Woodland Daily Democrat (Woodland, California) Wed. February 5, 1936, p. 1
Source: www.newspapers.com
Introduction.
It's not like there's no oil in Yolo County. There is. Just not enough to get rich off of. And that was pretty much the opinion of the majority of professional petroleum geologists in California circa 1919 when a relatively unknown civil engineer and surveyor by the name of W. D. McKinney from Los Angeles made the claim in San Francisco that there likely was significant amounts of oil beneath the western Yolo hill country. McKinney may have been acting on a tip from a young German-born rancher and orchardist Herman Hartwig, who had come across an oil seep trickling out of a hole in some rocks on a barren knoll rising out of his 600 acre spread just west of Esparto in Lamb Valley. It was Hartwig, energetic and full of enthusiasm, who got a local Yolo land agent and sometime mining enthusiast, interested in the discovery during the early months of 1919. The name of the agent was Eugene A. Elton, a.k.a E. A. Elton, Nathan Monroe Elton's oldest son, Clara B. Elton's oldest brother, and Margaret I. Elton's father.
Eugene Arthur Elton (local folks that knew him well called him Arthur, but most folks called him Eugene or out of a little more deference Mr. Elton, seeing as how he was a republican representative from Dunnigan at one time, and a county Game Warden to boot), had been on his own for several years after his wife Emma left him and took the kids over to Napa in 1915. We don't know the cause of the disharmony between the two, just that there was, and that
she left with the kids. He was working at odd jobs here and there and had means and every now and then regular income. He even had a job selling land parcels in the West Sacramento reclamation project down in the southern part of the county back in 1913. At $ 450 per acre the land sold much more quickly than the company Eugene worked for, or Eugene himself, had expected. It went so well that Eugene opened his own office in the Yolo Reality building later that year (1913).
But we need to go back several years to get to the root of Eugene's speculative aspirations. The oldest son of Nathan Monroe Elton, a California pioneer from New York via Ohio, Eugene was born in Yolo but grew up in Knights Landing on the Sacramento River not far from his father's old carpentry worksites in Placer County. Eugene started out in carpentry but didn't stay there. Eugene was more the adventuresome type. He had a jet black steed by the name of Rozinante, and the two of them used to roam the countryside, from the Sacramento River in the east to Cache Creek and the hills overlooking the Capay Valley in the west. He knew the rural areas as well, all the farms and the fruit orchards that dotted Yolo's tabletop flat lands, both big and small. Lots of folks knew Eugene.
When old Mr. Nathan Elton died in 1893 Eugene, age 19, was left to look after his mother, his brother George, and
the four little ones (Ruth ("Edith"), Esther, Marvin Nathan ("Dick"), and Claire ("Clara")). The following year was spent working odd jobs, carpentry, chopping wood, construction work, and traveling the countryside with Rozinante whenever time allowed. The family lived in what was then called Cacheville, later renamed Yolo, which sounded a little less hickish, a little less small-townish, than the small rural town in the Sacramento Valley that it was -- a small town with a big heart and a lot of promise.
It's not like there's no oil in Yolo County. There is. Just not enough to get rich off of. And that was pretty much the opinion of the majority of professional petroleum geologists in California circa 1919 when a relatively unknown civil engineer and surveyor by the name of W. D. McKinney from Los Angeles made the claim in San Francisco that there likely was significant amounts of oil beneath the western Yolo hill country. McKinney may have been acting on a tip from a young German-born rancher and orchardist Herman Hartwig, who had come across an oil seep trickling out of a hole in some rocks on a barren knoll rising out of his 600 acre spread just west of Esparto in Lamb Valley. It was Hartwig, energetic and full of enthusiasm, who got a local Yolo land agent and sometime mining enthusiast, interested in the discovery during the early months of 1919. The name of the agent was Eugene A. Elton, a.k.a E. A. Elton, Nathan Monroe Elton's oldest son, Clara B. Elton's oldest brother, and Margaret I. Elton's father.
Eugene Arthur Elton (local folks that knew him well called him Arthur, but most folks called him Eugene or out of a little more deference Mr. Elton, seeing as how he was a republican representative from Dunnigan at one time, and a county Game Warden to boot), had been on his own for several years after his wife Emma left him and took the kids over to Napa in 1915. We don't know the cause of the disharmony between the two, just that there was, and that
she left with the kids. He was working at odd jobs here and there and had means and every now and then regular income. He even had a job selling land parcels in the West Sacramento reclamation project down in the southern part of the county back in 1913. At $ 450 per acre the land sold much more quickly than the company Eugene worked for, or Eugene himself, had expected. It went so well that Eugene opened his own office in the Yolo Reality building later that year (1913).
