Waves of time

Ellen McCarty

By 1919, Huntington Beach had enough perks to make it a good place to

live.

A light and power plant, a modern sewer system, a telephone exchange and

mail system were operating smoothly.

The Holly Sugar Co. was the most modern sugar beet factory in the world.

More than 1,000 tons of beets were crushed daily during harvest time,

yielding an annual sugar output worth $2.2 million. Huntington Beach

might have sustained itself for many years as a stable beach community

with a lively summer tourist season, but the oil industry forever changed

its spirit in the 1920s.

A decade earlier, gas vented through the ground as sheep grazed in

pastures north of town, and shepherds would light a match to the gas and

cook their dinner over the resulting fire. Throughout the development of

the city, there were complaints about attempts to drill water wells and

getting gas instead.

In some places, oil and asphalt oozed from the earth and many residents

used the substance to repair their roofs and light their homes and barns.

Although the presence of oil was no secret, it wasn’t tapped for decades.

On May 24, 1920, the Standard Oil Company of California struck oil at a

depth of 2,199 feet at Discovery Well in Huntington Beach. Almost

overnight, land considered worthless two miles inland earned a reputation

as an ocean of black gold.

Oddly enough, Encyclopaedia Britannica was responsible in part for the

population boom of the 1920s.

The company had purchased land in Huntington Beach in the 1910s as an

incentive for customers to buy one of its new products, the Students

Reference Encyclopedia.

An attorney for the company came west looking for the cheapest possible

land for the giveaway. He paid the Huntington Beach Co. $200 an acre for

seven 5-acre tracts that subdivided into 420 lots, consisting mostly of

hillsides and canyons that could not be built on.

Back east, Ezra Hapfield bought the encyclopedia set for his daughter,

Hattie, who was attending a girl’s finishing school. He paid little

attention to the deed for his new lot when it arrived and threw it into a

desk where it was forgotten for several years.

When Hattie and her son moved back to her family’s New England farm, the

family received an offer of more than $300 for their lot in Huntington

Beach. The family had not heard of the oil boom, but because $300 was

more than Hapfield had paid for the entire set of encyclopedias, he

decided to investigate.

The family soon discovered that their Huntington Beach parcel was located

over the heart of a huge subterranean oil reservoir. With their first oil

royalties, the Hapfields bought a bungalow, complete with orange trees,

on a slope overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

The September 1921 issue of the Orange County Review reported: “Seventeen

months ago Huntington Beach was a sleepy little town of 2,400 souls.

Today there are about 8,500 permanent residents and a floating population

of 4,000.”

Quiet country landscape was suddenly crowded with tall wooden oil

derricks that emitted ear-splitting noise and the overpowering smell of

oil.

After his arrival from the Midwest in 1920, Oscar L. Stricklin, who

worked as an oil rig builder seven days a week, said people came pouring

into Huntington Beach “like there was a gold rush.”

With great wealth came great risk, and many workers in the oil industry

perished on the job. Well tongs fell and crushed men. Dry gas lines

exploded and caught fire.

But no matter what dangers, noises, dirt and smells came with the oil

business, the 2,500-acre Huntington Beach oil field was destined to

become the third largest field in Southern California.

In October 1929, the stock market crashed and prosperity across the

country came to a screeching halt. No new oil wells were drilled in

Huntington Beach during the 1930s, and the Huntington Beach News reported

that burglaries were on the rise, even in broad daylight.