White Oil Seep

White Oil Seep. Do You Smell That?. , What you are smelling is a pool of bubbling white oil. This very rare geologic feature of translucent petroleum has been filtered by nature. This special resource originates from deep within the earth in the Placerita Schist basement complex of rocks. Geologists have theorized that the oil traveled along the San Gabriel Fault Zone where it was filtered through various layers of sediments to get to its highly refined state. The oil is said to burn longer and brighter than kerosene and early local residents could pour it directly into their Ford Model T and Model A cars for fuel. , The Southern California oil industry started in the Newhall area in the late nineteenth century. In 1898 James Evans filed a patent on a mining claim which gave him title to the Placerita Canyon property. Evans then leased the land to the New Century Oil Co. to drill for oil. Imagine how surprised the oil drillers were when in 1900 the well started gushing white oil rather that the expected black gold! In 1901, the company entered a sample of crude oil into the Pan-American Exposition held in Buffalo, New York, which was the eighth largest city in the United States at the time. , Unfortunately, the oil wells did not perform as expected and in 1902 New Century Oil went bankrupt while drilling additional wells. The company's stock dropped from $1.00 per share down to $0.02 per share. By order of the court, all of their oil equipment assets were seized and auctioned off by the Sheriff. , Frank Walker , In the following years, Frank Walker (1886-1971), grandson to James Evans, inherited this Placerita Canyon property and used it as his primary residence along with his wife Hortense Reynier and their twelve children. Walker invented a contraption which allowed him to separate the water, white oil, and natural gas from the abandoned well. This enabled the family to capture the oil in a storage drum and route the natural gas directly to their cabin's kitchen stove and lantern.