But we need to go back several years to get to the root of Eugene's speculative aspirations. The oldest son of Nathan Monroe Elton, a California pioneer from New York via Ohio, Eugene was born in Yolo but grew up in Knights Landing on the Sacramento River not far from his father's old carpentry worksites in Placer County. Eugene started out in carpentry but didn't stay there. Eugene was more the adventuresome type. He had a jet black steed by the name of Rozinante, and the two of them used to roam the countryside, from the Sacramento River in the east to Cache Creek and the hills overlooking the Capay Valley in the west. He knew the rural areas as well, all the farms and the fruit orchards that dotted Yolo's tabletop flat lands, both big and small. Lots of folks knew Eugene.
When old Mr. Nathan Elton died in 1893 Eugene, age 19, was left to look after his mother, his brother George, and
the four little ones (Ruth ("Edith"), Esther, Marvin Nathan ("Dick"), and Claire ("Clara")). The following year was spent working odd jobs, carpentry, chopping wood, construction work, and traveling the countryside with Rozinante whenever time allowed. The family lived in what was then called Cacheville, later renamed Yolo, which sounded a little less hickish, a little less small-townish, than the small rural town in the Sacramento Valley that it was -- a small town with a big heart and a lot of promise.
Eugene Arthur Elton as a young man probably around 18 years of age, Cacheville (=Yolo), Yolo County, California, circa 1891.
Woodland Daily Democrat (Woodland, California) Tues., January 23, 1894, p. 3
(source: www.newspapers.com)
(source: www.newspapers.com)
Self-styled Naturalist and Collector of Central Californian Indian Arrowheads.
Eugene Elton was a literate man and a keen observer of the natural history of the land he lived in. Besides writing poetry, mostly about his natural surroundings, he collected Indian arrowheads while travelling around the Yolo countryside on his beloved horse Rozinante. The above is a clip of a piece he wrote and illustrated for a monthly Western natural history magazine called "The Overland Monthly" from 1901, pp. 625-628 (published in Berkeley, California). His son, Art Elton, would inherit his father's love for collecting arrowheads. (To read the whole article google search "Eugene Elton" arrowheads).
Tying the knot and putting down roots.
Eugene met a gal from Dunnigan, a small railroad town maybe 18 miles north of Yolo in the upper part of the county. If anything it was even smaller than Yolo if that were possible. Like Dunnigan, Yolo was serviced by the railroad on a straight line north from Woodland, the county seat, but was known more for its fruit orchards, alfalfa, and wheat fields than anything else. Emma Wheadon (or Whedon) was born and spent her early childhood in Elko, Nevada up
to age five, when Emma's family moved out to California, first to Township 6, Amador Co., in the Sierra Nevada foothills, then to Dunnigan, Yolo County, California. Anyway, Eugene and Emma, ages 21 and 20, were married September 24, 1895 at the Wheadon family homestead near Dunnigan. Eugene seemed like a good catch at the
time -- he was handy, he played the guitar, and he knew lots of folks. He had light brown hair and light blue eyes. Eugene seemed like the kind of fella with a future ahead of him. But then again, Eugene had his speculative side.
The side that wouldn't let him rest in bed easy. Eugene wanted something more.
Eugene met a gal from Dunnigan, a small railroad town maybe 18 miles north of Yolo in the upper part of the county. If anything it was even smaller than Yolo if that were possible. Like Dunnigan, Yolo was serviced by the railroad on a straight line north from Woodland, the county seat, but was known more for its fruit orchards, alfalfa, and wheat fields than anything else. Emma Wheadon (or Whedon) was born and spent her early childhood in Elko, Nevada up
to age five, when Emma's family moved out to California, first to Township 6, Amador Co., in the Sierra Nevada foothills, then to Dunnigan, Yolo County, California. Anyway, Eugene and Emma, ages 21 and 20, were married September 24, 1895 at the Wheadon family homestead near Dunnigan. Eugene seemed like a good catch at the
time -- he was handy, he played the guitar, and he knew lots of folks. He had light brown hair and light blue eyes. Eugene seemed like the kind of fella with a future ahead of him. But then again, Eugene had his speculative side.
