On the rails again

The Octopus

The geography of Central California is structured by mountain ranges and valleys running more or less parallel from South to North. The central valley in the middle is flanked by the Sierra Nevada in the East and the southern coastal mountain ranges in the west.

Country road in the Central Valley

The parallel geographic topography continues to the east by the Owens valley, the Inyo and White mountains, Panamint Valley, Panamint range, Death Valley and Amargosa mountains.

Interstate I-5 crossing the traverse range between Los Angeles and Bakersfield

The Southern California Coast Ranges again are divided in an inner range to the east, the Gabilan and Diablo Mountains, separated from the outer range along the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Santa Lucia mountains, by the Salinas Valley. The southern end of the Salinas Valley and Diablo and Santa Lucia mountain ranges is formed by the Temblor and Caliente ranges. Together with the Traverse range of among others the Sierra Madre, San Gabriel, San Bernadino and Tehachapi Mountains they form a barrier around the Los Angeles coastal plain.

Country road close to Coalinga

While the coast and the national parks of California enjoy the full attention of an onslaught of tourists they are rarely seen in the central valley. By most, it is seen as a superficial nuisance to be passed through by the cost of many hours of driving from the pleasures of Disneyland in LA to the majestic grandeur of Yosemite National Park. However, in the history and development of California these wide, agricultural valleys have played a more important role than the spectacular sites tourists tend to visit. The valley also has inspired writers to some great works of literature, the best known of course Nobel prize winning John Steinbeck, who’s epic novels Grapes of Wrath, Of mice and men or East of Eden all somehow involve the Central or Salinas Valley.

Merced Wildlife refuge at sunset

When the first Europeans arrived, the Central Valley was a desert wasteland. Because of the mountain ranges to the west there is little rainfall in the valley proper. Water comes down from precipitation and snow melt in the high reaches of the Sierra Nevada to the east. Tributaries from there feed the San Joaquin river. Seasonal floods fed marshes and lakes in this primordial landscape.

Geese at Merced Wildlife Refuge

Today it is hard to imagine that an enormous lake occupied the southern end of the San Joaquin

Valley. Tulare Lake named for the tules or bulrushes growing thickly around it provided excellent habitat for fish, waterbirds, and other animals attracted by the huge body of fresh water. These resources also attracted the native Yokuts people.

Geese at Merced Wildlife Refuge

Few spots in the valley allow an insight today how it looked like at that time. There are some wildlife refuges like the Merced National Wildlife Refuge, Great valley grasslands state park, San Joaquin river National Wildlife refuge, San Louis National Wildlife refuge or Kern National Wildlife refuge. They are essential as resting places for migratory birds on their way South or North. Merced National Wildlife Refuge has an auto tour route and four hiking trails. In the evening hours the water is dotted with water fowl setting down for the night. The view at the setting sun reflecting in the water extends over the vast expanse of flat land which leaves the illusion of going on eternally.

Merced Wildlife Refuge

The marshes and steppe of the central valley had little attraction for the arriving Spaniards. When they built the Camino Real, a chain of Missions from their Mexican heartland up to San Francisco they as much as possible choose a route along the coast. In the area of the Big Sur coast, where the Santa Lucia mountains meet the sea, the steep cliffs don’t allow easy progress. The route of Mission turns inland along the Salinas Valley. The missions were located within daily walking distance of each other. Besides allowing for safe overnight stays the settlements served the conversion and education of the natives. Few survived that treatment.

Mission church San Juan Bautista

Many of those missions still exist. The most complete and originally preserved might be the one in San Juan Bautista. Next to the church, barracks for the soldiers, a nunnery, the Jose Castro House, the Plaza Hotel and other buildings were constructed around a large grassy plaza in front of the church and can still be seen today in their original form. The mission probably also served as the model of the mission San Juan de Guadalajara in Frank Norris novel “Octopus” (see below). Norris worked on a farm in Salinas close to San Juan Bautista to research the novel. However, there never where any similar missions in the imaginary location of the Central Valley towns of Guadalajara and Bonneville, the sites where the book takes place.

