The West Side Oil Fields of California

Abstract

FROM the outskirts of Bakersfield the Elk Hills are only a faint line below the Temblor Mountains, thirty miles to the west. The hills rise from the immense plain of the San Joaquin Valley and become a gentle arc, tapered at either end, yet flatter than any strung bow. Carbon-black clay, carried by the periodic overflow of Buena Vista Lake, rims the hills: in January the sticky clods are sprinkled with cotton bolls missed in the harvest. Beyond, the Elk Hills stand softly rounded, scalloped from gully to gully. There is no resistant material in them, and in a country with heavy summer rains they would long ago have been cut to badland ribbons. But the five inches that fall come in January, February, and March, when a new crop of filaree and red brome can swiftly replace the worn yellow grass that stretches from saltbush to saltbush. From the summit of the Elk Hills, the San Joaquin Valley stretches back to the Sierra Nevada. Westward there is another ridge, the Buena Vista Hills, lower than the Elk Hills, shorter and surrounded by dry flats. The Temblors rise beyond them finally, a sharp boundary for the San Joaquin. In summer the heat is terrific; there is no shade, no breeze, no water. But there are other times when the climate is as gentle as the hills themselves, and there are valleys in the Elk Hills where the open vistas of the San Joaquin Valley disappear, replaced by a delicate network of gullies, grassy slopes, and the sky. The only sound is birds singing in hidden nests.