 86% of the energy used in California comes from oil and gas. Drilling for oil in the state began around 1861. Today, about 132,000 oil and gas wells have been drilled. How was the earliest oil produced? A look at Ventura County oil fields helps tell the story. Indians began petroleum production in California at the hundreds of natural oil and gas seats throughout the state. Here, from cascades of twisted asphalten and murky puddles of oil, waterproofing and adhesive materials were gathered. Immigrants in the 17 and 1800s also used asphalten. In the 1850s and 60s, many were miners. They greased wagon axles with oil from the seats while traveling in search of the mother load. When some gave up the gold fields and stayed to mine the seats, commercial oil production began. Men dug asphalten from pits such as this in the San Joaquin Valley. The high pit temperatures and heavy gas fumes limited shifts to 20 minutes. From the 1860s through 1891, prospectors tunneled for oil. The oil flowed down through the tunnels into pipelines and barrels. Many old tunnels in Ventura County are still in operation, such as these in Santa Paula oil field. Essentially, what we have here is the green oil tunnel and its separation tank, the original wash tank, put in service in about 1890. The tunnel probably produces about 20 barrels of fluid per day, 90% of which is water and the remainder oil. The water and the oil collect in a line at the tunnel, come down 1,600 feet from the canyon and into the tank. The water separates and collects and is drained off the bottom of the tank, and the oil skims off the top and goes down a pipeline to another holding tank down the canyon. All of the system is gravity flow. What we have here is the Adams 4 tunnel, more recently called the boarding house tunnel. This tunnel was in the 1890 era. The tunnel was completed at 1,600 feet of depth, and it flows about 700 barrels of total fluid a day, only about a half a barrel or less of oil. Here we have one of the salt marsh Dunham Tunnel group. The tunnel entrance has been partially blocked with dirt to contain the flow. These tunnels have somewhat of a collapse, just beyond the entrance. The Union Oil Production Department now has 28 of the original 60 tunnels in operation. The early 1860s saw not only oil tunnels, but the first oil wells drilled in the state. These were drilled at oil seeps with cable tools. A seep on the surface does not necessarily mean commercial quantities of oil are underground nearby. However, 52 oil and gas fields in California were found by drilling at seeps. This field, Ohio oil field near Santa Paula was one. There's a great deal of early California history associated with this area right here. Thomas Barg was a very early oil developer who came out here from Philadelphia. In about 1865, Barg started drilling right close by. But the first five wells ran into problems, either buckling of the casing or caving of the holes and so on. But finally, they brought in what is now called, or was then to, Ohio number six. And it was drilled by cable in 1867. That well floated about 20 barrels a day, rather heavy oil, but was the first well in California to produce in commercial quantities. Below us here is a storage tank, a so-called production tank, from which oil flowed from the wells drilled in this area. They were all connected on this one jack line. Below us here in the canyon, the tail pump would pump oil up over this slope to a gathering tank above that. Many oil fields are in steep canyons like Cespi oil field. Discovered in the 1880s in Cespi Canyon near Fillmore, wells were drilled here high up the canyon walls. Oil field supplies, heavy timbers, nails, iron tools, pipes, and machinery, metal sheeting, food, people, all had to be raised up the slopes. Often tramways were built to handle the job. All this work was done by Chinese labor that built the trams, which I am standing on one of the platforms that was used to haul the material up to the wells. The old windlass with a one-lung engine was used to pull this platform, which has got wheels on it, something like a train, up the tram. By means of a cable that went up to the top of the hill, went over a series of pulleys and backed down to this pulley here on the end of the working platform, and they would fire this old engine up and wind the reel up on the drum and pull this thing up the hill with maybe a man standing on it and another man running the engine. The guy on the top would flag when he wanted him to stop, and that's how they did it many, many years ago. Carl O'Brieg was asked when the tramway was constructed. He said it was built around the turn of the century. How long is the tramway from the base of the canyon? It's a head. I didn't measure it with a ruler, but it's reported to be a half a mile long, and it raises 800 feet in elevation. It's finicular. And there's a place in the middle where there was a 285-foot bridge, which is destroyed, of course, by now. And just below that, while the cars went over a section of four rails so that they would pass each other. Uh-huh. So there'd be more cars than one. There was two cars, one on each end. They had to, when they'd haul heavy things, why they would put weight on