Barracks for the soldiers, Mission San Juan Bautista

San Juan Bautista became even bigger with the arrival of the California Gold rush. However, only few years after 1849 the Gold Rush began to wane. Disillusioned miners and other settlers were seeking new ways to survive and earn a living. The San Joaquin Valley offered fertile ground. Farming offered new chances of exploiting California's natural wealth. However, there were two obstacles. There was not enough water or the water was not at the spot where it was needed. Moreover, in the first years after annexation into the United States, California was an isolated outpost. Traveling and transport to the eastern states involved month long and dangerous overland treks or the equally hazardous shipping route around Cape Horn. But even inside California it was difficult to transport agricultural products to the markets at the emerging urbanized centers where they could be profitably sold. Therefore in the beginning cattle was the farmers’ crop of choice.

Gigantic cattle farm in the imperial valley

With the development of the railroad network the solution to the transportation problem came closer by. Almost immediately after the conclusion of the first transcontinental railway in 1869 small carloads of California crops were shipped eastward via the new route. Later, the introduction of iced refrigerator cars or "reefers" increased the time fresh produce could be kept and therefore the travel distance.

Southern Pacific Mission style Glendale station in 1988

The western part of the transcontinental railway had been built by the Central Pacific under the lead of a group of businessmen known as the Big Four: Charles Crocker, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Jr. and C. P. Huntington. In 1868 they bought the Southern Pacific railway found in 1865 by Timothy Phelps with the aim of building a rail connection between San Francisco and San Diego. The construction of the Southern Pacific line along the valley via Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield to Los Angeles now took off quickly and on September 5, 1876, the link between Los Angeles and Southern California and San Francisco and the East was closed at Lang Station, near Palmdale.

Enblem of Southern Pacific above the station entrance

Building the railway was subsidized by extensive federal land grants. Interspersed between the homestead tracts the railroad was compensated for their investment by alternating tracts of 20 miles deep into the land in a checkerboard pattern for each mile of track laid. The land was leased to the homesteaders with the pledge that it would in turn be sold at a fair market value at a later time. The federal land between the railroad plots was distributed for free to the settlers to quickly bring as many people as possible into the empty lands.

Entrance, Los Angeles Union station in 1988

Before the advent of irrigation, the most reliable and profitable crop in the San Joaquin Valley was dry-farmed wheat. In the 1870s and 1880s, wheat growing in California was conducted on a monumental scale. The fertility of the virgin valley soils combined with large farming operations and the latest in agricultural technology like Stockton gang plows, Fresno scrapers, and combine harvesters resulted in unprecedented yields. Labor was cheap and profits immense. The farmers of the valley were not petty homesteaders. Holdings of 4000 to 8000 hectares were common and the greatest wheat rancher, Dr. Hugh Glen, farmed some 22.000 hectares in Tolusa county.

Country road, Imperial Valley

However, the exploitation of the land was short-sighted and oriented in making the quick buck. Use of fertilizers, crop rotation or rest periods were widely ignored. Correspondingly the soil was quickly exhausted and yields and therefore profits decreased after few years of farming. The Bonanza disappeared.

Cattle food factory, Imperial Valley

The interdependence of the railroad and local farmers shaped the settlement of the San Joaquin

Valley. The farmers needed the railroad to get their crops to market, and the railroad needed the revenue from shipping the farmed goods. Being the only railroad in the valley the Southern Pacific had a monopoly. After the settlers had arrived and installed themselves and the first harvests were shipped the Southern Pacific increased the freight rates. At the same time the farming yields started to decrease due to the exhausted soil. The farmers tried to fight the increased freight rates at court but lost. The reason might have been that one of the big four, Leland Stanford, at the same time was governor of California and shareholder of the Southern Pacific.

