Photos of Huntington Beach, California, in 1928. Credit to Jerry Person, Huntington Beach Historian, and
The Washington Post (where there are a half dozen more pix) via
LindsayFincher. I also found the photo below, of "offshore" wells, at
Alterdestiny.
Wow! I had no idea how congested the beaches were with all the metal structures. Are those power lines?
ReplyDeleteThose are oil wells. The blue underlined words are called "links," where you can read more about the photos.
ReplyDeleteI'm well aware what a link is, thank you. I was simply skimming your articles and didn't think the links to Washington Post or other photos would have been so well-captioned. Thank you for the clarification though. It's hard to imagine sitting on the beach in the shadow of oil wells.
ReplyDeleteIf you are interested where all the oil rigs in Los Angeles went, watch this video. There are still some oil rigs right in the middle of suburbia. I grew up next to them. google map of the area which is the Baldwin Hills oil field
ReplyDeleteHaving been raised 26 or so miles south in Laguna Beach, I can assure you that the Huntington Beach wells were never seen in the 1940s or 1950s by myself. I think the wells may have been further north than the Huntington Beach pier, which was a site renowned for fishing and surfing. To my knowledge no oil spills or fouled beaches.
ReplyDeleteThere are still many operating pumps scattered through the city, including two in the parking lot of HB City Hall. The high school sports teams are named "The Oilers."
ReplyDeleteNaturally occuring tarballs are not uncommon on beaches up and down the coast.
The photo at the top of the post was taken from the Huntington Beach Pier. Our first oil boom hit in 1920, and we were still finding large new desposits in the 1950s.
ReplyDeleteSome of the derricks from the '20s boom were already gone by the 1940s. But it was a major push by our fire chief, Bud Higgins, that really cleared out most of the remaining large wood ones in the 1950s. They were not only obsolete eyesores, but also were a major fire hazard. After that, the smaller "grasshopper" pumps were most common.
I remember at least one major oil spill in the 1990s.
Insane. Ridiculous, Dangerous, Greedy. Who the heck would go to the beach with all of that crap around. We are going to fall into a great sink hole. Inject this.........Total B.S. Just like the mess the pig's left by Edison that has secretly leached into our city water wells. Arms go numb at night ?????
ReplyDeleteKnow we know where the cancer is coming from.
ReplyDelete