Refineries – The San Joaquin Valley in the late 1800s had several small refineries that distilled kerosene for lighting homes and work places. All of these previous refineries are gone now, save one in the following valley to the south, at Newhall, where the brick ruins still stand of the outdated California Star Oil Works, that are shown within the photograph on the left.
The means of distilling kerosene from oil is very like making whiskey from corn mash. The oil is heated in a nonetheless, typically manufactured from brick, until the kerosene part boils off as a gasoline, which is collected in a pipe at the highest of the still, the place it cools, and condenses out as liquid kerosene at the opposite finish of the pipe.
From the 1860s till the turn of the century when electric lights turned commonplace, kerosene was the illuminant of alternative, being the low-price alternative to whale oil, and kerosene manufacture provided the principle market for rock oil. Happily for the oil trade, when the U.S. made the change from kerosene lamps to electric lights, the automobile was making its debut, providing a market for gasoline, which up till that time had been a nugatory byproduct from the distillation of oil.
The Star Oil Firm, one of many predecessors of the standard Oil Company of California (Chevron), deepened the Pico #four well at Pico Canyon oil discipline in 1876, increasing manufacturing to 30 barrels of oil per day, which made the Pico #4 the first truly commercial effectively in California. This discovery resulted in the construction of a refinery to distill kerosene at Andrew Kazinski’s new stage stop in Newhall, which had been constructed next to the just-accomplished Southern Pacific railroad line working to Newhall from Los Angeles.
Two small stills, of 15-barrel and 20-barrel capacities, were moved from an earlier refinery built by the Los Angeles Oil Firm in 1873 at close by Lyon’s Station stage cease, and to those were added two new one hundred twenty-barrel and a hundred and fifty-barrel stills. The Andrews Station Refinery distilled kerosene till 1888, when production was shifted to a a lot bigger refinery that Commonplace Oil constructed at Alameda on the San Francisco Bay. A photograph of the Andrews Station refinery as it looked in the 1880s is proven under.
The Andrews Station Refinery, which the locals began calling the Pioneer Refinery, sat decaying until 1930 when Chevron did a serious restoration. An image beneath that was revealed within the California Historical past Nugget journal in January, 1938 (vol. V, no. Four) reveals how the refinery seemed after the restoration.
Chevron did another restoration (if we will name it that) in the 1950s, after they dismantled the two smaller stills, one in every of which was moved to a museum at their Richmond Refinery. In fact, they closed that museum many years in the past, which at this time leaves simply the two bigger stills which can be shown below.
Despite the fact that it’s now owned by the town of Santa Clarita, The Pioneer Refinery is just a little exhausting to find, as it’s in the course of an industrial lot. The map beneath reveals the place you will discover it. Nevertheless, it’s accessible only throughout working hours, and it is totally enclosed by a fence. Supposedly, the city has plans to restore it and make it a little more accessible.
Though many individuals credit score the Pioneer Refinery as the primary commerical refinery in the state, that’s probably not true. Among several earlier refineries, was a small one operated by the Buena Vista Vista Petroleum Company from 1864 to 1867 in the San Joaquin Valley. It was positioned close to the trendy city of McKittrick, however the historical monument for it’s situated on the northeast corner of the intersection of Lokern Street and Highway 33, near the south edge of South Belridge field.
The successor to the Buena Vista Refinery was the refinery for the Sunset Oil Company that Hugh Blodgett and Solomon Jewett erected about 1889. The Sunset refinery was in operation by 1889 at a site a few mile southeast of fashionable Maricopa, they usually used open kettles to distill kerosene from asphalt. A number of shallow wells had been drilled to provide flux for heating the asphalt, and the primitive derricks for these early wells are clearly evident in the 2 views below of the Jewett and Blodgett operations.
The discovery of Kern River Field near Bakersfield in 1899 resulted in the start up of refineries in city, and several other refineries have been working in the San Joaquin Valley by the start of WWI. Nonetheless, the emphasis by then was refining gasoline for cars, not kerosene for lamp oil. In the present day the large refinery in Bakersfield is the Mohawk Refinery, proven under. that started in 1932, and has modified hands a number of occasions. There can also be the outdated El Tejon refinery in Arvin (lowermost photo) that began up in 1934 and is now operated by Kern Oil & Refining Company. Nevertheless, to most people it is thought merely as the Arvin Refinery.
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