Lakeview Gusher Turns 100!

While the City of Taft commemorates its 100th anniversary of incorporation, there is another prominent local event that is a century old too.  And, it happened almost exactly seven months before Taft was incorporated.  You might say it gave birth to the burgeoning oil community.

It is the famous Lakeview Gusher – the mightiest of the gushers that characterized early day oil production.  After it blew in on March 15, 1910, Lakeview No. 1 – as it was called by the tiny Lakeview Oil Company – flowed unchecked for 544 days and spewed out an estimated nine million barrels of oil.

The oil that surged through the top of the wooden derrick was driven by high natural gas pressure that would soon destroy the derrick, substructure and well casing.  The column of oil shot several hundred feet high and could be seen for miles. The resulting oil mist touched everything in the Taft area and was even detected on clothes drying on lines as far away as the Cuyama Valley – some 30 miles away.  The river of oil created by the blow-in began making its way toward Buena Vista Lake to the northeast, throwing up the specter of an impending ecological disaster.

Teams of workers quickly dug 20 huge sumps between the spewing just over four miles southeast of town.  Even though the workers were paid $5 a day – a good wage in those days – it wasn’t easy to find men willing to do the tedious and messy job of holding back that much oil.  In the end, they were successful in keeping the gusher from spoiling the lake.  Despite the effort to contain and capture the oil, which was flowing at an estimated  90,000 barrels each day, there weren’t enough storage and shipping facilities to handle the flow and much of the oil remained in sumps.

Today about all that is left at the site is a historical marker and remnants of sandbags that were employed in the effort to hold back the flow, although most of that was cleared away by a cleanup crew unaware of the significance of the canvas protruding from what once were the banks of the sumps.

The West Kern Oil Museum is planning a fitting tribute on March 15, 2010, the 100th anniversary of the gusher. Lakeview gusher also will be a focal point of Oildorado.