the car that was on top to counterbalance the load that was coming up on the bottom one. So you rode up on those cars yourself? Well, I've ridden on the cars many, many times. Used to be a favorite Sunday pastime to come up and ride the tram up here and look around and take a ride back down again. Well, when we'd get on the car here at the top and start it down again, as it went over the hump and started down the first pitch there, this car here with the extra weight on it would want to run ahead because the counterweights were changing down at the powerhouse. And one of the women, they'd all scream and holler and figured the car was running away and it'd run about 20 feet and then it'd come up short on the cable and stop and it'd do that twice on the way down. Then it was just a city rider's way to the bottom. When did they stop using it? In 1945, they drilled the 1D well up there at the end of the road and all the crew members wanted to ride the tramway instead of driving their cars up this road. The road had just been built and the company's insurance wouldn't stand for it. They put a sign up down there that nobody rode the tram anymore and that was really the death metal. So back in the days when they built the tramway how did they haul the materials into the canyon to the tram? Horsing wagon. Horsing wagon. Team, team and wagon. And of course they had a mule trail up here and when I first came in here they pulled the wells with the mules. They would put a block down at the corner of the derrick and cable up over and down and then the mules would walk out so far, pull the rod up and put the elevator on. And then the mules, they were strained so up in the just tell them to back up, they'd back up and use it to act down the hole again just instead of using a break. Carl and his friends sometimes rode trams in livelier ways sitting on a single board placed across the rails. Sliding down the hill here, it's a half a mile long and we could do it in a minute and a half we got in a hurry. We used the cables for breaks. We used a canvas rubber belting with a hole punched in the corner to stick your thumb through and then you'd squeeze on the cable with the hand. Until the 1920s, most California oil and gas wells were drilled with cable tools. A well bore was cut by repeated blows against the bottom with a large iron chisel suspended from a cable. The cable was fastened to one end of a teetering beam called a walking beam that rocked up and down. A steam engine powered this movement. Every so often, the chisel was removed and a baler lowered to pull out the pulverized rock. Assembled here, we have the remains on exact replica of a standard and cable tool drilling rig. And this cable tool drilling rig starts with the union tool engine then we had a belt driven assembly to the bull wheel which rotated the pitman arm and in turn moved the walking beam, the large wooden walking beam and that movement up and down created a upward and downward movement on the cable which actuated the bit at the bottom. Then they would bail by use of a baler and bail out the cuttings. This large drum assembly here would feed the line in as the bit got deeper. The screw here would adjust the action on the bit. The more tension of course on the line would make the bit drill at a lesser speed. These large wrenches here and this jack assembly were used to break the large tools at the end of the cable. In addition to the driller on the rig and other helpers, the principal person involved was a tool dresser. The tool dresser operated this forge and as the bits became dull through their drilling operation he would heat the bit up to a red hot molten steel and pound out with the hamburgers and this anvil and resharpen the tools. He would keep extra bits for various sized hole and or other angle problems that they may encounter. Occasionally the bits would be lost in the well and this assembly of fishing tools would be used to recover the tools if possible. This is one of the few of the old pumping units around. This originally was the unit to drill the well in around 1912. This unit in the middle is the old Samson post and the walking beam. The headache post and the pitman. They originally used steam. The steam engine was way out the side there with a long belt running it and they converted them gas engines and finally to electricity because the noise factor of the old engines popping and banging around but they just used them and connect them right up to the old wells when they finished drilling them and produced them right off the old drilling deal here. This is an exact replica of one of the old wooden derricks that is in People Canyon in New Hall, California. This steam draw works is one of the original ones. It is a very striking example of it and then the old bull wheel that used to use in pulling and drilling the wells. This is one of the forges what the blacksmith used to make his tools and then on the floor here there's all kinds of assorted tools. Some of them hand cast out in foundries locally in California. Some of them have very cathedral designs, very pretty. The Allen patented pumping unit, usually called a jack line unit, first appeared in the 1890s. It allowed many shallow wells