Added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 11, 2020

In the 15-minute drive between California’s first successful oil well and the historic Pioneer Oil Refinery in Newhall, you’ll pass by at least three Chevron stations. The omnipresent blue and red Chevron logo is a lasting reminder of the impact that the oil industry has had on Newhall and the surrounding Santa Clarita Valley for the past 150 years. In 1879, a century before Chevron was even known by that name, its early predecessor Pacific Coast Oil acquired the California Star Oil Works (CSO). CSO was the owner of Pico No. 4 (Etan Does LA visit #97), the well that in 1876 had first tapped the deep oil field underneath Pico Canyon, set off an oil boom in Southern California and continued producing for over 100 years. 

The early commercial success of Pico No. 4 wouldn’t have been possible without the Pioneer Oil Refinery, California’s oldest extant refinery, and according to some sources the world’s oldest. This was the philosopher’s stone of the early California oil industry, a contraption made of brick, wood and metal that alchemized crude into commercially viable products. While the Pioneer Oil Refinery was active for just over a decade, and was soon eclipsed by more advanced refineries with greater capacities, this was where it all began. 

In 1873 a small consortium of oilmen, banking on the future of Pico oil, formed the Los Angeles Petroleum Refining Company. By the end of the year they had raised enough capital to build a small refinery at Lyon’s Station, located on a convenient stagecoach route. The new still was small and rudimentary, and its first couple operators were incapable of creating quality, smoke-free kerosene. There were points in the mid-1870s where the entire operation threatened to go belly-up.  

Some deep-pocketed San Francisco oil merchants, Frederick B. Taylor and Demetrius G. Scofield, came to the rescue in 1876 in the same month that Charles Mentry struck oil at Pico No. 4. Taylor bought a 30% stake in CSO, bought hundreds of acres’ worth of oil claims in Pico Canyon and set out to build a larger, more advanced refinery, which would later be known as the Pioneer Oil Refinery. It was built on a five-acre site next to the inn at Andrew’s Station (named after the inn’s owner, Andrew Kraszynski), right where the Southern Pacific Railroad stopped on its newly completed Los Angeles – San Francisco line. Very convenient!

The Pioneer Oil Refinery was supervised by Joseph A. Scott, a refiner with experience in the famous oil fields of Titusville, PA. The new facility started with three brick stills (one a “cheesebox” style still from Titusville 100-barrel capacity, the other two 15 and 20-barrel stills repurposed from the failed Lyon’s Station refinery), plus a bunch of storage tanks on the hill above, to push the oil into the stills by gravity. They added another cheesebox after the refinery opened in 1877. 

Once Pico No. 4 was drilled, Pacific Coast Oil built a cast iron pipe to move the crude all the way from the well to the Pioneer Oil Refinery (you can still see the pipe today, with “Chevron” spraypainted on it at intervals). At the refinery the crude would be separated into oils of different gravity and chemically treat it before it could become a salable product – in Pioneer’s case benzene, kerosene for lighting and two types of lubricants for industrial applications; residues from the refining process were sometimes sold for fuel. Other byproducts of the process, like gasoline, were usually discarded; keep in mind this was the mid-1870s, still 15 years away from the birth of the American auto industry.

In 1880 Pacific Coast Oil built a larger refinery in Alameda, in the East Bay of California, to support the high-quality crude they discovered nearby in Moody Gulch. Within five years Pioneer Oil Refinery no longer produced kerosene; it essentially became an auxiliary to Alameda, partially distilling products that would be finished up north, and selling residues as fuel oil. By 1890 Pioneer had been shut down completely. 

While it would never again process oil, Pioneer has had a pretty active afterlife. Some of the equipment was removed during WWI to use in the war effort. In 1930 the decaying refinery was restored by Standard Oil, which had acquired Pacific Coast Oil in 1901. Standard built a historical museum at its Richmond Refinery in 1961, and brought the first two stills (the ones that were salvaged from Lyon’s station) and boiler from the Pioneer site to stand in front of the museum. The museum closed long ago, and Standard Oil has since changed its name to Chevron. But these refinery relics are “still” viewable by employees walking around The Rod and Gun Club, a private recreation facility on Chevron’s Richmond campus. See pictures here. 

Back down in Newhall, Chevron donated the refinery site to the city of Santa Clarita in 1998. The city is right now in the process of restoring the refinery and turning the surrounding land into an industrial park. When I visited on December 26, 2021, a fence kept me from getting too close, but I could only see the remaining stills, the brick foundation and chimney. This site indicates that the storage tanks, engine and pump house have been removed for their protection, with plans to spiff them up and reassemble them as part of the restoration. 

Recommended Reading

+Pioneer Oil Refinery’s NRHP nomination form (pdf)

+Pioneer Oil Refinery History (Elsmerecanyon.com)

+Pioneer Oil Refinery: The First Successful Oil Refinery in California (American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1975) (pdf)

+Chevron History (Chevron.com)

+Original Boilers, Newhall Pioneer Oil Refinery (SCVHistory.com, 2016)

+Pioneer Oil Refinery in Newhall added to national historic site registry (The Signal SCV, 2021)