The side that wouldn't let him rest in bed easy. Eugene wanted something more.
Woodland Daily Democrat (Woodland, California), Thurs., March 25, 1897
(source: www.newspapers.com)
(source: www.newspapers.com)
We don't know whether Eugene ever met the wealthy Idaho miner or attended any of his talks. No more mention is made of the mysterious man from Idaho who visited fair Woodland's suburbs early that spring in 1897. But we do know that by 1900 (according to US census data) Eugene was working for the railroads as a brakeman, a sort of fix-it-all, fetch-it-all serviceman for the rail companies. And many of those same brakemen and other railroad employees were joining speculative groups of men who were staking mining claims from the Los Angeles basin, to Ventura County, up to the Kern County lands surrounding Baker's Swamp (later renamed Bakersfield) in the San Joaquin Valley, and as far north as Sacramento Valley's western hill country during the great California black gold rush of
the late 19th and early 20th century. Eugene was not immune and he along with some other men staked at least one claim on a piece of land in Yolo County by February 1901. Yolo County had not been adequately surveyed at that time, especially for mineral or mining rights, so we can be sure that the men did a lot of the surveying themselves.
Woodland Daily Democrat (Woodland, California), Mon. February 18, 1901, p. 1
(source: www.newspapers.com)
(source: www.newspapers.com)
But a pick and shovel can only go so far. You really need venture capital or a successful stock capitalization to do any serious prospecting for oil. The railroad boys did hang on to their claims, however, just in case at some future date, some more connected neighbor struck it rich. Then they'd be able to sell the claim for a whole lot more than they bought it for. In the meantime there was a market for agricultural real estate involving lands reclaimed from the nutrient-rich Central Valley flood plains which were ideal for farming. As mentioned earlier, by 1913 Eugene had hired himself out as land agent.
Woodland Daily Democrat (Woodland, California) Sat. February 1, 1913, p.1
(source: www.newspapers.com)
(source: www.newspapers.com)
1916.
By 1916 Eugene travelled about Northern California as if he were single again, single being a somewhat relative term as he continued to be responsible for Emma and the younger children's financial well-being. He moved around quite a bit, living at various times with Emma and his family in Dunnigan, Yolo County in 1910 (as a laborer), with his sister Esther and brother-in-law just north of Stockton later in 1910 (blacksmithing), Yolo in 1913 (selling farmland), with Emma and/ or his brother George in the Sebastopol area in 1916-1918 (writing, living off own income), and on his own in Benita, California (blacksmithing in the Benita Shipyards, 1919). He was back with Emma in the 1920s off and on again. In 1920 he was living with Emma and Margaret in Napa (as a "geologist"). In 1922 he and Emma would attend their daughter Margaret's wedding to a young Napa man of means in Sacramento. In 1925 he would move back in with Emma at her Napa address, but by 1927 had moved to Winters, in the southwestern part of Yolo County. Later, in 1931, the two would attend an Elton family picnic together,
Outside of Yolo County, the world was a mess. Europe was at war. Mexico had been in a state of revolution since 1910 with both federalistas and banditos alternatively threatening to raid American territory along the border. In response the United States had greatly increased its standing army which consisted of the regular army, the reserves, and the national guard. At some point between 1910 and 1915 a man by the name of William Donald McKinney, known as Captain W D McKinney because of his last rank in the National Guard of Colorado (1904), had made his way out to Los Angeles from Denver where he had been working as a civil engineer for the irrigation industry. In 1910 McKinney incorporated a company called "The Arizona Land and Water Company" in Chambers, Arizona for the express purpose of acquiring water rights in Arizona territory. Years later he would repeat the procedure in Yolo County, northern California, substituting oil rights for water rights. In March 1915 Capt. McKinney was advising the city of Venice in Los Angeles County, California, on how to replace beach sand which the city had lost during a recent storm. By 1916 he had joined the US army reserves, as he was put in charge of organizing an automobile and truck army corps to be deployed at the Mexican border. The unit would work out of the new Union Oil headquarters building in Los Angeles. It is not clear whether he stayed in the reserves, or crossed back into civilian life as a civil engineer or oil survey consultant, but apparently his time spent at the Union Oil building in Los Angeles had not been wasted.