Silos in the central valley

To improve their parched and exhausted land the farmers pooled together and invested in irrigation projects. Water from the rivers was diverted to irrigate the fields. A canal brought water from the Kings river onto the arid land. Artesian wells were dug. At the same time some true farming started with the introduction of more elaborate crops like hops, vegetables and fruits. By 1878 the tracts were flourishing again in barley, wheat and fruit trees.

Commercial for insurance along highway 99, the main artery of the Central Valley

After almost a decade of working the leased railroad land the Southern Pacific demanded the farmers to buy their plots. Upon settling the land, the expectations for a fair price had been 2.5-5 $ for the acre. Probing their power, the rich owners of the Southern Pacific claimed that settlement and improvements had increased the value of the land. They charged 17-40 $ and threatened with eviction when the farmers refused to pay.

"Own your freedom, own a car": changing engine oil on a car can cost you up to 800 bucks in California

Left alone by the government that was dominated by the money of the railway companies the farmers started to organize their own resistance. On the morning of May 11, 1880, US marshal Alonzo Poole drove his buggie onto the ranch of Henry Brewer. In his pocket were federal eviction orders against Brewer. With him in the buggy were Walter Crow and Mills Hart, who probably were acting as dummy purchasers for Southern Pacific. Upon arrival Poole and his party were met by a gang of 15 armed homesteaders on horseback. When Poole alighted from his buggy and the first shots were fired he was struck by a terrified horse and fell. That probably saved his life. The ensuing shoot-out cost the lives of Crow, Hart and six farmers.

AT&SF tracks at Shafter, California

The incident became known as the massacre at Mussel Slough. 18 years later the writer Frank Norris appeared at the site, near Hanford. His thorough research including work as farm hand led to the 1901 epic novel “The Octopus”, written in the sociocritical and dramatic style of Harris’ great idol, the French writer Emile Zola. The description of the tragic events fueled even more anti-railroad sentiments although the farmers of Mussel Slow had been released from prison after 8 month and carried home in triumph in their buggies.

Shafter museum

However, the publication of Harris’ epic novel probably was not the main reason that the railroad company had to relent. Against violent opposition of Southern Pacific the San Francisco and San Joaquin Valley Railroad was licensed to construct a competing rail line between Stockton and Bakersfield in the late 1890s. Shortly thereafter it was purchased by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. When the first train reached Bakersfield on May 27, 1898, news reports trumpeted how the towns were now free of the "tyranny" of Southern Pacific's monopoly. Present day Burlington Northern Santa Fe still operates that line in competition to the parallel line of Union Pacific, which eventually merged with Southern Pacific and inherited their valley line.

Now trains stop any more at Shafter Depot, now a museum

Meanwhile Southern Pacific had built a second own line linking Los Angeles and San Francisco via Santa Barbara and the Salinas Valley. The last 130 km gap between Surf and Santa Barbara was closed on December 28, 1900.

Atchison, Topeca & Santa Fe Atlantic steam engine in Travel town museum in LA. These engines would have pulled AT&SF passenger trains 100 years ago along the Central Valley

Today about 20 daily freight trains use the tracks of the BNSF on its Central Valley Bakersfield (south of Fresno) and Fresno (north of Fresno) subdivisions. Amtrak also uses the BNSF line for their twelve San Joaquin trains to Bakersfield, 10 to and from Oakland and one round trip to Sacramento which uses Union Pacific tracks north of Stockton. Amtrak preferred the Santa Fe route since it allowed a higher speed of 127 km/h versus 113 km/h on the BNSF route. Although there are fewer freight trains and there is more trackage on the Union Pacific route the line tends to get congested. At the time the decision was taken it might have been biased by massive lobbying of Union Pacific’s predecessor Southern Pacific to influence the Nixon administration. The parallel former Southern Coast Line from Los Angeles via Santa Barbara sees little through freight traffic. However, this line sees the only through passenger train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, the famous former Southern Pacific, now Amtrak Coast starlight to Seattle.

