EMMA SUMMERS, OIL QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA
Prospectors were mining crude oil in California in the mid-1860’s. This novel method of petroleum production had limited success and has more interest as an early historical story than for the meager amounts brought from the ground. California oil historians credit Thomas Bard for drilling the first successful wildcat well near Ventura. Wildcat operations commenced from Ventura to Humboldt County. Statewide, California production grew steadily from 41,000 barrels annually in 1880 to 325,000 barrels in 1885 and 760, 000 barrels in 1894. In 1895, California oil production passed the one million mark generating 1,208,000 barrels. The new Los Angeles City Field accounted for sixty per cent of California’s total production in 1895. This was the beginning of California’s very big numbers.
In 1892, Edward Doheny and Charles Canfield purchased a city lot in the Westlake Park section of the City of Los Angeles for $400. They were not interested in placing a house on that lot. No, they were interested in digging for oil. “Digging” is what they did, not familiar with eastern drilling methods. At 155 ft., dizzy with the noxious gas, they stopped digging and resorted to a Neanderthal method of drilling by ramming the trunk of a eucalyptus tree into the excavated hole to create a passageway for whatever they could find. The primitive Doheny and Canfield Well found oil and soon was producing 40 barrels a day. The crude was a tad lighter than typical California crude and it found a ready, lucrative market as boiler fuel in downtown Los Angeles.
Neighborhood lots in Westlake Park went fast. Emma Summers bought a good number of them. Mrs. Summers migrated to Los Angeles from Kentucky in the 1880’s. A talented and educated woman, Mrs. Summers graduated from the New England Conservancy of Music. In Los Angeles, Mrs. Summers made a living by teaching piano and investing in and selling local real estate. Recognizing opportunity, Emma Summers, soon after the Doheny and Canfield Well success, bought a half interest in her first oil well in Los Angeles for $700. Confident of inevitable success, Emma purchased interests in other wells before her first well was finished. She hired her own workmen, personally purchased drilling tools and supplies and superintended the daily work and well development. She was not afraid of going into debt and would work at night teaching piano to help pay her workers and the growing stack of bills.
Mrs. Summers enjoyed success as a producer and personally found markets for her crude downtown as well as with the big local electric utility and various other industrial concerns, commuter railroads and a local trolley system. She purchased the crude of others in the field and combined that with her own production. In short order, Mrs. Summers was selling 50,000 barrels of Los Angeles City crude to her widespread customer base. She became a California celebrity of a different sort and was known as the “Oil Queen of California”.
By Neil McElwee, 2007.
Sources:
William Rintoul, Drilling Through Time, 75 years with California’s Division of Oil and Gas, 1990
Williamson, Andreano, Daum and Klose, The American Petroleum Industry, 1899-1959, The Age of Energy, 1963