INTRODUCTION
The other day I found myself in Santa Clarita with a couple of hours to kill. I Googled “best restaurants in Santa Clarita” — knowing full well that Google has been a mostly garbage search engine for years — completely corrupted as it is by paid advertisements and SEO. I’m sure that there are better restaurants in Santa Clarita, but Google pointed me in the direction of pub chains like Islands and Lazy Dog. I wasn’t really that hungry anyway. I tried “points of interest” and the nearest result was outside of Santa Clarita — the old ghost town of Mentryville. Having just watched Once Upon a Time in the West at the Vista the day before, Ennio Morricone’s theme had been playing in my head on a constant loop ever since and a visit to an Old West ghost town seemed just the thing.
Maybe it’s not time to take Google behind the shed just yet.
HISTORY
Mentryville is located inside of the small, fairly narrow section of Pico Canyon along the banks of Pico Springs (or Pico Creek). To the north is the south facing slope, which is characterized by Chaparral shrubland, grasslands, and oak savanna. In spring one can often enjoy the blooms of the California fuchsia, California poppy, canyon sunflower, redbush monkey flower, Marisposa lily, sticky monkey flower, and sugarbush — although few were in evidence on this day. The lowlands were dominated by black mustard, introduced by the Spanish, which out competes many natives, although a few brilliant lupines defied the odds. Higher up the hillsides, Chaparral Yucca stalks adorned with white flowers shoot up dramatically from their bases dotting the scrubby hillsides. To the south is a north-facing slope. It is considerably woodsier in character. There are firs and oaks – the coast live, coastal scrub, and valley oaks – as well as the only nominally oaken poison oak. Along the banks of Pico Springs grows arroyo willow, mule fat, and Fremont cottonwood. The air carried pappus, pollen, and a cumin-like scent that, though familiar, I don’t know the source of.
Mentryville is located in the Santa Susana Mountains, just north of 765-meter-tall Sand Rock Peak. Before the arrival of humans, the country was already stewarded by American badgers, American kestrels, barn owls, bobcats, brush rabbits, California ground squirrels, California king snakes, California mule deer, coast horned lizards, common poorwills, common ravens, coyotes, dusky-footed wood rats, gopher snakes, gray foxes, greater roadrunners, great horned owls, grizzlies, kangaroo rats, long-tailed weasels, mountain lions, Pacific tree frogs, red-shouldered hawks, red-tailed hawks, ring-necked snakes, ring-tailed cats, southern alligator lizards, Southern Pacific rattlesnakes, side-blotched lizards, skunks, spotted towhee, striped racers, turkey vultures, western skinks, Western horned owls, Western toads, and whiptails.
The first humans in the area were the Chumash, whose ancestors arrived in Southern California at least 13,000 years ago near the end of the last ice age. Nearby, they established the village of Kaštiq in the valley formed at the junction of the Santa Susanas, Sierra Pelona, and Topatopas. The name is usually translated to “what is like a face or an eye.” It is from Kaštiq that we get the name, Castaic. Fast forward a mere 10,000 years or so and the Tataviam and Tongva migrated into the region from their ancestral homeland in the Sonoran Desert. The three nations established a trading post about ten kilometers south.
By 450 CE, the Tataviam, whose name translates to “the people facing the sun,” were the dominant people in the Santa Clarita Valley region. In 1884, a collection of Tataviam artifacts were discovered in nearby Bowers Cave. I don’t know if any archaeologists or Native historians have identified the area that became home to Mentryville as having been historically important to either the Chumash or Tatativiam but I have to assume that both would’ve taken advantage, at least on occasion, of a beautiful valley nourished year ’round by a clear-watered spring.
When Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and his expedition sailed along the coast of Alta California, they claimed all they saw for the Spanish Empire. The valley in which Mentryville would be established eluded their view but I don’t know how far inland the land their claim extended. Centuries would pass, though, before any Tataviam would actually meet a Spaniard. In 1769, Catalan explorer, Gaspar de Portolà i Rovira, led an overland expedition through the country. In 1797, the Spanish founded the Misión San Fernando Rey de España in the nearby San Fernando Valley. The Chumash and Tataviam employed there, willingly or otherwise, were renamed “Fernandeños” by their masters.