Amtrak California San Joaquin train in Shafter

Roughly 60% of California's population, over 22 million people, resides in Southern California. It is the second-largest urbanized region in the United States. It appears strange that the Amtrak California San Joaquin trains stop at Bakersfield and passengers have to take a connecting bus to Los Angeles. The reason is Union Pacific. The Traverse range is a formidable barrier for all trains leaving the Los Angeles basin. All trains leaving the LA basin towards the Central Valley have to climb up the Traverse range via the Tehachapi Pass. Mile long freight trains coil around the Tehachapi Loop, one of the world’s busiest single track railway lines. The situation will only change when the California high speed line is finished. However, instead of building the urgently needed connection between Bakersfield and LA first, where no other alternative is offered and high numbers of passengers could be expected, the first parts of the high speed line are primarily built in the Central Valley north of Bakersfield where the San Joaquin trains already offer good connections.

California High Speed project under construction

So for the time being only the Central Valley part of the high speed line between Merced and Bakersfield will probably be finished by 2031. The next phase of the project will include the extension to San Francisco and Los Angeles but it is unclear where the financing comes from and when it will be finished. There is approval for the alignment for the 211 km between Bakersfield, Palmdale, Burbank and Los Angeles. 188 km will be covered in 36 min. Since the train will pass through 61 km of tunnels it is questionable whether it will become a favorite with sight-seers and an alternative to the spectacular Coast Starlight using the coast and Salinas valley route. If it is ever built it will take the high speed train another 7 min to cover the remaining 23 km to Los Angeles Union station.

New bridge for California high speed project

While the mining boom waned and the farmers fought with the Southern Pacific another boom cast its first shadows on California. In some spots in California, for example in La Brea in the middle of the LA basin, gaseous hydrocarbons bubble up and tar seeps to the surface. The resulting tar pits are frequently covered by a treacherous layer of water.

Coalinga Oil field

In 1863 a man called Baker dug the first well in LA on Hoover Street between Seventh Street and Wilshire Boulevard. However, that was not a big success. In 1875 and 1876 a guy called Mentry drilled three wells at the Pico Canyon Oil field. Success came with the forth well, a so called "gusher": at 110 m depth the drill hit an oil well with such a pressure that the oil gushed out high above the derrick which had been used to drill it. The well started producing in September 1876 and continued so for 114 years before it was finally capped in 1990.

Coalinga Oil field

In 1892, luck-less gold prospector and adventurer Edward L. Doheny and his partner Charles A. Canfield discovered the reserves of natural asphalt in the La Brea tar pits in the city of Los Angeles, at the time a minor settlement. Doheny dug a well of 1.8 m × 1.2 m with picks, shovels, and a windlass to mine the asphalt which could be refined for oil. When the well reached a depth of 47 m Doheny started drilling with a eucalyptus tree trunk. In 1893 the well reached down 69 m and produced 40 barrels per day.

Derrick road, Coalinga

The well was a small producer, but while it pumped steadily for three years, Doheny and others sunk around three hundred more wells. By 1895, the state of California alone, produced 1.2 million barrels of oil. In 1903 California became the leading oil-producing state in the US, a position it held back-and forth with Oklahoma until 1930. With increasing production the producers were eager to increase the demand. In the early 1900’s Doheny tried to persuade railroads to switch from coal to oil to power their locomotives. Soon, most of Southern Pacific’s steam engines were running on oil. Doheny and Canfield soon made a fortune. By 1925, Doheny's net worth was $100 million ($1.79 billion in 2024 dollars), at the time more than John D. Rockefeller. As of 2022, California produced 3% of the crude oil of the nation, behind Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, Alaska, Colorado, and Oklahoma.

Coalinga Oil field

The California oil boom was subject to several famous novels. The discovery of Doheny and Canfield’s first well appears in John Jakes's novel “California Gold”. However, it was Upton Sinclair’s “Oil!” published in 1926-1927 which recounts the developments of the oil boom in California based on the lives of Edward L. Doheny and Charles A. Canfield.

