A LOOK BACK -- JERRY PERSON

That fire at the Tosco refinery in Carson last week was quite some

blaze, especially when you think of the millions of years it took to

create that oil.

Millions of dollars worth of pipes and equipment were consumed along

with the expense of trying to put out that fire. Many men have searched

for those riches. Some have become overnight millionaires and others, not

so lucky, have lost their shirts.

Former Huntington Beach Mayor Marcus M. McCallen, along with his two

partners, Harold McVicar and Cecil “Doc” Rood became millionaires from

Huntington Beach’s liquid gold.

Art Baker, a popular 1950s television personality, invested his

savings into an oil venture here in Huntington Beach. He even went so far

as to have a motion picture camera set up at his well to record on film

when it struck oil.

That camera may still be there waiting for all I know, because, as you

may have guessed, it was a dry hole. Baker lost his shirt in that well.

Then there were those four Newport Harbor doctors who thought they

would make a killing in Huntington Beach oil despite the fact that they

were told not to invest in that well.

Richard Altman, Samuel Crawford, Alan Gray and Leon Nelson pooled

$12,000 and hired the Gene Reid Drilling Co. to start drilling operations

at a well located at 319 13th St.

Altman and Crawford put up $7,000 and Gray and Nelson $5,000 to begin

their oil venture in 1955. Their well was called the Wolfson No. 1,

named for William Wolfson, an oil operator here that owned the well.

These four doctors, or as “lambs” as our oilmen referred to

out-of-town investors, had been previously warned by several

long-standing Huntington Beach oil authorities that the area they were

drilling in had been pumped dry long ago.

Reid’s company charged the investors $4.50 a foot to look and the well

eventually extended 4,000 feet down, costing the men $18,000. When they

reached that depth, they found the oil-bearing sand to be low in oil, a

fact known to Huntington Beach oilmen since 1927.

But this was the time of the second oil boom in the Downtown area and

oil fever gripped many men trying to get rich overnight. When the well

proved worthless, these four doctors from Newport, instead of taking

their losses on the chin, went crying to a jury seeking the return of

their investment from Wolfson and his partner, Orange County Sheriff

Clinton Wright, in a trial in April 1956.

The doctors contended they were misled by Wolfson and Wright and that

these two men mishandled their investment funds. The Santa Ana jury

didn’t buy that and found Wolfson and Wright did not mishandle the fund.

And so these four “lambs”’ from Newport Harbor joined our list of

people who didn’t get rich off of our black gold.

* JERRY PERSON is a local historian and longtime Huntington Beach

resident. If you have ideas for future columns, write him at P.O. Box

7182, Huntington Beach, CA 92615.