Confusion Hill (aka Mad Mountain), Santa Clarita, California

Recent aerial view of Confusion Hill (in red circle) from Google Maps. It is bordered by Sierra Highway on the east, Mikelyn Road on the south and west, and the San Gabriel Fault zone (which is below Golden Valley Road) on the north.

1949 panaramic view of Confusion Hill from SCVHistory website. A larger image can also be seen there.

Image from 2016 recreating the above 1949 image. There is virtually no oil activity today. The wells with pumps are not being operated. The hill I was standing on has been cut down somewhat since 1949, so my photo is a little lower then the original. The view is toward the southeast and was taken where the little red "x" is in the previous aerial photo just inside the top of the circle. The 14 freeway is in the right distance. Quigley Road is the paved road in the foreground. Click here for a larger version of this image. (Photo taken on 6/3/2016)

Where is Confusion Hill in the Placerita Oil Field? Why is it called Confusion Hill, who named it, and when was it named?

Sources include "Placerita Oil Field" by Barton and Sampson, Confusion Hill chapter in book by William Rintoul, and numerous articles from the Newhall Signal, Los Angeles Times, and other newspapers.

Also see the SCVHistory website including Alan Pollack's story on Milfred Yant, A.B. Perkins, and Jerry Reynolds.

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In 1935 Milfred R. Yant, the president of the newly formed Yant Petroleum Corporation, bought four wells in Placerita Canyon. He also purchased the North 1/2 of the Northeast 1/4 of Section 31, T4N, R15W, from Tom Frew for $50 per acre. This area would become the seed for Confusion Hill. Now, Confusion Hill is meant to include the whole hilltop and not just the area that Yant purchased.

Yant then subdivided and started selling parcels as small as 7/1000th of an acre. However, many of the parcel descriptions on the deed were wrong. The original purchase was assumed to be 80 acres but was actually only 71 acres because the section boundary lines were incorrect. Most of the sale transactions included an oil and gas lease by the Yant Petroleum Corporation, but they never did any drilling under this lease. In late 1936, the Yant Petroleum Corporation went bankrupt. Since Yant was implying that there was oil on the property (he would show prospective buyers his derricks nearby), he was able to make a huge profit. But in 1938 he was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to 1 - 5 years in prison. He was released after two years and moved to Hollister, California, about 50 miles south of San Jose.

In the 1930's and '40s there was very little activity in the Placerita area until 1948. Then, more drilling was attempted with modest success. The Kraft and York areas around Placerita creek were named. However, in the Newhall Townsite area, drilling activity was making the news. The Sherman No. 1 oil well indicated that there was a major oil pool directly beneath Newhall. Preliminary tests predicted a production potential of 1500 barrels per day of oil. Oil companies were scrambling to get leases. In Hollister, Yant read a Los Angeles Times story about the Newhall Townsite oil strike (probably the December 30, 1948, issue). Excited, he traveled to Newhall and tried to raise money to drill on the 60 acres of land he still owned on a mesa above Placerita Canyon. However, he failed to raise the money. There is a fault between the Newhall field and Yant's Placerita land. That means there is an underground break between the two areas. An oil sand bed in the Newhall area would not extend into the Placerita area. So, nobody was interested.

Yant, still hopeful, returned to Hollister and convinced a wealthy Hollister cattle rancher he knew named Jose Ramon Somavia (1903-1989) to put up the money. They formed the Somavia-Yant Oil Company and their first well, Juanita 1 (named after Somavia's wife), struck oil. The initial production was 340 barrels of high-grade 22.8 gravity oil per day. After 30 days production was 242 barrels per day. Juanita 2 was completed in May of 1949 with an initial production of 700 barrels of 21.7 gravity oil per day. This new area was designated the Juanita area. Yant was rich. Somavia was richer. The field was so good that the Signal of August 25, 1949, called it "Little Signal Hill" after the famous Signal Hill oil field of Long Beach, one of the most productive oil fields in the world in the 1920's. In August of 1949, it was reported that Placerita "now stands as the most active drilling area in the state" (Oil & Gas Journal, August 25, 1949).

Oil leasing in the Juanita area began and so did the problems. The area had been sub-divided by Yant in 1935-36 and now it was discovered that there were so many over-lapping parcels that in many cases there were multiple claimants as owners to the same parcel. Plus, there were false owners because not everyone filed their deeds when they purchased their parcels from Yant. So it was very difficult to determine who owned what.

Then there was the Spacing Act law of the State of California which said that only one well could be drilled per acre. With so many successful wells being drilled, more and more wells were demanded. Some wildcatters just went in and drilled wherever there was space. The constitutionality of the Spacing Act was then challenged and, on September 23, 1949, Judge C.M. Hanson declared the law unconstitutional. Not only did drilling become even crazier, with wells drilled as close as five feet from one another, but dangerous.

Armed guards were being used to prevent wildcat drillers from breaking into fenced in leases. At one point, a bulldozer was used like a tank to keep eight trucks from breaking down a gate. September production peaked at 28,000 barrels pumped in one day.

With drilling going on everywhere and conflicts of land ownership, the Juanita area was justly named "Confusion Hill." But who first called the area Confusion Hill and when? The Signal of November 17, 1949, is the first newspaper that I could find that used "Confusion Hill". The article also used "Confusion Mount" and "Confusion Mountain". Another popular name was "Mad Mountain". The Signal of December 8, 1949, might have been the first newspaper to use that name.

