into the crown block of the derrick and followed it with a shower of oil that was estimated at 18,000 barrels for the first twenty-four hours' flow. Tuesday night some- thing happened down at the bottom of the well, 2260 feet in the earth. For a

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few seconds the flow of oil stopped and its place was taken by a torrent of rocks, sand and gas that filled the derrick with incandescent atoms, tore away the top of the derrick in which the baler was still hanging, and sent the drillers scurrying for their lives.

Nobody got very close to the mouth of the Lakeview for many months after that. Oil rained on everything for miles around as the breeze carried the spray from the gusher. The Union Oil Company's new camp just built on a nearby hill, was abandoned, and the neat green cottages soon wore a funereal black. Other wells drilling in the neighborhood were left unfinished, fires were put out in all the boiler plants within the radius that the gas from the Lakeview reached. Hundreds of men and teams were rushed to the scene to dig ditches, build dams across gulleys and scrape reservoirs in the earth to catch and hold the oil. The sand that the well threw out built a mound fifteen or twenty feet high all about the derrick, burying the engine house. Gradually the derrick was torn to pieces by the rushing column of oil, and sections of the inner casing of the well were hurled out. The question of whether the casing would all be worn out by the cutting of the sand and the well become a great crater in the ground became a very serious one. The Union Oil Company's engineers tackled the job of harnessing the great well with faint hope of success. An hour's work in the suffocating gas and drenching oil about the gusher brought $4 or $5 and upward, and men did not seek the job at that price. The first futile device for smothering the well was a great wooden hood made of timbers a foot or more in thickness. But the stream of oil ate its way through the wood, and went on playing the biggest and blackest fountain the world ever saw. Every train to Sunset bore sightseers, and a line of guards was placed in a great circle about the well to prevent the possibility of any accidental ignition of the gas.

Finally after some months of effort, when the well was largely cleared of sand and the upward force of the oil was less, an embankment was built about the gusher with sacks of sand and earth to a height of twenty or thirty feet, thus confining the oil over the mouth of the well and forming a cushion against which the big, black geyser could beat. By that time every vestige of the derrick was gone, and the well looked like an inky fountain playing in an inky pool.

Meantime, down on the flat a half mile or farther away, lakes of oil were accumulating. By September 5,000,000 barrels of oil had been stored in these makeshift reservoirs. The seepage was great, and the evaporation was greater, and the danger of accidental fire turning the whole into a flood of flame to go farther down the valley was the greatest anxiety of all.

Product Swamps Pipe Lines

At one time the Lakeview's output reached 68,000 barrels per day, twice the capacity of the greatest oil pipe line on the coast. There was no such thing as properly caring for the oil. During the months of September and October the Producers' Transportation Company's pipe line to the coast was placed almost exclusively at the service of Lakeview oil, and pumps and pipe lines installed by the Union were set to work forcing the oil from the temporary reservoirs on the flat to two new reservoirs built in the edge of the hills. These reservoirs, dug in a cañon and protected with earth and concrete dams and artificial waterways cut through the hills above them, held five million barrels of oil.

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After ten or eleven months of continuous production the Lakeview was still delivering 8,000 or 10,000 barrels per day, but its product was a mixture or emulsion of oil, water, and mud called "mulsh" by the oil men, and deemed of no value at the then low price of good oil. Months later the flow suddenly stopped altogether, and after letting the giant slumber undisturbed for a respectful period the owners rigged a derrick over the crater, explored the hole with the drill, patched up the wornout casing, and finally tapped the sands again. The well flowed a little and gave up large quantities of gas, but it never resumed its place in the ranks of the big producers.

The Consolidated Midway

A mile east of the Lakeview was brought in the Consolidated Midway gusher on section 30, 12-23. It was spudded in March 2, 1910, and on June 20th went through a thin shell into the gusher sand at 2165 feet. The 10-inch casing had been landed at 2145 feet and the last twenty feet of the well was an open hole. A gate was fixed on the 10-inch casing and the 10-inch was an- chored to the 12-inch, making a total load of sixty-six tons of casing with which to hold down the enormous gas pressure which was anticipated. The water in the well was baled down 600 feet when the flow started. The well soon sanded, but each time it responded to further baling, and each time the flow grew greater. Another gate was placed above the first one as a safe- guard against one of them being worn out by the friction of sand and oil, and later reducers were placed on the pipe above the upper gate to lessen the flow and better control the well. The result was that the well, estimated at 10,000 barrels daily capacity, was as easily and thoroughly controlled as a faucet in a kitchen sink. Like most gushers, however, the Consolidated Mid- way finally went to water.

