by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The opening in 1917 of the Montebello oil field, largely centered around the development in the northeast section the Montebello (Merced) hills, occurred at a particularly auspicious time as the United States entered World War I at that period. The hills, largely barren and long considered as worth little other than for livestock grazing, were part of the Rancho La Merced, long owned by Juan Matias Sánchez and F.P.F. Temple after they were given the ranch by William Workman, who secured it in late 1850 by foreclosing on a loan to its grantee, Casilda Soto de Lobo.
A quarter century later, however, Temple and Workman took out their own loan from Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin in an effort to save their Los Angeles bank, but this was unsuccessful and, in 1879, Baldwin foreclosed, taking almost the entirety of La Merced, including Sánchez’ portion after he was induced despite his fear of losing his land. Baldwin did allow Sánchez to keep his house and 200 acres, while the Temples acquired their homestead of 50 acres from the new owner.
Baldwin died in 1909 with his daughters, Anita and Clara (Stocker), taking possession of the hills, though, in October 1912, 60 acres were sold to F.P.F. Temple’s son, Walter, for $75 an acre, though he didn’t have the cash to buy the property outright and a financial deal reached. A year-and-a-half later, Temple’s nine-year-old son Walter stumbled upon oil indications in the hill and a lease was arranged in 1915 with Standard Oil Company of California, which inked a deal with the Baldwin heirs.
The bringing in of the first three Temple wells between June 1917 and January 1918 provided an amazing degree of wealth for the family, who promptly moved from the lease, settling first in Monterey Park, then in Alhambra, while the 75-acre Workman Homestead was also purchased. As 1918 progressed, the remarkable run of fortune continued. In early June, wells 4 and 5 came into production, each yielding about 1,000 barrels per day. Toward late September, the sixth well was brought in at about double that production, with the Whittier News of the 26th remarking,
Two other wells are drilling on the famous Temple lease [numbers 7 and 8] . . . Both of the wells are looking good and will probably be mates to No. 6. The Temple lease has proven one of the most valuable of the smaller oil properties in the Montebello field. Six wells are now producing on the property and the output runs high.
In its edition of 25 October, the paper reported that well 7 came in “and the production is 2000 barrels of high grade clean oil such as only the Temple property produces.” Number 8 was also brought in at 765 barrels per day and the News noted the perfect record “on this most wonderful of the small leases of the state,” with a total production of some 8,000 barrels daily.
As impressive as this was, and the Temples had an incredible passive income from their one-eighth royalty, no one likely conceived of what would happen next, even though it was a half-year before the next well was completed. The Los Angeles Times of 21 April 1919 detailed that
The most remarkable gusher yet struck in the Montebello field is the Standard Oil Company’s well No. 9 on the Temple property, which came in at 4 a.m., Wednesday, doing 30,000 barrels daily at a conservative estimate, and continuing to flow at that rate for thirty hours, the oil running from the well into earth reservoirs. At about Noon Thursday the hole sanded up and the flow stopped, but when it is cleaned out it is safe to say the well will be good for at least 10,000 barrels.
The account noted that well 8 was redrilled as it had not hit the deep sand when originally brought in and it “came in as a gusher almost simultaneously with the coming in of No. 9,” while the first well, nearly two years old, was still yielding a daily tally of a thousand barrels. Over on the Baldwin lease, well 28 was brought in the day prior to Temple number 9 and at 4,000 barrels and Baldwin #23, at 4,400 barrels a day, was the biggest producer at Montebello until the newest Temple well shattered that record.
The 4 June edition of the News reported that Temple No. 9 was back producing after two weeks for cleaning and re-drilling and was producing some 7,000 barrels of remarkably clean oil that “is accompanied by 2 million [cubic] feet of gas.” The paper, moreover, asserted that,
The well is the greatest in the state of California, and thought by some to be unequalled anywhere in America today. The big well brings the production of the Temple property up to 10,000 barrels a day.
The News of 30 June had an interesting piece that concerned a dream “Lucky” Baldwin purportedly had about oil in the Montebello Hills during his period of ownership of that property. It remarked that “about twenty years ago Baldwin proposed to turn over forty acres of Rancho La Merced to a drilling of a test well for oil at a point which the turfman selected.” It was added that the contractor requested 160 acres of the land “which was then considered suitable only for grazing stock.”
The parties, however, could not come to an agreement and the idea was dropped, but, the paper continued, “it is interesting to note that ‘Lucky’ Baldwin’s choice of location was approximately where the Standard Oil Company has drilled one of its best-producing wells.” It was observed, however, that, even if attempts had been made at the end of the 19th century, the machinery for drilling would not have been good enough to reach those pools that were enriching Baldwin’s daughters, or Temple.
A few days later, the News commented that “the Standard’s two properties, Baldwin and Temple at Montebello are now making an aggregate production of a million barrels of oil a month, making these two properties the greatest oil producers in the state.” It reiterated the Temple #9 remained “the greatest well in the state and probably in the United States” as it “has settled down to a regular production of 6100 barrels a day,” while Baldwin #23 was second at 4300. It was, however, added that, for the first time since the field began operating about two-and-a-half years prior, there were no well drilling making holes.