The Spanish radically transformed the countryside by introducing cows, hogs, horses, goats, and sheep – as well as the aformentioned black mustard for their livestock to graze upon. The greenish-yellow spray is pretty and the European honey bees, introduced by Americans in the 1850s, clearly welcomed their presence in the slightest and my green trousers, like their legs, were soon covered in yellow pollen. I thought of Jason Journeyman‘s advice to eat edible non-native invasives. I’d never eaten wild mustard before. I wiped a few leaves off to make sure there weren’t any camouflaged caterpillars or other critters and popped the leaves in my mouth. I tried to identify the flavor as I chewed and walked. After a few minutes of contemplation, it dawned on me — mustard greens. Oh, right.
Mexico declared independence from Spain in 1810. They secularized the mission in 1834, simultaneously freeing the natives but also requiring them to find work or risk imprisonment. Weakened by eleven years of warfare against Spain, Mexico was no match for the invading US, who conquered 55% of Mexico’s territory, including all of California. California was made the 31st state in 1850.
OIL!
Everyone who’d ruled this region was aware of its oil seepages. The Chumash mixed it with sap to waterproof their deep seafaring oceancraft. Chumash women fashioned tar balls to weigh down their grass skirts. The Tataviam used oil to waterproof their baskets and to soothe arthritis. Pico Canyon was named after Mexican general Andrés Pico, who’d fought against US forces in the Mexican-American War. He began hauling asphaltum out of the canyon that bears his name in 1855 for use in caulking and tarring roofs. Pico teamed with Edward Fitzgerald Beale and Vincent Gelcich to establish the Los Angeles Asphaltum and Petroleum Mining District in 1865. That was followed by the formation of the San Fernando Petroleum Mining District, which issued a patent to Andrés Pico and his son, Rómulo, for Pico Springs and to Henry Clay Wile, who was looking for oil nearby.
Pico died on 14 February 1876. A few months later, on 26 September 1876, his claim would become the first commercially viable oil field when pre-existing wells were deepend by a French immigrant named Charles Alexander “Alec” Mentry. The California Star Oil Works opened its Pioneer Refinery in 1876 in nearby Newhall in order to transform the oil into kerosene and benzene.
In the 1860s, locals Henry Clay Wiley, Sanford Lyon, and William Jenkins had discovered oil in the canyon but lacked the technical know-how to turn a more than modest profit. Mentry had, by then, punched 42 successful wells in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Mentry arrived in California in 1873. He made his way to Los Angeles County in 1875 and, as an employee of the Los Angeles Oil Company, punched: Pico Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4. San Franciscan Demetrius Scofield, having caught wind of the goings on there, purchased the claim and Mentry became an employee. Charles Crocker, president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, also smelled opportunity. His railroad had just completed a railway between Los Angeles and San Francisco three weeks before the gusher at Pico Canyon. He responded by raising his price to transport oil. Mentryville responded by laying the state’s first oil pipeline – from Pico Canyon to Ventura. Southern Pacific backed down and lowered their rates. The pipeline was never used.
Mentryville arose as a boom town soon after to accommodate the oil workers who flocked to the canyon. At first it was just Pico Camp. By 1880, it was home to 100 families, including Metnry’s. Mentry married a New Yorker, Flora May Lake. Their union produced four children which they raised in the thirteen-room (five of them bedrooms) “Pico Cottage.” Pepper trees and other non-natives were planted, presumably, to provide more shade. Visitors can’t enter the home but can peek through the windows and imagine what it might look like when it was new… or, perhaps, imagine the interiors, washed in sepia, adorning the cover of a slowcore album.
