The herald., 1895-03-03
Novel Scenes at the Old Second
Street Park
STRANGE TRANSFORMATION
Cosy Cottages Surrounded by Groups
of Oil Wells
The Perfume of Flowers Tingled With the
Odor of PetroIeum-A Growing
Industry

Spring and Second streets. In almost
less time than it takes to tell it, you will
be landed at Second street Park, the center
of the Los Angeles oil field. You will
have enjoyed the ride, too, for from the
window or platform of the car you will
have obtained birdseye view OF the
greater part of Los Angeles and its en-
virons-a most beautiful panorama.
On alighting at the park, ascend the hill
at its east boundary to State street. From
this eminence look down State street along
the north boundary of the park, and you
win behold remarkable scene. Not
only will you see strange sights, but you
will hear unusual sounds. A forest of der
ricks and groups of oil tanks will greet
the eye, and the rumble of bull wheels
the roar of furnaces and the humping OF
drill ropes will for the moment deafen
YOU. Your olfactories will have detected
the smell of petroleum even from afar Off
and if you have not been careful where
you stepped you will perhaps have coat
ing of blackstrap on your shoes. You will
also have it on your hands, face and
clothing ii you venture too near the drip
ping rigging of the oil wells.
Such sights and sounds and smells may
have become familiar to you in Pennsyl-
vania, Ohio or other oil producing states,
perhaps, too, in California, but never be-
fore, if this is your first visit to the Los
Angeles city oil field, have you witnessed
a sight quite so novel as this. You may
search the world over and not find another
spot where rose-em powered cottages are
surrounded by groups of oil wels-where
| the rose the heliotrope, the violet and the
orange mingle their perfumes with the
odor of petroleum fresh from the bowels
of the earth.
At the corner of State Street and Lake
Shore avenue you will notice several neat
cottages with nicely terraced lawns, Dor
dered with a profuson of fiowers-cala
lilies, roses, geraniums and nearly every
other Variety found in Los Angeles gar
dens Such exotics as the orange lemon,
fig, palm and banana lend their foliage
to add charm to the locality.
All the botanical surroundings of the
cottages indicate that the occupants are or
were people of aesthetic tastes, but now
towering oil derricks stand at the back
doors and huge tanks for storing the liquid
mineral product dishgure the lawns. On
/ Unc STOuluS SOlnC VI thSSC
houses the drillers are at work with their
noisy machinery, keeping up an incessant
clatter day and night. In other front and
back yards are finished wells, and the
premises are literally soaked with oil.
Some of these houses are deserted, but
most OF them are occupied-many of them
by the original owners, who located there
before such thing as an oil boom in the
neighborhood was foreshadowed. Such
OF the more fastidious residents as could,
moved away when they saw that the oil
development could not be arrested. 9th
ers caught the oil fever themselves and
decided 10 endure the discomforts of liv-
| ing among the oil wells, for the sake OF
engaging in the industry and being handy
to their work.
As the oil underlying the land is worth
more than the surface and the improve
ments thereon, in most cases, very few
of the property holders have lost money
by the encroachment OF the oil drillers.
Quite a number have been able to sell
out at handsome profit on their original
| investments. Some, however who had
made expensive Improvements are dam
aged considerably by the operation, OF
the oil men and are not yet done fighting
them by legal process.
As residence quarter the hill country
bounded by Court, North Figueroa, Sec
ond and Lake Shore streets, has unques-
tionably been greatly damaged. Vet on
| your rambles through the little oil city,
you may observe in the door yards, tidy
housewives apparently oblivious of their
oleaginous surroundings. You may en-
counter oii-besmeared urchins playing
hide and-seek among the tanks and der
ricks or making mud pies OF crude petro-
leum.
You will see scores of workmen-grear
brawny fellows most of them-daubed
with oil from head to foot, but all evil
IDENTIFY satisfied with their occupation. A
host of engineers, drIllers, machinists,
plumbers, carpenters and other skilled and
unskiled laborers are furnished remu
nerative employment by the oil industry
Thus contentment and prosperity &C
| hand in hand in the Second street park
oil city. The industry has grown marvel
ously since its inception, less than tive
years ago. From a few shallow prospect
holes have evolved more than a hundred
oil wells, some of them more than thous
and feet deep and producing barrels o
liquid wealth.
y Herald representative who recently
visited the district made d careful count o
the wells and discovered that there were
all told 1872, including those in course o
construction of which there are about fiji
teen or twenty There probably are one
hundred and thirty five finished wells anC
not a dry hole among them. A number
of them are closed down, however, fol
lack of storage room and market for thu
product. This enumeration does not in
clude the wells on the East Side and those
scattered throughout the northern ant
western hill section. There are probably
il all one hundred and seventy five OF
wells finished and unfinished, inside the
city limits.
The daily output of all of the wells, j
they were pumped to their full capacity
is variously estimated at from 1000 tt
1900 barrels.
The former figures are considered q con
sentative estimate. Some new wells whef
the pumps were first started have yielded
over POO barrels in twentyfour hour
but it is only by allowing the oil to ac
cunulate in the hole for several days tina
the operation can be repeated.
A we'll that will WELD ton barrels a da,