Coalinga Oil field

In the book the story is told from the viewpoint of James Arnold Ross Jr., nicknamed Bunny, oil prince and son of the oil tycoon James Arnold Ross Sr, i.e. Doheny. Since Bunny sympathizes with socialist views and labor activist of the oil union Paul Watson he runs into arguments with his father and his partner Vernon Roscoe, leaders of the independent oil company Ross consolidated. The latter argue that they have to increase their oil empire and profits in an endless struggle with the great oil producing trusts, in the book represented by Excelsior Pete and Victor oil. The struggle culminates in the attempt to install president Harding and bribe secretary of the interior Fall to acquire access to federal oil leases, a scandal later known under the name of the Teapot Dome.

Coalinga Oil field

In 2007 the book was loosely covered by the film “There Will Be Blood”. The film won two academy awards for Best Actor for Day-Lewis and Best Cinematography and is widely regarded as one of the greatest films of the 21st century.

Coalinga Oil field

In “Oil!” Bunny wirnesses how the bucolic countryside of the foothills of the Traverse range teeming with quail and simple and poor but happy farmers is transferred to a mayhem of gushing oil wells and derricks burning out of control. The life of the Watkins family, poor farmers in an area where Bunny himself discovers oil, is forever changed.

Coalinga Oil field

Photos of the time show LA’s Huntington Beach Oil field. The backdrop of the beach is an immense forest of derricks, clouds of smoke and sand covered in oil. Although the mess is cleaned up today and the old Derricks are replaced by the one-armed knicker pumps, the field in Huntington beach is still producing. In “Oil!” Huntington Beach is called Beach City while Los Angeles is transformed to Angel City.

Coalinga Oil field

The Coalinga Oil Field surrounding the town of Coalinga halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco at the foot of the Diablo Range is a large oil field in western Fresno County, California. Like Bunny’s own oil field, ironically called Paradise, it was discovered in the late 19th century and became active around 1890.

Coalinga Oil field

In the early years of the oil boom competition was fierce, with a particularly sharp conflict between a group of independent oil producers (fpr Sinclair Ross consolidataed) and Standard Oil, (Excelsior Pete et al) a gigantic trust which was dismantled by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1911. An article published in the New York Times in 1905 showed how Standard attempted to force its competitors out of business by artificially holding down the price of oil to as little as ten cents a barrel. Like Bunny’s Paradise field, the Coalinga was run by independents.

Coalinga Oil field

In the beginning railroad companies shipped oil in wooden barrels loaded into boxcars. They soon discovered that that was not cost-effective and developed steel cylindrical tank cars capable of transporting bulk liquids. By 1915, the transportation of petroleum products had become a lucrative business for the railroads. At the same time, the Southern Pacific Railroad also worked in conjunction with Standard Oil to obstruct the independent operators of oil wells by delaying delivery of drilling equipment and shipment of their produce to the markets.

Coalinga Oil field

When they built a pipeline to San Francisco Bay to avoid the railroads and the facilities in the LA basin the construction was obstructed by continuous harassment from Standard Oil. Eventually the independents were only successful by secretly building a real pipeline while simultaneously seeming to work on a "dummy" in a more prominent location.

Coalinga Oil field

To get independent from the big producers, Ross/Coscoe alias Doheny/Canfield also invested in refining their own crude oil. The Shell Martinez Refinery, in Martinez, California, at the end of the pipeline close to San Francisco Bay, has operated continuously since its construction in 1915.

Coalinga Oil field

The Coalinga field attained a peak production of 19,500,000 barrels (3,100,000 m3) of oil in 1912. The value declined steadily afterwards. With over 1600 active wells the Coalinga field is now the eighth-largest oil field in California. It is operated by Chevron Corp. (formerly Standard Oil of California or SoCal) and Aera Energy LLC. During the last 50 years the decline in well productivity has been countered by advanced technologies such as water flooding, steam flooding, fire flooding, and polymer flooding. Steam is pumped into the underground heavy oil deposits to help them flow more freely. The steam for enhanced recovery is produced by a Cogeneration plant, which burns gas from the field to produce steam. It also provides electricity for California's power grid. Even with such methods, the oil output of the field has declined considerably compared to the early part of the 20th century: in 2006, the field's operators reported 5,700,000 barrels (910,000 m3) of oil pumped. Although not directly visible from the road, the environmental impact must be considerable. The field is closer to exhaustion than most of the other major fields in California. Its remaining reserves, at around 58,000,000 barrels (9,200,000 m3), are less than 6 percent of its total original capacity. Over 912 million barrels (145,000,000 m3) of oil have been pumped from the field since the late 19th century.