to be pumped from one central power source. A line to each well was hooked to an eccentric at the top of the pumping unit shaft. As the eccentric turned, the lines were alternately tightened and released, thus pumping the wells. This is what they call a central power unit or jack line unit. These cables that you see attached to the pitman on top run out to either a counterbalance or to a well and to the jack lines they used to pump the wells. These units were built before the turn of the century. This has been here for probably 80 years or more. Originally it was run by steam engines and gas engines and finally converted to electric engines. They're very economical to run. This two or three horsepower motor will run as many wells as you want to put on them. All they do must be kept in balance. Where they don't have a well, they'll just put a counterbalance. They want to go down a canyon, they go down a canyon up over a hill. If they want to go around the corner of a ridge they'll just put a dead man with a pitman on it and go right around and make almost right angles with it. To hook up the jack line or cable to the pitman and go to the well, they just take a hook with a piece of pipe on it, shove the cable in and flare the end and then pour it full of babbit. That makes a connection to hook them up on both ends. When they have a broken cable they'll make a splice by just slipping a piece of pipe over the cables and flare the ends and pour them with babbit and they're hooked back up again. This will run as many wells as you've got pockets up on the sentry core and even some of them they'd double them up and would run another unit right off the end of another well itself beyond it where they were two in line they could run two together on the same cable. It's just about as many pockets as they have on top of the pitman that they can run the wells through. So if you had 20 or 25 wells they could all be put on the same unit and take no more horsepower so all the horsepower is four just about the drag of them. Just east of Ventura County at Pico Canyon in New Hall Oil Field, well Pico 4 was drilled in 1876. Still producing today, the well was the first continually producing commercial oil well in California as described on this state historical marker. The success of well Pico 4 led to the construction of Pioneer Oil Refinery, the state's first true oil refinery and the first oil refinery west of the Mississippi. The refinery built in 1876 had a daily capacity of 20 barrels of oil. Its main products were benzene and kerosene. The refinery now in New Hall is open to the public as a California registered landmark. Carl Brigg operates by himself wells for Texaco Producing Incorporated in Piru Oil Field. He and his father before him worked for much of their lives in this field. They designed and built much of the equipment used to produce the wells. While early oil field practices formed the roots of all modern drilling and production activities these roots are very apparent in Piru Field with Carl. When we first came up here well number nine had what was for then a fairly modern wooden rig on it. And what year would that have been? That was in 32, 28 to 32. It was originally a producer then it was abandoned and then re-drilled and when they re-drilled it they put this lake rig in there. I think they tried some rotary stuff on it but the sandstone here would just eat their bits up so fast they couldn't make any hole. Let's talk about the fire for a minute again. This was in 1934? Yes. My sister, two sisters and my brother we all pitched in and helped rebuild wells one at a time to where we got production. And when these burned up here they just burned everything. There wasn't a splinter or wood left anywhere. And when was this steel derrick behind us? I believe they were put in around 1916. That one up there on the skyline has a wooden liner because they tried to pull the pipe out of the bottom and hold the short liner that they had in there and they buckled two legs on it. They just put these six to six timbers up through the inside of the legs to hold the load. The bracing was all right, yeah? Do you still use that derrick up there? Oh yes, that's my best weld. To produce the wells, Carl lowers the baler until it hits the oil. Once the baler fills with oil it's lifted out. Then the oil is emptied into a barrel connected to a pipeline that runs to a production tank. And how much oil at a time do you get in the baler? The baler holds just a barrel. Just a barrel. 42 gallons, a little more or a little less depending upon the gas that's in the oil. There's a very lightweight oil so sometimes the pressure's released on it. So you really saw you produce two barrels of California oil? That's right. That's what it amounts to. The oil and gas industry in California was shaped in part by early activity in Ventura County. As the industry grew, so did the need for wise production and engineering practices. To this end, in 1915, the California Department of Conservation's Division of Oil and Gas was formed. Today, every 24 hours, over one million barrels of oil and one billion cubic feet of natural gas were produced in the state. Thanks to California's oil and gas pioneers.