Well No. 4, Pico Canyon Oilfield, located about seven miles (11 km) 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 also 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, and the Mentryville ghost town is now open to the public as a historic park.
Early history of oil drilling in California
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.
Discoveries of oil in Pico Canyon
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 followed the trail and found it dead near the spring. The quality of the oil in the spring attracted his attention, being of a dark, green color and very thin, and so different from anything that he had ever seen, that he concluded it must be valuable. So he notified a friend of his, Jesus Hernandez, and they located the oil claim.
According to a later 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. Peria was granted an ownership interest in an oil company for making the discovery, but he reportedly 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 almost five years later that the first well was struck and later still before the first commercial success.
Well No. 4
In 1875, the Star Oil Works, later reorganized as the California Star Oil Works Company, hired Charles Alexander Mentry (1846-1900) 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, and 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 ; the well immediately began producing . Well No. 4 was drilled with great difficulty since "the railroad had not then been completed, there was no road into the canyon, water was almost unattainable, and 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 in 1877, the oil spurted to the top of the derrick, increasing the production to . 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, later extending it to the ocean at Ventura, California.
Well No. 4 continued producing oil for 114 years before it was finally 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." Demetrius G. Scofield (c. 1834 – July 31, 1917), also known as D. G. Scofield, was a pioneer of the oil business in California who founded a number of companies in that state and became the first president of Standard Oil of California.