Outside Coalinga

Sheep grazing the dry meadows of the foothills with the oil rigs in the background remind of the sheep farm of the Watkins family in Sinclair’s book, which loose their bucolic property to the oil boom. Eventually they loose their home by a big fire after a gusher ran out of control. However, when the field will finally run out, nature and farming will come back. Paul Watkins will have finally won the oil war.

Sheep grazing outside Coalinga

The town of Coalinga is in the center of the oil field. In the second half of the 19th century there also were coal mines in the foothills of the Diablo mountains. Coalinga started its life as a coaling station of the Southern Pacific Railroad. SP’s coaling station was simply called coaling station A, “COALING A” which led to the Spanish sounding name. Originally, the line went on 4 more miles to Alcalde, the first settlement in the area, where Tolton T. Barnes had started raising sheep in 1869.

Practicing to cycle outside Coalinga oil fields

With the completion of the line to Alcalde, some 50,000 local acres became the property of the Southern Pacific Railroad. Alcalde terminus contained a turntable for the engines, a spur for storing cars, a depot building with living quarters on the upper floor, and a house. The station master lived above the depot with his family. Next to business regarding the railroad and the twice weekly trains he was in charge of the telegraph.

Dusk outside Coalinga

The railroad opened up the world to the people of the area, although the sheep business continued until 1887. With the railroad income could be supplemented with the sale of hunted quail from

the area. The birds were shipped by train to elite restaurants in the San Francisco area. With the founding of Coalinga also garden farming using the Water from the Warthen Creek was started. The Fresno Hot Springs hotel was built. It had space for 200 guests. Today there is nothing left of the former Southern Pacific branch line to Coalinga.

Downtown Coalinga

With the discovery of oil in the area Coalinga grew and became prosperous. In 1913 Shell purchased California Oilfields Ltd. Unlike many other oil camps a well organized and equipped company town called oilfields was built to house 600 residents. There was a modern hospital, bakery, boarding house, ice factory, water system, and a sewer system with septic tanks. Its farming operations supplied vegetables, milk, butter, eggs, poultry, ham, pork and beef for the camp residents. The settlement also had a fully stocked store, post office and its own salaried minister.

Coalinga Prebyterian church

An onsite school named “Oil King” took care of the school-aged children of the employees. Its five teachers were housed within the modern schoolhouse. Oil field workers were notorious drifters, but at Oilfields living conditions were good although workers had to work 12 hours a day seven days a week. Workers formed a tight knit community.

Coalinga clock tower

On May 2nd, 1983, Coalinga was struck by an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5. The eight block commercial district in downtown was almost completely destroyed. 691 buildings suffered major damage and more than 300 were lost completely. The downtown shopping mall was rebuilt. However, it gives a quiet and empty impression.

Coalinga motel

It is obvious that Coalinga has seen better times. The era of the oil boom has passed. The town has tried to rely on other sources of income. Interesting enough, one is Cannabis. In 2016 the town sold its municipal prison to a cannabis cultivation company to get out of its financial crisis. Outside town the huge state prison offered new employment for the former municipal prison guards. That way none-withstanding the decline in the oil business the town’s population steadily grew and now is at some 17.000.

Historic gas station in Coalinga museum

In the center of town the R.C. Baker Memorial Museum is housed in a former Oil Tools machine shop. The museum collects displays local fossils, models of prehistoric fauna, Native American artifacts, and items from pioneer settlers. Most prominent is the display of a restored 1934 Richfield gas station.

