Title: Oil Wells - Los Angeles, CA
Artist: The Philadelphia Museum
Silver gelatin photograph, 1910s.
Image size 9 1/2 x 12" (241 x 304 mm).

Petroleum is obtained from wells in various parts of the world. Each well is simply a hole, only a few inches in diameter, bored in the earth, often to a depth of a thousand feet or more, although many wells are only a couple of hundred feet deep. When a subterranean deposit of oil is found, many wells are usually sunk in the immediate district. The derricks above the wells are then a peculiar and characteristic feature of the landscape. These derricks support the machinery by which tools are lowered into or raised from the wells and the oil pumped out. This photograph shows part of an oil field in Los Angeles, California. The production, while small in comparison with the enormous output of the Appalachian oil district, is still very considerable and is an important factor on the Pacific coast. In Oil fields, the crude oil is generally stored in tanks of which several small ones are seen in the picture. Crude petroleum is shipped by rail, sometimes in barrels and sometimes in tank cars; but, especially in the eastern part of the United States, nearly all of the oil is pumped from the wells to the refineries or the seaboard through great pipes (pipe lines), which run for hundreds Of miles. For convenience of shipment, most of the great refineries are located along the coast. At the refineries, the crude Oil, as it comes from the well, is distilled and yields kerosene, coal oil, and similar illuminating oils, as well as fuel oils, naptha, benzine, gasoline, lubricating oils, paraffine, vaseline, etc. The quality of crude petroleum varies in different localities. The oils from the Appalachian and the Ohio-Indiana fields are of high grade and contain large percent- ages of illuminating oil, while the oils obtained in Texas and California yield but small percentages of kerosene and are used for fuel, replacing -coal for locomotives steamboats and industrial establishments. In the United States the leading, oil producing states are Ohio, Texas, California, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Indiana. Pennsylvania oil is of exceptionally high quality. Russia produces, in a small district near Baku, on the Caspian Sea, almost as much petroleum as is obtained in the entire United States, but, like the Texas and California oils, it is of low grade. Refined oil is shipped in this country by rail in barrels and in tank gars' for shipment abroad, some oil is put in barrels, but large quantities both of crude refined oils are shipped in bulk in tank steamers, American kerosene oil is exported to all parts of the world.

Condition: Very good condtion, some minor surface staining on back of photo board.