California itself was in the middle of an oil rush the likes of which had not been seen since the 1901 discovery of oil at Spindletop Hill on the Gulf Coast just south of Beaumont, Texas. Beginning in September 1876 with Charles Alex Mentry's gusher at Pico Canyon Well No. 4 in the Santa Susana Mountains north of the San Fernando Valley, to Edward L. Doheny's series of successful surface wells along the Los Angeles City oil field in 1892, to the discovery of the massive Buena Vista Hills oil field in the lower San Joaquin Valley southwest of Bakersfield in 1909, everybody living in southern California was getting rich or felt like they had a chance of getting rich. By December 31, 1916, according to the Second Annual Report of the State Oil and Gas Supervisor of California, Vol. 2, there were thousands of independent oil companies operating prospect and/or producing wells in California, of which almost all were operating south of the San Joaquin River (I did find one, the Watsonville Oil Company, that was operating four wells in Santa Clara County, ie., north of the San Joaquin River, but that's about it). Authorized capitalizations of these companies ranged from $ 3000 for the tiny "California Oil Development Syndicate", which worked out of the Wilcox Building in downtown Los Angeles, to $ 100,000,000 for the behemoth Standard Oil Co. of California, headquartered in San Francisco. Union Oil, which was originally authorized at $ 50,000,000 in 1890, operated hundreds of wells all over southern California by the end of 1916.
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-04-10/books/bk-44101_1_los-angeles-times
By 1916 Eugene travelled about Northern California as if he were single again, single being a somewhat relative term as he continued to be responsible for Emma and the younger children's financial well-being. He moved around quite a bit, living at various times with Emma and his family in Dunnigan, Yolo County in 1910 (as a laborer), with his sister Esther and brother-in-law just north of Stockton later in 1910 (blacksmithing), Yolo in 1913 (selling farmland), with Emma and/ or his brother George in the Sebastopol area in 1916-1918 (writing, living off own income), and on his own in Benita, California (blacksmithing in the Benita Shipyards, 1919). He was back with Emma in the 1920s off and on again. In 1920 he was living with Emma and Margaret in Napa (as a "geologist"). In 1922 he and Emma would attend their daughter Margaret's wedding to a young Napa man of means in Sacramento. In 1925 he would move back in with Emma at her Napa address, but by 1927 had moved to Winters, in the southwestern part of Yolo County. Later, in 1931, the two would attend an Elton family picnic together,
Outside of Yolo County, the world was a mess. Europe was at war. Mexico had been in a state of revolution since 1910 with both federalistas and banditos alternatively threatening to raid American territory along the border. In response the United States had greatly increased its standing army which consisted of the regular army, the reserves, and the national guard. At some point between 1910 and 1915 a man by the name of William Donald McKinney, known as Captain W D McKinney because of his last rank in the National Guard of Colorado (1904), had made his way out to Los Angeles from Denver where he had been working as a civil engineer for the irrigation industry. In 1910 McKinney incorporated a company called "The Arizona Land and Water Company" in Chambers, Arizona for the express purpose of acquiring water rights in Arizona territory. Years later he would repeat the procedure in Yolo County, northern California, substituting oil rights for water rights. In March 1915 Capt. McKinney was advising the city of Venice in Los Angeles County, California, on how to replace beach sand which the city had lost during a recent storm. By 1916 he had joined the US army reserves, as he was put in charge of organizing an automobile and truck army corps to be deployed at the Mexican border. The unit would work out of the new Union Oil headquarters building in Los Angeles. It is not clear whether he stayed in the reserves, or crossed back into civilian life as a civil engineer or oil survey consultant, but apparently his time spent at the Union Oil building in Los Angeles had not been wasted.
