(English)
(Español)
This is the fifth from nine murals painted in the community from 1998 to 2007. It is located at 123 North 10th Street at the Santa Paula Art Museum. This mural was Completed in 2001 by muralist Jum Fahnestock
As a result of the Civil War, shipments of oil and kerosene from the East declined, and interest rose in finding a source of oil in California. Shown here are Lyman Stewart and Wallace Hardison, who discovered oil in this area and formed Hardison & Stewart Oil Company in 1883. It became Union Oil in 1890.
William W. Orcutt grew up in Santa Paula and worked at odd jobs for the Union Oil refinery until attending Stanford University, where he graduated in 1895. Hired by Union Oil in 1899, he made the first geological maps of California’s most important oil fields.
Shown in the oval is Josiah Stanford’s early inventive effort at tunneling for oil in the 1860s. Mirrors reflected the sun’s rays to light up the tunnel, and petroleum flowed by gravity out of the tunnels. This view is from the South Mountain oil fields, looking north to Santa Paula in the distance.
