Story by Leon Worden, SCVTV.

The “history” in the following story was based primarily on information in the city record. That information was provided to the city by local historians prior to 1991. Soon after the city agenda report and the following story below were published, the writer discovered huge discrepancies in the historical record. For the time being, none of the history presented here should be considered factual. Once we’ve made the necessary changes and corrections, we’ll remove this message.

Santa Clarita City Council voted on June 23 to approve the demolition of the burned-out shell of a historic house in Newhall.

Built about 1878 in Pico Canyon as a guest house for oil field executives and moved to Newhall early in the last century, the so-called Star Oil House was destroyed by fire Nov. 2, 2014.

Photo courtesy of SCV News.

Someone inside the vacant house knocked over a candle. Flames ripped through the roof and gutted much of the small wooden building.

City Council approved the recommended action of demolishing the Star Oil House, receiving the property as donation and allowing all structures located at 24148 Pine Street to be demolished.

The house was one of only eight structures outside of William S. Hart Park to have been deemed historically significant by the City Council in 2013.

The fire destroyed its structural integrity and with it, its historic value. The structure is considered to be a total loss.

City staff placed a yellow tag on the property on Nov. 3, 2014, disallowing permanent occupancy by the residents, but allowing occupants to remove belongings from the home.

A red tag was placed on the structure on Nov. 4, 2014, and it was secured it to keep people out.

The property owner, who lives in Redondo Beach, offered to donate the property to the city, for which he would receive a tax write-off. City Council accepted the donation on June 23.

City Council agreed to a a 30-day historical research period of the house on Pine Street before demolition can start.

Exactly when the Star Oil House was moved from Pico Canyon to Newhall is unknown. Assessor records show two dwellings on the property: an 856-square-foot 2-plus-1 with a construction date of 1929; and a 732-square-foot 1-plus-1 with a construction date of 1934 and a remodel date of 1939. One of those is the historic house. The third structure on the property is a small storage shed.

The Star Oil House was historically significant not so much for its design – a vernacular wood-frame building – but rather for the history that walked through its front door and slept under its medium-pitch, side-gable roof.

Star Oil House in 2009. Photo courtesy of SCV News.

It was built as a company house of California Star Oil Works, the outfit that hired Charles Mentry to drill wells in Pico Canyon. Mentry put the Santa Clarita Valley on the map in 1876 when he brought in California’s first commercially successful oil well. The petroleum industry would prove to be a major employer of Newhall townsfolk for decades.

George Washington didn’t sleep there, but Demetrius G. Scofield did. He was the company president and one of the early believers in the potential of oil – not for gasoline (there were no automobiles then), but to light lamps. Petroleum was better and more plentiful than whale oil (not to mention less brutal). Scofield became the first president of Standard Oil Co. of California when John D. Rockefeller bought him out in 1900.

Charles N. Felton slept there, too; he was a major financier and ran the other company in Pico Canyon, Pacific Coast Oil. Felton was elected to Congress in 1885 and became one of California’s U.S. senators in 1891.

Lyman Stewart, who had a place of his own in Newhall in 1878 (now one of the historic homes in Hart Park), is believed to have slept there, as well. By 1890 Pico was getting crowded so Stewart moved to Santa Paula and founded the Union Oil Co.

In 1915, when the oil boom in Pico Canyon was over, Standard Oil Co. sold the house to longtime employee Josh Woolridge, who moved it to its present location in Newhall.

An official survey from 2009 terms it “a rare example of a property related to early settlement and oil discovery in Santa Clarita.”

After the fire, it’s officially “a visual blight on the community and a threat to public health and safety.”

And soon, just a faded memory.