Santa Clarita Sites... - 2/22/2014

We have so many sites in our home-town of Santa Clarita, so it was a little funny that we have seen nearly 200 sites and only one of them has been in town.  Today we decided to rectify that and visit some local landmarks.

Our first stop was Rancho San Francisco (CHL 556).  This plaque is near the site of the original Rancho that acted as the granary of the San Fernando Mission.  The rancho was built in 1804 and was givent to Antonio de Valle in 1839. 

Next we drove to Mentryville (CHL 516-2).  We were hoping to catch two sites while we were here... but only made it to one.

The actual town of Mentryville was closed for the day, but we were still able to look around the grounds.  Mentryville is named after Charles Alexander Mentry who in 1876 drilled the first successful oil well in California.  This is also the site where the Star Oil Company, a predecessor of Standard Oil of CA, began.

We hoped that this was the site of Pico Well #4-- it certainly looked like a cool old oil derrick to us...

Just look at this character!

Sadly, when we got home and did some more research, we discovered that while this was cool it was nowhere near the actual well.  We will have to return on another day to make the almost two mile hike in to the Well.  Anyone who wants to join us, just let us know :)

We will have to return another day to explore more of the old buildings as well.

Our next stop was the site of the Pioneer Oil Refinery (CHL 172).  Sadly there is no plaque here or any of the site left that can be seen by the public. 

We did attempt to take a photo over the fence to see if there was anything left, but it doesn't appear that there is.

This was the first commercial oil refinery in California that was established in 1876.  It helped to process some of the 100 barrels a day that were being processed by the Pico Canyon Well.

We still have some more sites to see in our valley-- it is fun to have some really neat ones close to home.