A notable event on the Temple lease not pertaining to drilling was the ceremony, at the southwest corner of San Gabriel Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue, to dedicate a memorial to Joseph Kauffman, brother of Temple’s agent and manager, Milton. The younger Kauffman was killed in the Battle of the Argonne Forest in France during the final days of the world war and the Los Angeles Express of 14 July noted that Walter Temple “was chief among the subscribers to the fund which made the memorial possible.” If the remote location, sandwiched among oil wells, seemed strange, the monument soon had a companion.
In July 1921, Temple erected a granite marker next to the Kauffman memorial to identify the location of the original Mission San Gabriel, founded in 1771 on the banks of the old San Gabriel River, now the Río Hondo. Temple’s youngest sons, Walter, Jr. and Edgar, unveiled the tablet, the band of the local Elks lodge played and speeches given in Spanish by attorney Antonio Orfila and in English by Luther Ingersoll. Afterward, the Elks decamped to the Homestead and were entertained by Temple, who was a member. Though the mission memorial is a California Historical Landmark, the actual original site was across San Gabriel Boulevard, not on that corner against which the steep hills ascend.
The perfect record on the Temple lease may have come to an end with wells 10 and 11 and it is notable that the 2 January edition of the Express stated that “the abandonment of 10 wells in the Montebello field gives some indications of its probable productive limit,” though it did caution that “these abandonments do not absolutely condemn all their localities” because there were mechanical issues at some of the wells.
While no record could be found of success at Temple wells 10 and 11, the twelfth well site was located in mid-September 1919. The fact that another year elapsed might be telling, but the Pomona Bulletin of 10 September 1920 recorded that “Montebello’s greatest [current] gusher, and the second largest oil well in California” was brought in and “the well is gushing 4200 barrels of oil a day, and between two and three million [cubic] feet of gas, which is being released under terrific pressure.” Significantly, while producers 5 and 8 were in the flat section near the Basye Adobe, where the Temples formerly resided and which was Standard’s lease headquarters, well #12 was in this area, but a bigger producer.
The Express of 9 September 1920, however, commented that “the Montebello oil field got another thrill and a new lease on life” and that “the Standard’s latest gusher was another surprise, as it came in entirely unexpected.” It went on to observe that indications were that, at best, it might yield up to 300 barrels, but deep sand was struck at 3,260 feet “that sent the black liquid wealth over the crown block” at the rate noted above, though it settled down to 3500 barrels daily. The light gravity oil was “as clean as oil ever came from the earth,” while the large amount of gas “is extremely rich in gasoline.”
As noted earlier in this post, Montebello voted to incorporate in fall 1920 and the new city extended its borders to include the Temple lease. Not surprisingly, Walter Temple joined the various oil companies in protesting the inclusion of their properties within the new boundaries, obviously concerned about municipal regulation, taxes and other aspects and claiming that there was no benefit to them to be included as part of the nascent city. These opposition efforts, however, failed.
The thirteenth well (perhaps unlucky?) looks to have been dry, but, in mid-September 1921, well #14 was completed at the lower section of the hills just west of the two memorials, as an 800-barrel producer. The Times of the 26th, noting that Baldwin’s 57-A came in at half that volume, paid tribute to Standard’s drilling superintendent, Walter Black, who had 75 flowing wells to his credit making him “the greatest oil producer in Southern California,” though he was hardly a producer and certainly not reap the financial rewards a successful producer would!
It was three more years until the fifteenth well also was completed as a producer of 700 barrels, as the News of 26 December remarked that “the old [seven years!] Montebello field staged something of a come back” with the surprise of #15. The paper added that “six years ago the Temple property contributed some of Southern California’s biggest wells.”
A sixteenth well was started in October 1925 and maps show a seventeenth, but what was abundant clear was that, by around 1923 or so, Montebello, considered a shallow field, was markedly declining in production. The Times of 7 December 1925 reported that,
The present total output of the Montebello field is 18,000 barrels per day, of which the Standard Oil Company has about 11,200 barrels. The Standard operates two leases in this field, the Baldwin property, where fifty-five wells are putting out about 8100 barrels per day, and the Temple property, on which are located fifteen wells, making 3100 barrels per day.
So, while there was still decent production emanating from Montebello (hopes in 1923 of a bonanza in the west end were not to be realized) and from the Temple lease, there was certainly a notable drop in yield, this also reflecting on surviving financial statements for Walter Temple, whose royalty payments slumped from tens of thousands of dollars monthly to several thousand—still a very handsome passive income stream, to be sure.
The problem for Temple was that, while his Montebello income declined through the Roaring Twenties, his move into independent oil prospecting and real estate development, not to mention major improvements at the Homestead, including the construction of La Casa Nueva, naturally involved rising expenditures. By early 1926, he was induced to issue bonds for work at his Town of Temple (renamed Temple City two years later) and Alhambra real estate projects, while a loan was also undertaken to complete his house.
The result, even as he tried to manage mounting debt, was that, as the Great Depression burst forth at the end of the decade, Temple was unable to extricate himself from the financial morass he was in and all of his property, including the Montebello oil field property, was lost by summer 1932 when the Depression sunk to its depths.
We are going to return with more early Montebello history, specifically looking at the 1920s period, as well as the notable Montebello Park project that came about in the middle of that decade, so check back for that.
If we stroll through the old Rancho La Merced in Montebello to reflect on the windfall of Walter P. Temple and the downfall of his father, F. P. F. Temple, we might arrive at an ironic anti-proverb: Where there is a well, there is a way.