Joints

This is a liquor store on Willow Street in Long Beach, California. Actually it's in Signal Hill, in the middle of what use to be an enormous oil boom that took place in the mid 1920's and that I have written about before, here.

This joint was built under an old wooden derrick and all the parking lot barriers are 5 1/2 in. casing with rock bits on them. Its got old oilfield signs all around it and you can get a sandwich there and sit out on the table in you have a mind to..

Signal Hill, 1927

Along he coastline, on the west flank of the Los Angeles Basin, is a surface ridge that rises some 60-80 feet above the beach. This ridge runs northwest all the way to Inglewood and, because of numerous oil seeps and gas bubbling up out of the ground, that surface ridge started getting lots of successful oil wells drilled on it as early as 1918-1920.

In 1921 exploration on the ridge focused on the hill at Signal Hill, also called, Old Baldy. In July the Alamitos No. 1 well blew out and marked the discovery of Signal Hill. By 1923 there were rigs running everywhere in the Signal Hill area NW into Long Beach and production was reported to be 68MM BO for the year from over 300 wells. Eventually the City of Long Beach swallowed up Signal Hill.

The Oil Patch Liquor Store

Signal Hill City Hall and Police Department Buildings; 1927-1928