However, due to the unrestricted drilling and pumping, oil production began to decline in December. New drilling had nearly stopped. Virtually all the active wells were being pumped. The title for a March 2, 1950, Signal newspaper article was "Mad Mountain Fading." In the Oil and Gas Journal of October 12, 1950, there was an article titled "Overdrilled Placerita Canyon Nears Exhaustion." The October 17 issue of the Los Angeles Times reported that "Placerita Canyon's days as a leading crude producing field appear to be numbered." The Van Nuys News of October 19 said "Placerita Canyon Black Gold Strike Suffers Nosedive."

But by then Milfred R. Yant was out of the Placerita oil business.

This is from the Mint Canyon Quadrangle Topo Map of 1960 (photorevised in 1988). The black square is about the N 1/2 of the NE 1/4 of Section 31, Yant's property. Sierra Highway is the main road running through it (Golden Valley Road did not exist here at that time). The location of well Juanita 1 is indicated in blue (based on published DOGGR coordinates).

This is from the Berry Petroleum Company Investor Conference of 2008 (see resources) showing the Placerita Oil Field. Confusion Hill is a lease that they apparently don't own.

From Selected Papers Presented to San Joaquin Geological Society, Volume 3, November 1965, "California Blue Sky Laws and the Geologist" by Walter L. Rowse, pp. 57-58

Time Magazine article from December 19, 1949. This article, and more information, can be found on the SCV History website here.

Another story of Yant from the Newhall Signal of September 12, 1973

From the Summary of Operations California Oil Fields, Thirty-Fifth Annual Report of the State Oil and Gas Supervisor, Vol 35, No. 2, July-Dec., 1949, p. 44

From the Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Vol. 34, No. 6 (June 1950), pp.1914-1031, "Developments in West Coast Area in 1949" by Graham B. Moody

1939 photo showing Ramon and Juanita Somavia (from here)

Aerial view of Confusion Hill and vicinity in 1947. There are no visible signs of any kind of oil activity. Sierra Highway is cutting through almost vertically on the right of the photo. The Quigley Canyon siphon of the Los Angeles Aqueduct is the short, almost vertical, line in the lower left. Placerita Canyon is just out of view below (south of) this photo. (Photo from historicaerials.com.)

This is the photo from the above Time Magazine article about Wilfred Yant of December, 1949. The photo is also in William Rintoul's book Drilling Ahead (Valley Publishers, Santa Cruz, 1981). According to the book, there were 31 rigs working on Confusion Hill when Jerry Holscher took this aerial photograph. He made enlargements and sold them rig-to-rig for $1 each.

Aerial view in 1952. The difference is quite dramatic. Put a circle around that activity and you have Confusion Hill.

1959. Similar to 1952.

1966

1986

2013

Confusion Hill in the early 1950's. Aerial view toward the west with Sierra Highway the road on the bottom. Photo courtesy of the SCV History website. A larger image, a panoramic view of Confusion Hill, and more information, can be found on their website here. The San Gabriel Fault zone is the northern boundary of the Placerita Oil Field and it cuts off the lower right part of this photo into a triangle. The zone is between the two dirt roads intersecting with Sierra Highway at the bottom of the photo. You can see a couple of wells in the zone in the small valley between the two dirt roads. There are only tanks to the right of the fault. The road intersecting Sierra Highway on the left is called Mad Road.

This is about the same direction as the above photo except at ground level. We can see that the road on the left intersecting Sierra Highway is still being used and is paved. It is called Mad Road. The road on the right is dirt and has not been used in many years. The lower area between these two roads is the San Gabriel Fault zone, which, of course, also extends many miles to the northwest and southeast. Photo taken on 4/5/2016.

From the Signal of October 20, 1949. Like the previous historic photo, the view is towards the west, only further away. Sierra Highway is the main horizontal road. This photo also shows wells on the east side of SH, something the other photos don't show. I would sure like to find the original photo instead of using the newspaper.

From the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society. Back of photo reads: "The Placeritas Oil Field - an air view taken about 1950 (courtesy Mrs. Earl Schmidt)". The road at the bottom is Sierra Highway. The dirt road on the right side of the photo running perpendicular away from Sierra Highway is Mad Road. Photo similar to previous one.

From the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society. Back of photo reads: "Showing the Placeritas Oil Field, but more important it shows the Soledad Canyon as it was then - minus houses. 1949." Sierra Highway is now the road on the right side of the photo.

The following story is from the Oil and Gas Journal of October 6, 1949 (Vol. 48, No. 22, pp. 156-157).

This story about how well diesels performed is from Diesel Progress magazine of July 1950 (Vol. 16, No. 7, pp. 44-45). To make it readable, I had to use this large size.

Placerta Nears Exhaustion from the Oil and Gas Journal, October 12, 1950.

Brine Drowns Confusion Hill, The Signal, March 22, 1951.

Water Jets Hike Yield, Oil and Gas Journal, June 21, 1951, Vol 50 No 7.

Mad Mountain Deep Zone, The Signal, August 25, 1955.

Mad Mountain Oil Source, The Signal, March 22, 1956.

Placerita Canyon and the Battle of Mad Mountain, The Signal, July 13, 1997.