Newhall Oil District, Santa Clarita, California
Website created and maintained by Stan Walker
This is a 1934 map of the Newhall Oil Field from Walling, R. W., 1934, Report on Newhall Oil Field: California Oil Fields, Summary of Operations of the State Oil and Gas Supervisor: Department of Natural Resources, Division of Oil and Gas, Vol. 20 No. 2. You can see how the Pico Anticline forms, what Walling calls, the Pico Anticline District. Click here for a larger PDF version (1.6MB).
This site originally was only about Elsmere Canyon. Over the years it expanded to include many other subjects, the largest being the Newhall Oil District. Therefore, the first section is now called the Newhall Oil District, which includes the oil history, geology, paleontology, an occasional biography, and other subjects, of all the canyons that make up the oil district. It also includes Placerita Canyon, which became its own oil field in 1949. Elsmere is now listed below in its geographial location between the Tunnel Area and Whitney Canyon.
There were many other oil fields in Santa Clarita that I did not cover. Some examples of these fields are Bouquet Canyon (with 10 wells recorded in DOGGR records), Castaic Hills (82 wells), Castaic Junction (84 wells), Del Valle (147 wells), Hasley Canyon (38 wells), Honor Rancho (107 wells), Newhall Townsite (41 wells), Newhall-Potrero (180 wells), and Saugus (10 wells). Also, many other wildcat wells were drilled in Santa Clarita in areas that never became an oil field.
From "California Oil and Gas Fields, Vol II, Southern, Central Coastal, and Offshore California", Division of Oil & Gas, Pub. No. TR 12, Sacramento, Third Edition 1991.
Location of the canyons. Pico, Towsley/Wiley, Rice/East, Elsmere/Whitney, and Placerita have parking areas and are open for public hiking.
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All photographs, unless otherwise noted, are owned by Stan Walker