“Cities Sacrificed on the Altar of Oil”: Popular Opposition to Oil Development, in 1920s Los Angeles

Abstract

A paradise of sunshine, fruit, and flowers; true-life embodiment of Oz, Garden of West, a land where smokeless and cloudless skies have let sunshine stream into human hearts -such were typical characterizations of Los Angeles basin in early twentieth century. But this Eden-like was also to become, in decade of 192os, site of what was then most intensive oil field development in history, producing the greatest outpouring of mineral wealth world has ever known. Southern California's tremendous petroleum industry accounted for over 20 percent of world's output of crude oil during part of 1920S. Petroleum exploitation, in fact, not only provided a basis for southern California's economic growth during that decade, but was also such a dominant force that history of southern California's oil development, in words of contemporary economist John Ise, is almost history of oil industry of entire country.' As a central element in economic transformation of southern California, oil industry forever changed region's landscape. Located within fastestgrowing metropolitan area of country, oil development radically changed existing land-use patterns, encouraged industrialization and suburbanization, and contributed to real estate speculation in region. The particular nature of oil exploitation in Los Angeles basin-the preponderance of small landholdings (town-lots), its intense and unplanned development, and unusual geological formations encountered in drilling-contributed to production practices which devastated physical environment and severely strained economic vitality of industry. So serious was oil pollution that one observer found region to be a stygian landscape in 1924.2 This new context of oil development in an urban area presented industry managers with new problems: public concerns over unprecedented levels of oil pollution, a changed political setting offering greater regulatory opportunities to municipal and state governments, and prospect of a revived union movement that explicitly based its rebirth on social control of industry.