Pipeline to History

When a painter is standing on the sidewalk scraping paint off the front window, it’s time for a new exhibit at the California Oil Museum in Santa Paula. And there is no more appropriate setting for a collection of photographs documenting the oil industry over the last 100 years or so. The new exhibit opens Sunday and runs through June 17.

The building itself, constructed in 1889 for the princely sum of $37,000, was the headquarters of several local companies that merged in 1890 to form Union Oil. The museum opened in 1950 and was renovated in 1990 at a cost of $2.5 million. More than 15,000 people visit the museum each year.

The new photos complement the permanent exhibits, which include models, videos, computer games, photos and memorabilia documenting elusive black gold.

Among those exhibits are meticulously restored and colorful gas pumps. The Phillips 66 pump advertises a price of 25 cents a gallon, the Union 76 pump sports 43 cents and the Chevron pump offers 34 cents. There are also older pumps of long-gone oil companies.

There’s a hunk of bamboo pipe, not unlike the ones used by the Chinese 1,000 years ago to transport natural gas, and several finely detailed models depict the technology involved in offshore drilling. Another exhibit is dedicated to the geology of oil, complete with rocks from the Miocene Age, from 5 million to 25 million years old.

The new photograph exhibit will include examples of the history of oil fields in the Ventura Avenue area: the Rincon, Oxnard, Ojai, Bardsdale, Somis, Santa Paula and Lake Piru. Many of the photos are from private collections and are new to the public. Several were originally in such bad shape that they had to be computer enhanced, and there will be several side-by-side before-and-after examples.

Although there are plenty of action shots of gushers and great old vehicles, it’s the faces staring out from the past and the changed local landscapes that are really fascinating.

A number of photos from the ‘20s and ‘30s are from South Mountain near Santa Paula. There are shots of workers on the job or ready to take to the field on their homemade baseball diamond. Many of these men lived and worked in company housing not far from their job sites.

An interesting turn-of-the-century calendar shows a drawing of Ventura with a ship unloading cargo at the pier and no oil fields on the Avenue--instead, only a couple of streets and lots of farming. The old photos of Somis show not an idyllic farming community but a forest of oil derricks. There are trams that go up steep hillsides near Lake Piru to take workers to drilling sites, long before directional drilling was invented. The oldest photo is probably about 120 years old, a shot of Bard Well No. 6 in Ojai.

The local angle makes up only about a quarter of the exhibit, the rest showing scenes of oil fields from such places as the Bay Area, Utah, Oklahoma, Texas and Pennsylvania. There are also photos of a 1920s-era oil field in Mexico. Much of the modern color photography was done by Larry Lee, who has traveled the world documenting the changes in the oil industry.

The exhibit is being organized by John Nichols of Sespe Group Creative Services, a man who sees the connection between the rig and the lens.

“The oil industry and photography are very compatible because the industry is so photogenic,” Nichols said. “It responds to the camera angles, and there are these huge pieces of machinery coupled with the heroic efforts of the men and women who were involved in it.”

DETAILS

“Oil Photographs: Vintage & Contemporary Views of the Oil Industry” at the California Oil Museum, 1001 E. Main St., Santa Paula, 10 a.m. Sunday through June 17; $2 adults and $1 children; 933-0076.

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Bill Locey can be reached by e-mail at blocey@pacbell.net.