THE FELTON SCHOOLHOUSE
The Felton School District was established in 1885. The Felton Schoolhouse, built in 1885, was named after senator Charles Norton Felton – then the president of Pacific Coast Oil and later a US senator. You can’t see inside of the schoolhouse, today, but it at least formerly contained wooden desks, a library, and a pot-bellied stove. It was also in 1885 that the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey acquired Pacific Coast Oil and liquidated California Star Oil Works. In 1906, Standard’s California holdings became the basis of Standard Oil Company of California.
Mentry remained the oil superintendent until 1900, when he contracted typhoid fever from an insect bite and had to be hospitalized in Los Angeles. He died on 4 October and was buried at Boyle Heights’ Evergreen Cemetery. Almost all of Mentryville came to his funeral, bringing with them an oil derrick-shaped floral arrangement. Walton Young took over operations and moved into the “big house.” By 1900, Mentryville had a bakery, a blacksmith’s shop, a boarding house, a two-story bunkhouse, redwood cabins, a cork-lined ice house, dormitories, a machine shop, a social hall, the Felton School, tents, a tennis court, croquet pitches, and, of course, a road paved with asphalt. Before it was replaced with gas and electrically powered engines, there was a steam-powered jackline plant that powered the drills of the oil derricks.
At its peak, Mentryville was home to roughly 200 residents. Mentryville residents raised cows and chickens. A chicken coop and barn, both built in the 1890s, still stand. One family, the Cochems, ran the bakery and the stage stop at Mentryville was used to convey their macaroons and other baked goods over to Newhall. The social hall, next to the school, hosted live music from vocal quartets and concert pianists, sermons from traveling preachers, performances of Shakespeare plays from traveling actors, dances, box socials, and potluck suppers. Kids dammed Pico Springs to create a swimming hole. The tennis courts and croquet pitches were illuminated with gas lighting. Johnson Park, named for division manager Warren Johnson, had dice tables and an area for games of horseshoe. There was also a small cemetery. One amenity Mentryville notably lacked was a bar. Mentry was a teetotaler. Anything stronger than sarsaparilla was off-limits in his company town. Anyone who fancied a beer after a long day of backbreaking labor had to trek over to Newhall’s Derrick Saloon on 8th Street.
Demetrius Scofield died in 1917. Superintendent Charles Sitzman succeeded Young in 1927. Oil production slowed over time and the population soon began to decline. Other oil opportunities were sprouting up in places like Ventura and Whittier. A natural gas plant closed in 1929. Most of the last residents left in the 1930s and completely dismantled their homes and took the materials with them to be sold for scrap. Some of their tools ended up at the Union Oil Museum in Santa Paula. Since they were built without foundations, there’s little if any indication of their exact location at Mentryville today. In 1932, a family with nine children moved on and the Felton Schoolhouse closed. In 1933, the area was absorbed into the Newhall School District. John Blaney took on the superintendent position in 1937 but only lasted until the following year. After him, the property would be overseen by foremen.
Standard Oil of California hired Francis Joseph “Frenchy” Lagasse in 1947. One of his first jobs was to remove the brick chimney from the Pico Cottage because it was in danger of collapsing. By 1962, Frenchy, his wife, Carolyn “Carol” Krumm, their daughter Nanette, Laurel, and Suzeette were Mentryville’s only human inhabitants. In 1966, Frenchy became a superintendent. Standard Oil constructed a home for the Lagasses. The oil company planned to demolish the Pico Cottage and Mentryville’s other aging buildings. Carol convinced the company, instead, to allow her to restore the house, barn, and chicken coop with redwood hauled over from near Van Norman Dam — and to let her family move inside. They furnished it with additional materials and furniture salvaged from company homes then undergoing demolition in San Martinez Canyon. Rooms were decorated with specific themes and the cottage and the Lagasses hosted tours and school field trips. Johnson Park hosted ice cream socials, reunions, and Halloween festivals.