Boiler exhibit in Coalinga for steam production to extract oil

At a little square a boiler draws my attention. However, although it looks like a locomotive boiler it was used to produce steam to pump into the oil wells to improve to extraction efficiency of the well.

Recreation of primordial tar pit

When mining of tar started in the pits of La Brea in Los Angeles it was obstructed by the jumble of bones found in some of the pits where the tar seeped to the surface. In the beginning they were taken for the remnants of domestic and wild local animals which had been trapped there.

Hydrocarbon gas bubbles emerging from water covered tar pit

Only after 1901 W. W. Orcutt, a Los Angeles geologist, discovered that the bones were fossils of extinct animal species. Attracted by shallow pools of water on the tar surface animals like mastodons or mammoth had walked into the tar and got trapped. Frantic movements accelerated their fate. The desperate sound of those animals trying to get out of the muck attracted crowds of scavengers. Consequently the number of carnivores found at La Brea were much higher than the number of their victims. Up to now fossil bones of more than 4000 different dire wolves have been excavated. Upon entering the main hall an enormous wall displays only the skulls of hundreds of these wolves on an orange background. There were numerous fossils of three different types of saber-toothed cats, american lion, giant jaguar, grizzly bears but also of vultures and other birds of prey.

Sabre tooth tiger fossil

Collection of Dire Wolves skulls

Asphalt is a superb preservative to protect small and delicate fossils such as bird bones. As a result, the La Brea collection of fossil birds is one of the world’s largest. Asphalt also helps preserving bones of small animals like vertebrates such as snakes or lizzards but also mice or squirrels.

Extinct vulture fossil and how it might have looked like

The process is ongoing. The park between the museum and the Los Angeles County museum of Art is part of the museum and a volunteer provides a guided tour of the tar pits on the ground. Some are still in progress of excavation, others are still trapping animals. What seems to be the innocent surface of a pond is the thin, treacherous layer of water on a bog of tar. From time to time bubbles of gas pop up through the reflective water surface. Oil or tar seeps through the surface in various locations, even in the middle of the tarmac of the walking path.

Tar seeping through tarmac at La Brea tar pits

The guide tells us about the outcry of tourists watching a flock of Canadian geese getting their feet trapped in the tar. A rescue team had to help the poor geese. Many of the smaller tar pools are covered with dry leaves which stick to the gluey surface. We watch a squirrel which noses around one of the pools… coming closer and closer. It did not get trapped before we left.

Squirrel in high danger

Already until 1915 early excavation had retrieved 750000 fossil species. The most spectacular found their way into the Los Angeles museum of natural history. In 1917, wealthy philanthropist George C. Page arrived from Nebraska. His money and fascination for fossils led to the building and opening of the G.C.Page La Brea tar pit museum in 1977.

Giant ground sloth

Most visitors come for the display of enormous mammoth, mastodon and giant ground sloth exhibits. However, what makes La Brea museum really unique are the displays of birds and small animals. The center of the museum is a giant glass cage where volunteers are constantly busy separating fossils from the surrounding muck. Tiny pieces of fossils are immediately displayed on a plate behind the glass screen.

Mammoth

The amount of incoming material is gigantic. Already the excavation of the foundations of the museum itself before 1977 yielded such an enormous amount of material that even now, 50 years later only a small part has been cleaned and sorted. The building of a parking garage on the ground under the adjoining Los Angeles County Museum of Art led to the discovery of new tar pits. Containers full of material found there including the entire skeleton of a giant mammoth is waiting for volunteers to be cleaned and sorted.

Analysing fossil tar, Page museum of La Brea Tar Pits

When I first visited the museum in 1989 there was an exhibit of the fossilized skeleton of a young woman. In the display it was alternately covered with a holographic image of how she probably looked like when she was alive. When I came back now I was looking for it in vain. I asked some of the employees and eventually I found one who remembered. The native American community were opposing the display and the skeleton was giving back to them to be treated in their traditional way. It is unknown what happened with it.

