Photos Capture Drama of Oil Calamities

It wouldn’t happen today: An oil gusher spewing wildly out of control, the black goo pouring relentlessly over the ground while crews valiantly work to contain the muck.

But that’s exactly what happened near Bakersfield in 1910 and 1911, when California’s largest gusher shot 9.4 million barrels into the air and onto the ground over 544 days.

Union Oil Co. lost half the booty to evaporation and runoff, but one of its executives, William Warren Orcutt, captured the dramatic events in gripping photos that are on public display for the first time at Santa Paula Union Oil Museum.

The photos, loaned by Santa Paula’s venerable Orcutt family, are part of the museum’s new exhibit, “From Gushers to Gas Pumps.” Also on display are about 10 vintage gas pumps from the collection of Santa Paula’s Dick Bennett, as well as a variety of gas station memorabilia.

Orcutt, a pioneer in the field of petroleum geology, used a Kodak folding camera to document the gusher at Lakeview No. 1, an eruption so strong that it tore apart the well’s wooden derrick with a fountain of oil 20 feet wide and 200 feet high.

“In those days it was pretty rudimentary,” said Mike Nelson, the museum’s director. “They didn’t have the technology to control a well that comes in under high pressure.”

The extraordinary well had been drilled by Charles Lewis Woods, previously known as “Dry Hole Charlie” for his string of bad luck. His life--and nickname--changed at 7 a.m. on March 15, 1910, when oil roared to the surface from 2,200 feet below the Earth, jetting hundreds of feet into the sky and filling every gully and crevice in the area. When the wind was right, residents of Fellows, a tiny settlement 10 miles away, were fully lubricated just stepping outside.

Hundreds of men worked night and day to trap the rushing oil in hastily built reservoirs. A river of runoff resembled a jet-black, bubbling trout stream. This one gusher produced so much that it significantly lowered the price of crude oil. It left a huge crater in the ground.

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Only after seven months could crews contain the oil in massive reservoirs. The gusher finally died out in 1911.

So spectacular and famous was the gusher that the plume of oil was depicted on souvenir plates. One of the colorful plates is on display in the exhibit.

Though not as notorious as the Lakeview, there were other gushers, according to the exhibit set up by curator John Nichols of the Sespe Group. California’s first gusher in 1888 was at a well in Adams Canyon, between Santa Paula and Ventura.

Alongside the gusher memorabilia is a collection that is as fascinating as it is unusual--old gas pumps. Collector Bennett has been hunting down historic pumps and restoring them for 18 years.

“It’s an obsession,” he said. “My wife says I’d rather go gas-pumping than to the theater or dancing.”

The centerpiece of the pumps on display is a 1924 beauty with a Mobilgas logo. Its base is an ornate column topped with decorative frills.

In those days, pumps included a transparent glass container that showed the fluid as it was being pumped. Gas station patrons wanted to be assured they weren’t being cheated. The cost of gas back then: 16 cents per gallon.

The pumps on display date back to about 1915. One early model is known as a “Mae West” because of its tapered design. Bennett has run across the old pumps at car swap meets, but they’re more commonly found on ranches, he said. For the exhibit, Bennett also donated his collection of vintage oil and grease cans.

Despite his passion for pumps, Bennett’s only job pumping gas was a two-week stint when he was 17. He drove a Model A to school back then, and years later when he was planning to get another one, he recalled: “I thought it would be neat to have a gas pump to go with the Model A.”

DETAILS

* WHAT: “From Gushers to Gas Pumps.”

* WHERE: Santa Paula Union Oil Museum, 1001 E. Main St., Santa Paula.

* WHEN: Museum hours, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday through Sunday.

* HOW MUCH: Free.

* CALL: 933-0076.