Chevron took over the property in 1977. It was designated California Historical Landmark No. 516 on 8 October 1977 at an event sponsored by the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society and the Newhall Women’s Club. Pico No. 4 was only capped in 1990, making it the longest operational oil well on record. Frenchy moved on, however, after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake rendered the Pico Cottage unsafe. In 1995, Chevron donated the approximately 1225-hectare property to the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, an agency headed by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. In January 1996, Paul Higgins organized the non-profit Friends of Mentryville was organized to continue the restoration, coordinate public activities, and to offer docent-led tours. Frenchy Lagasse died on 10 February 1996.
Some of Mentryville’s preservation and restoration has historically been funded by renting out the site to film and television productions. Mentryville’s film appearances include Walking Tall Part 2 (1975) and The Color Purple (1985), and the made-for-television film, Return to Green Acres (1990). For the latter, a façade house was built with a living room set inside. It still stands, although, not designed for the long-term, it’s in a more advanced state of decay than most of Mentryville’s much older buildings. It was featured in episodes of the television series The A-Team, Murder She Wrote, Highway to Heaven, The Magical World of Disney (“The Thanksgiving Promise” 1986) and The X-Files. Mentryville was the subject of a 2023 episode of Ghost Adventures, titled “Mentryville Ghost Town.”
The atonal bird songs; the loud, vuvuzela-like hum of bees; the babbling brook; and the snare brushes and gentle applause of rustling leaves, combined, made a surprisingly loud if euphonious din. The effect was not entirely unlike that of an orchestra warming up. Few would describe these symphonic players as peaceful – in fact, the scene positively pulsated with activity. People speak of the “peace and quiet” of the country so often that you sometimes forget how busy and loud it actually is, especially in late spring.
I was reminded of a road trip from California to Chicago and back that I undertook with an ex around 2001. She was a Los Angeles native – a Valley Girl. We stopped by the house where I grew up in Missouri’s Little Dixie region and stepped out of the car at night so that she could behold the beauty of a meadow illuminated only by fireflies. The bull frogs, leopard frogs, spring peepers, coyotes, crickets, cicadas, katydids, great horned owls, whippoorwills, and screech owls, however, proved to be too much for someone used to the peace and quiet of Los Angeles to take.
The walk from the Felton Schoolhouse to Pico No. 4 isn’t a long one – just 2.25 kilometers up the Pico Canyon Service Road. In between “downtown” Mentryville and the derricks is Johnson Park — the former site of the recreation area which now boasts a replica derrick. I started to stroll in that direction with a couple of bobwhites leading the way. Western fence lizards abandoned the sun-warmed pavement and scurried into the underbrush. Weeds poked through the cracks. It didn’t seem like they saw a lot of traffic. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time on this particular day. Next time!
FURTHER READING
“Mentryille: State Landmark a Ghost of Once-Bustling Oil Town” (1986) by Debra Sorrentino Larson
“The Story of Mentryville: California’s Pioneer Oil Town (1996) by Leon Worden
“Mentryville Memories from Carol Lagasse” (2021) as told to Cynthia Neal-Harris
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Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, essayist, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking paid writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities. He is not interested in generating advertorials, cranking out clickbait, or laboring away in a listicle mill “for exposure.”
Brightwell has written for Angels Walk LA, Amoeblog, Boom: A Journal of California, diaCRITICS, Hey Freelancer!, Hidden Los Angeles, and KCET Departures. His art has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft Contemporary, Form Follows Function, the Los Angeles County Store, Sidewalking: Coming to Terms With Los Angeles, Skid Row Housing Trust, the 1650 Gallery, and Abundant Housing LA.
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Eric Brightwell 
Thanks for the look at an almost-vanished bit of Southern Calif. history. I’ve never been to Mentryville, but visited the pioneer oil refinery back in the 1960s. Your mention of the Spanish-Mexican period reminds me of Richard Henry Dana’s “Two Years Before the Mast”. I don’t have the exact quote, but he was not impressed by the Mexican rancheros. He wrote something like, “In the hands of an ambitious and energetic people, this land could blossom.”
You mention that Mentryville has been used as a movie location–I’ve seen film crews at work in many parts of LA County, leading me to paraphrase Shakespeare: “All the world’s a sound stage….”
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