All American high security water storage

Although the issues of transportation and irrigation were solved by the end of the 19th century the problems of the valley did not stop. By the late 19th century, settlers had diverted so much water from the rivers that huge Tulare Lake began to recede. As the lake retreated, farmers moved in, digging irrigation ditches and planting grain. The lake went completely dry for the first time in 1898. In the 20th century vast cotton fields eventually replaced the lake.

Pelicans relaxing in reservoirs, Central Valley

Irrigation turned the fertile San Joaquin Valley into one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world. Over a century of intensive effort reclaimed what was perceived as "swampland" and channel water to those dry desert parts of the valley where it was needed. Canals and irrigation ditches crisscross the length and breadth of the Valley. At all seasons of the year, something can grow here. Sometimes two or even three harvests per year are possible. Some 250 crops are grown - a cornucopia of grapes, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, peaches, nectarines, plums, oranges or lemons fills the baskets of the Union. However, the modern and highly technological agricultural industry resulted in a highly engineered landscape.

Farm Supply shop, somewhere in the Central Valley

Access to reliable sources of water is vital to agriculture and the economic health of the arid San Joaquin Valley and to the rest of California. Because so much is at stake, the control of water has often been contentious. Today, the sustainability of irrigated agriculture is at risk due to a dwindling supply of available fresh water, poor drainage, and increasing salinity of soil and groundwater resources.

Burning fields, Imperial Valley

To get rid of the remains of plants after the crop has been harvested and at the same time provide some fertilizer to the ground entire fields are set on fire. The resulting smoke not only brings particles, soot and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere above the valley but also the chemicals remaining from fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides or insecticides which do not burn but evaporate, thus creating a health risk for everybody around. An additional risk might be that the fire occurs right next to a sign which announces the presence of a high pressure gas pipe and strictly forbids smoking. We get the hell out of there.

Grocery store, Alpaugh, California

Traveling down the valley not only offers views of endless orchards, alfalfa fields and cattle stockyards but also of abandoned lots where the remainders of dried-out, withered trees and scrubs are bleached in the sun. Other fields are covered with a whitish crust of salt. Entire villages have turned into shanty-towns where people camp in abandoned, graffiti covered ruins, tents or assemblies of garbage cardboard and sheet metal.

Car residence, Mecca, California

Most of the settlements and the yards are filled with the remainders of discarded vehicles. Sometimes a vehicle still serves as somebody’ home. A chair outside waits to be occupied, a dusty roller will help to do some shopping in the supermarket across the parking lot.

"Where miracles happen", Lighthouse Supply, Egrenberg, AZ

The desperate flock to one of the numerous churches. Jesus saves international church, First church of the Nazarene, Church of Jesus Christ the latter day Saints, Church of Christ, Seven days Adventist church, Presbyterian church, Faith Fellowship, Light house, Eternal life Gospel Ministries, Chapel Grace, New life Tabernacle, Baptist church and of course a catholic church compete for believers. Coalinga alone tells at least 12 church communities.

Sacred heart catholic mission, Alpaugh, California

The agriculture in the central valley as well as the neighboring imperial valley closer to the border to Mexico is relying on the cheap work from immigrants arriving from the central American countries south of the border. Salaries are low, working conditions hard and status and legal position precarious. Many stay in makeshift quarters, always threatened by the chance of discovery and eviction.

Abandoned cottage

During the stop at a gas station I watch a man meditating over the muddy waters running swiftly down the garbage covered trench of an irrigation channel. In his hands a couple of empty plastic bottles. Next to the ditch gape the empty black windows openings of a graffiti covered ruin of a building sitting among refuse under some romantic looking palm trees. A peek inside reveals a jumble of discarded furniture, mattresses, plastic bags and fat stained food packaging. The smell is disgusting. When I make my way back to the gas station I watch the man enter the building. He has managed to fill his water bottles with the unsavory muck from the irrigation ditch.