WORKING IN LONG BEACH
Roustabouts in the Oil Field
Wikipedia tells us, “on June 23, 1921, Shell Oil Company’s Alamitos #1 well erupted. Gas pressure was so great the gusher rose 114 feet in the air. Soon Signal Hill was covered with oil derricks, and, because of its prickly appearance at a distance, it became known as “Porcupine Hill.” The Long Beach Oil Field was enormously productive in the 1920s, with hundreds of derricks covering Signal Hill and adjacent parts of Long Beach. Largely due to the huge output of this field, the Los Angeles Basin produced one-fifth of the nation’s oil supply during the early 1920s. In 1923 alone the field produced over 68 million barrels of oil, and in barrels produced by surface area, the field was the world’s richest.”
If your ancestor came to Long Beach looking for work in the oil fields, you might find him mentioned or pictured in the following online resources:
California State University Long Beach University Library: Digital Repository
Petroleum Entrepreneurs
Quoting from this CSULB Digital Repository, Virtual Oral/Aural History Archives webpage, “Some of the interviews in this series were conducted as part of a project to study the impact of oil discovery on the development of Long Beach. Others were done as part of a project to document the history of Signal Hill. The experiences of these nine narrators illustrate the variety of people who came to participate in the oil boom that began in the 1920s.”
Oil Workers
Quoting from this CSULB Digital Repository, Virtual Oral/Aural History Archives webpage,
“This series of interviews was conducted as part of a project to study the impact of oil discovery on the development of Long Beach. The experiences of the six narrators illustrate many of the significant points of this historical development. Jake Briegel, Red Carey, and Everette Harris all came to Long Beach in the 1920s to seek better opportunities. Nahum Emery, born in southern California, found similar opportunities. Charles Armin came to Long Beach at the end of the Depression and went to work for the oil workers union. Laura Carey, the wife of an oil worker, also lived the life of a ‘boomer’.”
Additional Interveiws
Type “oil” in the search box on this page, click “search,” and you will find more than 60 interviews with pol field worklers with extensive biographies attached to each one.
Brown’s Court Apartments in Signal Hill
http://brownscourtapartments.com/signal-hill-oil-workers/
http://brownscourtapartments.com/signal-hill-oil-workers/
Click on the link above, and you will see a large photograph showing five oil field workers as well as the Union Oil Company’s “Classification and Wage Scale of Oil Field Employees.” The photo has four readable surnames written on it: Horne, Wilson, Sullivan and Roneok.
American Oil & Gas Historical Society
This website has an article about the Signal Hill oil boom.
Paleeontological Research Institution
A very good overview of the petroleum industry in Southern California is available on this website.
Gendisasters: Events That Touched Our Ancestors’ Lives
A transcribed newspaper article re: the Long Beach Richfield oil refinery explosion of June 2, 1933, can be found here. Pictures of the event are included, and the names of the dead are listed. A newspaper article about an earlier oil well gas explosion which killed E. H. and H. H. Hanley, brothers, and H. S. Clark, on March 1, 1931, in Long Beach, is also posted on this site.
Critical Past: Stock Films
This site has 1 minute and 27 seconds of black and white film footage that shows the Richfield refinery fire of 1933.
RESEARCH TIP: Remember to include audio resources when you search for information about your ancestors. Oral history projects are becoming popular, and many local universities and libraries have interviews available with old residents who live in the area. Some of these interviews are on cassette tape, some are available as transcriptions, and some have been digitized as podcasts.
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