On this day in 1847, Charles Alexander Mentry, the man who would help birth California’s oil industry through his work in the Santa Clarita Valley, was born in France.

Historians guess that his original name was Charles Alexander Menetry, before he came to the Newhall area in 1873 with aspirations of striking it rich. Mentry was already an experienced oil driller, having successfully drilled 42 wells near Titusville, Pennsylvania. His expertise would soon transform the region.

Mentry arrived in the Newhall area and quickly found work in Grapevine Canyon, at the southern end of the Santa Clarita Valley. In 1875, he formed a partnership to purchase an oil claim in Pico Canyon, an area that had been previously explored but had yet to yield significant results. 

The land was promising, but it needed the right person to unlock its potential—and that person was Alex Mentry.

By 1876, Mentry had drilled four new wells, Pico No. 1 through 4, in an area previously prospected by the joint partnership of Newhall entrepreneurs Sanford Lyon, Henry Clay Wiley, and famed feudist William Jenkins of Castaic. 

His success caught the attention of San Francisco financier Demetrius Scofield, who purchased Mentry’s claim and hired him as a full-time employee. It was under Mentry’s leadership that the area’s oil production skyrocketed, with the No. 4 well consistently producing 30 barrels of oil per day.

Still, Mentry continued to dig deeper, using what historians speculate might have been California’s first steam-powered oil rig. 

On September 26, 1876, Mentry’s No. 4 well struck a major oil deposit at a depth of 617 feet, leading to the first commercially successful oil well in the western United States.

Mentry’s success in Pico Canyon would lay the groundwork for Mentryville, the oil boomtown that developed around the site in modern-day Stevenson Ranch. 

Mentry went on to marry Flora May Lake and had three sons and a daughter. Together they lived in a grand 13-room mansion at the base of the canyon, which can still be seen today

Although his life was tragically cut short by illness on October 4, 1900, from typhoid fever, Mentry’s legacy as a pioneer in California’s oil industry endures. His work in Pico Canyon not only made him a key figure in the region’s development but also set the stage for California’s future as an oil-rich state. 

Pico Well No. 4 stood the test of time to become the longest continually operating oil well in the world, finally closing in 1990 at 114 years in service.  Pico No. 4 was a the foundational well of the Pacific Coast Oil Company, a predecessor of Standard Oil Company, later renamed Chevron in 1977. 

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