Oil production impacts Yorba Linda history

Oil production--one factor impacting Yorba Linda's early development--no longer plays an important role in local politics, as partly evidenced by the City Council's non-controversial action formalizing standards for building activity near the city's remaining active and more plentiful capped wells.

But years ago, various oil companies leasing mineral rights on hundreds of acres in the local area used their economic power to forestall Yorba Linda from becoming a city, with the issue of allowing an incorporation vote finally decided by California's Supreme Court.

The oil companies--several of which became land developers in more recent times--feared possible imposition of a severance tax, according to a 1988 oral history interview with incorporation lawyer and first City Attorney Jim Erickson by Dennis Swift for Cal State Fullerton.

Oil interests filed sufficient protests to deny cityhood petitions, since oil and gas leases were included in land valuations. City proponents eliminated as much oil land from the original city boundaries as they could, but enough remained to stop an incorporation vote, Erickson noted.

Erickson said he was prepared to argue against including oil and gas leases in land values, but that wasn't necessary because the court ruled the protests weren't timely filed, ending a years long legal battle and forcing the county Board of Supervisors to allow a 1967 cityhood vote.

Compared to surrounding Atwood, Brea, Fullerton, Olinda, Placentia and Richfield, Yorba Linda was late in oil development, with exploration coming in the 1930s, and a successful well drilled in 1937 during the initial production period.

Shell Oil geologist E. G. Heath, in an article titled “Yorba Linda Oil Field” for a 1958 oil guide, stated the 1937 well “touched off an outbreak of drilling which lasted for seven years,” noting that “little drilling” occurred 1944-54, until another discovery led to more activity into 1958.

The impact on Yorba Linda was described by David “Whit” Cromwell in a 1970 oral history interview by Milan Pavlovich for Cal State Fullerton. Cromwell was an early postmaster before his election to the first City Council.

Cromwell said Yorba Linda's early oil industry was second to agriculture, with some farmers doubling as workers in nearby fields, noting that drilling near Richfield Road did “pretty well.”

“But the strongest influence the oil industry had on Yorba Linda was that the few farmers who had any oil lease money and in some cases got some oil income were better off than the rest of us,” Cromwell said.

One strange story involves Richard Nixon's birthplace property and a comment Nixon made about his father's lemon grove in his 1974 farewell speech: “It was the poorest lemon ranch in California, I can assure you. He sold it before they found oil on it.”

Nixon told the fanciful story several times and included the quote in his “Memoirs,” but, of course, as most Yorba Lindans are aware, no oil was ever drilled from birthplace property.