A Procession of Gushers

Other gushers of the Lakeview group include a 5,000 barrel well of the Maricopa-Thirty-Six, on section 36, 12-24; a well of the Sunset Monarch which started flowing at a 24,000-barrel rate; the Standard's three gushers on section 30, 32-24, and the Sage wells on section 35, 12-24, belonging to the Union Oil Company. The Sage wells were chiefly famous for the terrific bom- bardments of sand and rocks which they sent through the tops of their derricks at uncertain intervals. At the beginning of these bombardments would come a roll of thunder from the casing mouth ; the drillers and tool dressers would scamper to the lee of a neighboring hill, and the tools that happened to be in the well would go shrieking through the crown block, followed by the sand and rock and a little sprinkling of oil. Then the well would choke with 1500 or 2000 feet of sand in the casing, and the workmen would repair the der- rick and tools and begin the long job of digging down toward the oil measures again. With a certain amount of sand removed the pent-up gas would hurl forth another shower, the casing would sand up again, and the whole process would start over again. And this kept on and on, and on, for so many months that everyone except the owners and the immediate neighbors finally forgot what eventually became of the Sage sand gushers.

North Midway Gushers

Next to the remarkable group of wells of which the Lakeview was chief, range in interest the magnificent wells of the North Midway valley. Beginning with the Santa Fe, St. Lawrence, the Crandall and the Mays, the North

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HISTORY OF KERN COUNTY

Midway gusher population was increased by the American Oilfields' great No. 79. several lesser producers of the same company, the Eagle Creek, Le Blanc, the California Midway, Pioncer Midway, the Visalia Midway and Santa Fe on section 25, 31-22, the Midway Premier, Midway Five, on section 5. 32-23, and others of lesser fame, if not of lesser merit.

The prince of them all in North Midway was the American Oilfields 79. which ranked next to the Lakeview as a producer. At its best it made 22,000 barrels of oil per day, which is the more remarkable from the fact that it was finished at a little over 900 feet with a single string of 12-inch casing and produced 23-gravity oil. Like the Lakeview, the well made great quantities of sand, and it was impossible to control or diminish its flow. The only thing accomplished in this line was to slant a heavy shield of boiler iron over the mouth of the well to deflect the column of oil and prevent so much of it being lost in vapor. The well gave out great quantities of gas and standing on the edge of the great sump built about it, its roar was like that of a Kansas tornado heard from the conning tower of a cyclone cellar. The well was brought in in April, 1910, and at the end of the year it was still flowing at the rate of 5000 barrels per day.

The American Oilfield Company's well No. 56 is celebrated as the first big Midway gusher to catch fire. It ignited at 1:30 p. m. September 11 from a burning sump, and shortly after the well of the Honolulu Consolidated, formerly the Crandall, just across the section line to the east, started flowing and immediately was ablaze. The two great pillars of flame, 200 feet or more in height, burned until 5 o'clock while a frantic swarm of men from all the nearby country employed every effort to keep the other flowing wells and oil reservoirs in the vicinity from joining in the conflagration. The task of putting out the two burning wells was too great to be seriously attempted, and a general pean of thanksgiving went up from the tired workers when at the last named hour both wells sanded up and went out. During the night No. 56 again started flowing and again took fire from the embers of the derrick, but it stopped once more of its own accord.

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History of Kern County, California, with biographical sketches of the leading men and women of the county who have been identified with its growth and development from the early days to the present, Part 19

Author: Morgan, Wallace Melvin, 1868- [from old catalog] Publication date: 1914 Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company Number of Pages: 1682

Author: Morgan, Wallace Melvin, 1868- [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1914
Publisher: Los Angeles, Cal., Historic record company
Number of Pages: 1682