On September 12, 1883, at Mentryville, one worker was killed, and four were injured while building a huge oil tank that could hold 20,000 barrels of oil. Mentryville was on the up and up ever since the establishment of Pico No. 4, which originally cemented it as the first town with a commercially productive oil well.  The success of the ...

On June 6, 1953, a commemorative plaque was dedicated beside the CSO No. 4 oil well in Pico Canyon by Standard Oil of California and the Petroleum Production Pioneers, honoring the well’s pivotal role in California’s petroleum history. The plaque reads: “First Commercial Oil Well in California On this site stands CSO-4 (Pico #4), California’s first commercially productive well. It ...

On May 22, 1865, pioneers Ramon Perea and Jesus Hernandez sold off Pico Canyon, rich with oil, to Colonel Robert S. Baker for $300. Ramon Perea, born August 31, 1838, immigrated from Mexico in the mid to late 1800s and owned and operated a ranch in San Francisquito Canyon. In the 1880s, Perea sold off the ranch to the Raggios ...

On this day in 1876, Pico Canyon’s Well No. 4 erupted, becoming the first commercially productive oil well in the American West and marking the birth of California’s oil industry. The well was drilled by Charles Alexander Mentry, a French-born oilman who had come to the Santa Clarita Valley in 1873 after a successful career in Pennsylvania. Earlier attempts to ...