Molly's Rough Draft: Mentryville

Mentryville

Mom’s dad, Grandpa Westcott was the manager of the oil depot in Newhall, California. He lived on their property in a large canyon in the Santa Susana Mountains called Pico Canyon. Pico Canyon is located just south of where Magic Mountain is located now, just north of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County.

Deep within Pico Canyon was a ghost town called Mentryville. Mentryville was an oil drilling town. It was started in the 1870s. The first oil strike in California occurred there in 1876. It is also the longest running well as it was not capped until 1990. In 1966 Well No. 4 had the distinction of being the first site in Los Angeles County to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Mentryville ghost town is now open to the public as a historic park.

The town was named after the superintendent who was in charge of the oil field, Charles Alexander Mentry. Mentry lived in the town until his death in 1900 and built the 13-room mansion (we called the Big House) that still stands there. There have been several caretakers that have lived in the Big House over the years. As children we played on the porch often and watched the quails peck around the bushes.

Mentry struck oil in 1876, at a depth of 370 feet. The well immediately began producing 25 barrels a day. It was called Well No. 4 as it was the fourth well Mentry drilled before he struck oil and it was drilled with great difficulty, as "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." (The town had it’s own blacksmith.)

“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 560 feet in 1877, the oil spurted to the top of the 65-foot derrick, increasing the production to 150 barrels a day. It became California’s first commercially successful well.

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 50 miles (80 km) to the ocean at Ventura, California. In 1895, a pamphlet issued by the State of California stated that the Pacific Coast Oil Company had 40 wells operating in Pico Canyon producing 500 barrels a day, and one well which had produced 1,500,000 barrels.

During the 1930s, most of Mentryville's residents left, many tearing down their houses board by board and nail by nail, and taking it all with them.

In 1933, my grandparents and their five children (including my mom) lived in an old redwood cabin style house that was built without using any nails and was located just across the stream from the Big House. My grandfather built a barn next to it. They only had gas for lights, cooking and heating.

My mother tells many stories of this time. . . being afraid during storms as the bridge would wash out, my aunt Peg waking up to a tarantula on her pillow, cooking a sparrow for her mother. Getting stuck in quicksand, killing lots of rattlesnakes and grandma being the family doctor.

My brothers and I used to walk up the winding country road, being chased by aggressive ducks and passive cows, past the ghost-town’s one-room school house, and up to the remaining picnic grounds called Johnson Park. There were huge barbeques and it looked like a good place to have a party. There was also a huge oil tower with a plaque on it. We were proud that this was the first place oil was discovered in California.

The Tatavian and Tonga Indians used to live in the canyon also and we found evidence of this once and awhile as well as lots of sea shells. The sea shells indicated that the land had been under water at some previous time.

Mentryville and Pico Canyon have also become popular locations to shoot motion pictures.

There was a popular TV show called Lassie and the people in the Big House always took care of the series of retired "Lassies" from the show.

My Aunt Peggy tells me that Zane Grey wrote Riders of the Purple Sage while staying in the canyon.

The favorite part of the canyon for me was the wildflowers.

I later read about how much of the rusty drilling equipment that we played
around as children had been shipped to a museum that was located near where I had been living until recently, so I took a bunch of pictures (which I will post later when I find where I have archived them.)