Pioneer Oil Refinery

The crude was worthless until someone could cook it. California Star Oil Works put up stills here in 1876, the year after the Pico Canyon strike, and ran the canyon's green crude into kerosene and lubricating oil. Mentry laid a pipeline down from the wells rather than pay the railroad's freight rates, which was the whole economic point. It was the first successful commercial refinery in the West. Chevron handed the site to the city of Santa Clarita in 1997.

What the plaque says

California's first oil refinery operated on a commercial scale, erected 1876. Restored by the Standard Oil Company of California in 1930 as a memorial to D. G. Scofield and his pioneer associates of the California Star Oil Works company, a predecessor of the Standard Oil Company of California. In 1875-1876 Mr. Scofield and his associates obtained California's first commercial production of crude petroleum in Pico Canyon six miles northwest of this point and built this refinery for the manufacture of petroleum products.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Colorado Street Bridge — 26 mi
  Beaux-Arts concrete arches curving 150 feet above the Arroyo Seco, opened in 1913 and later a link in Route 66.
• Mission San Gabriel Arcangel — 30 mi
  The fourth Alta California mission, built on Tongva land with Tongva labor, rebuilt after arson and now telling that story straight.

More markers nearby

• Lyons Station Stagecoach Stop — 0.9 mi
• Beale's Cut Stagecoach Pass — 2.0 mi
• Oak of the Golden Dream — 2.8 mi
• The Cascades — 3.5 mi