Mentryville was once a booming oil town, now reduced to nothing more than the ghostly ruins of what once was. The history of how the town was established to its ultimate end spotlights one of the greatest successes of the oil industry in California.
By Evan M. Decker
As you’re driving up or down the 5 Freeway approaching the Pico Canyon Road exit, you’ll notice a small beige historical landmark sign that reads “Mentryville; 3 miles.” Keep driving west down Pico Canyon Road past the tract homes into the canyon where you’ll eventually come upon a green gate with a sign reading “Welcome to Mentryville – Established 1876”. It is here that California’s first commercially viable oil field was once productive. All that remains of the oil town today is an old red mule barn, a mansion with a wrap-around porch, and a one-room schoolhouse further up the road. Mentryville, which is located roughly 2 miles down canyon from the oil derricks, was once a teeming company town complete with dwellings, boardinghouses, a dance hall, and a bakery.
The earliest inhabitants in Pico Canyon were the indigenous people who lived in our valley, the Tataviam (“People Facing the Sun”), who were thought to have had a village there going back over a millennium. When the Spanish Empire conquered what is now Southern California in the late 18th century and established the California Mission System, there was no evidence left behind to suggest that the Spaniards ever extracted Petroleum, let alone even knew about its existence in the canyon. For over 130 years, there were many articles written suggesting that Mexican General Andreas Pico (November 18th, 1810-February 14th, 1876) had extracted oil from the canyon bearing his name, and refined it for the San Fernando Mission. The earliest mention of this story comes from the Fourth Annual Report of the State Mineralogist, May 15th, 1884 (California State Mining Bureau; p.294). It reads: “Andreas Pico knew the locality now called Pico Cañon, Los Angeles County, for some years before Mr. Morrell established his refinery, and had made oil for the San Fernando Mission in a small way, in a copper still and worm. He was probably the pioneer oil manufacturer of the state.” For one, Pico left behind no evidence saying that he dabbled in the oil industry, having died in 1876, eight years before that quote was published. Another falsity is that the missions were already secularized by the 1830s, meaning the Mexican government stripped all 21 missions of all religious associations. Thus, he couldn’t have refined oil for the mission padres in the 1850s. However, two other Californios named Ramon Perea and Jesus Hernandez are credited with discovering petroleum in the canyon, telling Romulo Pico, son of the famous Mexican General, to file a preemption claim on January 24th, 1865. This meant that he was only allowed to file a claim on the land strictly for agriculture and animal grazing rights, as oil was not widely known yet in the region. However, soon after, many men flocked to the area to file preemption claims throughout January and February of 1865, including Henry Clay Wiley, Dr. Vincen.t Gelcich, who was the man who identified the oily substance as petroleum to Perea and Hernandez, his friend Dr. Simon Seymour Tod (a Civil War surgeon), Darius Towsley, John Moore, James F. Burns, who was the 8th Sheriff of Los Angeles County serving from 1868-1871, J.J. Warner, and Alex Dewitt. As news began spreading about loads of oil in the hills, businessmen from the East Coast began flocking to the greater Los Angeles region to stake claims and begin drilling for oil. One of these early businessmen was Sanford Lyon. Born on November 20th,1831, in Machias, Maine, Lyon and associates,s which included Edward F. Beale (1822-1893), who a few years earlier ordered his men to cut out a 90-foot slice at the summit of today’s Newhall Pass, which we now know as “Beale’s Cut”, are credited with drilling the first operational well in Pico Canyon as early as 1869, drilling it manually by spring pole. The “spring pole method” was how oil was drilled out of the ground before steam engines. At this time, oil was drilled by manual labor. In many instances, drilling was propelled by one or several men either kicking into the rope loops that were attached to the spring pole or jumping on a spring-loaded platform to extract the petroleum. By the early 1870s, numerous prospectors from the East Coast traveled here to strike it rich in oil. In about 1873, three men, Col. Robert S. Baker, Denton C. Scott, and Charles A. Mentry, obtained the lease from Sanford Lyon, the most famous of these men being that of Charles Alexander Mentry…