Filed: 09/22/2000 By PHIL RYALL http://www.westkern-oilmuseum.org/ http://www.taft-oildorado.com/ Kern County Museum http://www.kcmuseum.org Santa Paula, California Oil Museum http://www.oilmuseum.net/ R. C. Baker Museum, Coalinga Area Chamber
of Commerce
There are four oil or petroleum museums I can identify in California, which is one of the premier and historic oil-producing states in the country. Two are in Kern County, one is in the Ventura County city of Santa Paula and one is in Coalinga. The two Kern County museums are in an expansion mode. The West Kern Oil Museum Inc., 1186 Wood St. near Highway 33 in Taft, runs as a private, non-profit museum. The other, called the Kern County Oil Exhibit, is at the Kern County Museum on North Chester Avenue in Bakersfield. This museum has undergone major changes in the last several years and is in the planning and fund-raising phases of major growth. The West Kern Oil Museum is in a more modest but consistent growth pattern
with exhibits being added and funding coming from the private sector. Retired
Californian columnist Bill Rintoul is from Taft and has acted as the Museum's
historian. In fact, his first book, "Oildorado,"
The West Kern Oil Museum is dedicated to preserving and relating not only the history of oil through the years, but also of the people who lived in the communities of McKittrick, Maricopa, Fellows and Taft. Without the people, the businesses they brought and the oil companies, there would be no history. The museum sits in the heart of one of the most productive oil fields in the world, the historic Midway-Sunset Oilfield. It is also within a stone's throw of several other world-class oilfields — Elk Hills, Buena Vista, Cymric and Belridge. These fields are all on the west side of the San Joaquin Basin about 30 miles west of Bakersfield and produce about 50 percent of California's oil. The West Kern Oil Museum was established in 1973 to collect, preserve and interpret the oil history with help from a group of dedicated volunteers. The present museum building and grounds were opened to the public in October 1980. One of the few complete original wooden derricks left in the world stands guard at the museum. This derrick, built in 1917, stands over the original well, which was drilled during the first weeks after the United States entered World War I. The old cable tools used to drill and produce this well are still in place. The museum has grown from three to eight acres just on the south side of Taft. There are 11 buildings and when the master plan is completed will represent an old-time oil company camp on its oil lease lying among the fields. There is a main museum building, a Story of Oil addition, an oil tool supply house, a firehouse, a blacksmith shop, a field warehouse, a tent house in which early settlers lived, an office, a library and gift shop, an outdoor class room and pond, a park and gazebo, a pipe perforating ship and a building housing the transportation department with five restored trucks and a 1920s garage. Soon to be completed is a steel derrick, a shotgun house and a machine shop. The West Kern Oil Museum is open five days a week from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Curator Jane Kinsey and her staff are knowledgeable and helpful. For more information, call 661 765-6664. *Other Books by William
Rintoul
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