A LOOK BACK:A changing landscape

I’m sure a popular TV personality’s catch-phrase “This is amazing, simply amazing”would also apply to the changes that took place in the 1920s and 30s along Ocean Avenue (now Pacific Coast Highway) with oil’s discovery.

Imagine trucks pulling in and out day and night, the noise of drilling machines constantly pounding in your ears and the ground-shaking explosions of a well being drilled.

It’s hard for anyone today to imagine how Huntington Beach looked with hundreds of oil derricks lining its coast from the bluffs to almost Main Street.

Homes were removed or torn down to make way for drilling, and the smell of crude oil was a constant reminder that we were an oil-producing town.

When black gold was first discovered at Huntington A-1 well, the oil boom was on and many of the wildcatters coming into town hoped to become millionaires overnight.

Men from all over the country poured into town to find work or if they had money, started drilling for oil and formed their own companies with names now long forgotten.

Well-known fight promoter Jack J. Doyle from Los Angeles got the oil fever and had a well drilled at 18th and Walnut, and when it was completed it yielded was supplying him with about 400 barrels of crude oil.

Wallace Taylor from Long Beach purchased a lot nearby and operated a well for the American Petroleum Co. On the back of this lot Walter Hughes of the Two and One Oil Co. of Long Beach also had a working well.

Over on a lot at 22nd Street and Walnut O.R. Howard owned a well. Rood and McVickers operated the well, which was producing a thousand barrels of black crude.

Another Rood and McVickers operated well was at 22nd and Walnut for the Cameroo Oil Co. It was a lucrative well.

Frank West, owner of the West Trucking Company, formed the Prosperity Oil Co. and had a well drilled at 21st Street and Olive Avenue, which was for a time the most inland well drilled from the ocean.

Clyde Bell, the owner of the Beloil Corp., owned a well at PCH between 16th and 17th Streets where today there are multi-million-dollar homes.

The Vicaroo Oil Co.had the honor of bringing in the first gusher at 22nd and Walnut in January of 1933. It produced 2,000 barrels of oil. and for this company it was riches coming from 2,000 barrels of oil.

The Speik Oil Company’s well at 19th and Walnut generated was producing wealth at 2,700 barrels of oil and 2-million cubic feet of gas from their well.

Brave men worked long hours on wooden derricks.For some, it meant losing their lives on those dangerous derricks.

Standard Oil had three wells drilled at PCH and 23rd Street and the Petrol Corp. had wells at 22nd and Olive.

The largest producer at the time in this area was the Wilshire Oil Co. with wells on PCH between 18th and 19th Streets producing 4,000 barrels. Company officials were so excited about the amount of oil that they drilled several more wells in the area.

E.E. Combs, who led the West Shore Petroleum Corp., wasn’t so lucky with his well at 17th and PCH, for it only produced about 600 barrels of crude.

E.E. Combs Jr., who worked for his father, was a well-known Pacific Coast golf star.

At a depth of 3,700 feet, the Simaroo Oil Company’s well produced more than 2,000 barrels of crude oil.

These are just a few companies that pinned their hopes of striking it rich in our oil field, but for the men who worked for these companies it was hard, backbreaking work.