152 The American Geologist. ^^'''''^' i^^i. 
ords just given, yet the fifty or more wells drilled in this field 
have yielded a steady supply for more than a dozen years and 
are still pumped. Their total yield is estimated at not less than 
one and a half million harrcls and one of the wells is reported 
to have given during its first year 50,000 barrels. The oil from 
this field, or rather the residuum after refining, goes by a pipe- 
line to the beet-sugar factory at Chino, sixteen miles away, 
which has used about 100,000 barrels a year. 
Not until 1892 was any successful attempt made to develop 
the various oil indications in the city of Los Angeles. In that 
year a small well was drilled to the depth of a little more than 
200 feet, and a yield of oil obtained which though slight, was 
a stimulus to greater undertakings during the following years 
until now in 1901 there are within the city limits 600 or 700 
wells yielding nearly 1,200,000 barrels yearly. The total yield 
from the field since it was opened is reported between 7,000,000 
and 8,000,000 million barrels but the annual production has 
fallen oft' since 1897. Wells have been bored too close together 
and the sand which is neither deep nor thick, shows signs of 
speedy exhaustion. The derricks stand thicker on the ground 
at Los Angeles than at almost any place in Pennsylvania. 
Passing to the central part of the state we find the oil-field 
of Fresno county with Coalinga and Oil City as its two central 
points. Numerous attempts had been made to find petroleum 
before 1895 but only since that year has the region come into 
the list of California oil-fields. Its yield now cannot be less 
than 35.000 to 40.000 barrels monthly. 
Not a few of the Coalinga wells are petroleum-geysers 
which sixjut oil for a few minutes and then rest until the gas 
again accumulates and develops pressure enough to force the 
oil to a bight of some feet above the ground. This oil is 
pil>ed to the Southern Pacific railway. 
South of Fresno in Keni county and near its chief town, 
Bakersfield, lies another of the California oil-fields. It is sit- 
uated near the southern end of the great valley of California 
— the San Joaquin — and not far north of the point where the 
Sierra Nevada and the Coast range come together and throw 
the rampart of the Tehachapi around its southern end. In 
this nook in 1897 near Bakersfield, a shallow trial well was 
dug which yielded a considerable quantity of oil at the small 