California itself was in the middle of an oil rush the likes of which had not been seen since the 1901 discovery of oil at Spindletop Hill on the Gulf Coast just south of Beaumont, Texas. Beginning in September 1876 with Charles Alex Mentry's gusher at Pico Canyon Well No. 4 in the Santa Susana Mountains north of the San Fernando Valley, to Edward L. Doheny's series of successful surface wells along the Los Angeles City oil field in 1892, to the discovery of the massive Buena Vista Hills oil field in the lower San Joaquin Valley southwest of Bakersfield in 1909, everybody living in southern California was getting rich or felt like they had a chance of getting rich. By December 31, 1916, according to the Second Annual Report of the State Oil and Gas Supervisor of California, Vol. 2, there were thousands of independent oil companies operating prospect and/or producing wells in California, of which almost all were operating south of the San Joaquin River (I did find one, the Watsonville Oil Company, that was operating four wells in Santa Clara County, ie., north of the San Joaquin River, but that's about it). Authorized capitalizations of these companies ranged from $ 3000 for the tiny "California Oil Development Syndicate", which worked out of the Wilcox Building in downtown Los Angeles, to $ 100,000,000 for the behemoth Standard Oil Co. of California, headquartered in San Francisco. Union Oil, which was originally authorized at $ 50,000,000 in 1890, operated hundreds of wells all over southern California by the end of 1916.
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-04-10/books/bk-44101_1_los-angeles-times
E. A. Elton's Early Interest in Oil Exploration in the Western Yolo Region.
By 1916 Eugene Elton had taught himself enough about the relationship between geology, natural history, and oil to present credible arguments to potential investors. Sometime in 1916 he decided that the geological conditions of western Yolo county were worth exploring for oil by serious investment money. He had done enough surveying of the land formations of the region to provide detailed arguments demonstrating in charts, illustrations, and scientific terminology why oil deposits should be found in western Yolo.
Attached below is a letter from the president of Pacific Steamship County (headquartered in Tacoma, Washington with offices in San Francisco) in response to one of E. A. Elton's solicitations. Eugene at the time was working out of his wife Emma's rented home in rural Sonoma County (RFD No. 4 # 115, Sebastopol, California):
By March 1917 Mr. Alexander had hired an oil exploration expert, one Dr. Smith, to look into the matter. Unfortunately for Eugene, Dr. Smith came to the conclusion, that, no, geological conditions in western Yolo did not warrant further investigation, let alone exploration, as it was unlikely that there was enough extractable oil in the area to put company money at risk. Attached below is a letter from Mr. Alexander's lawyers informing Eugene that Mr. Alexander was no longer interested in the matter, could he please go away. The letter is dated March 24, 1917 from Pacific Steamship Company headquartered in Tacoma, Washington.
OIL!?
We don't know specifically what brought Capt. Don McKinney north to San Francisco to look for oil. We do know that the United States as a whole, and California in particular, was in the midst of an oil shortage in 1919. Mr. Henry Ford had been cranking out cheap, relatively durable automobiles for the masses since the introduction of the Model T in 1908, and sales were booming, especially with the boys coming home from "overseas". And yes, the US military saw the advantage of converting its fleets and newly motorized army over to the much more efficient oil-based power stations. In 1911 Southern Pacific railroad had already decided to convert its coal-burning engines to diesel. So perhaps Captain McKinney came north (or was sent north) to take a second look at old abandoned areas where oil had been discovered in the second half of the 19th century, but had proven economically unfeasible to bring to the surface with the technology of the day. Or maybe the science of geology had progressed enough to embolden the new oil prospectors. It is also possible that the San Francisco consortium that hired Capt. McKinney to organize efforts to look for oil in and around Yolo County was just following the lead of a Pittsburgh PA investor-backed corporation -- the Pittsburgh-Pacific Oil Company, which had earlier dug a prospect well near Williams, Colusa County just north of Yolo in 1917. Whatever the reason, though, the general consensus of professional petroleum geologists in 1919 continued to be that northern California was still "no oil territory", despite the lone wildcat well in Colusa County and the creeping northern advance of large oil field discoveries in the San Joaquin Valley (Kern County, Kings and Tulare Counties, Fresno County, even activity in western Stanislaus County, a mere 60 - 80 miles south of Sacramento).
We don't know specifically what brought Capt. Don McKinney north to San Francisco to look for oil. We do know that the United States as a whole, and California in particular, was in the midst of an oil shortage in 1919. Mr. Henry Ford had been cranking out cheap, relatively durable automobiles for the masses since the introduction of the Model T in 1908, and sales were booming, especially with the boys coming home from "overseas". And yes, the US military saw the advantage of converting its fleets and newly motorized army over to the much more efficient oil-based power stations. In 1911 Southern Pacific railroad had already decided to convert its coal-burning engines to diesel. So perhaps Captain McKinney came north (or was sent north) to take a second look at old abandoned areas where oil had been discovered in the second half of the 19th century, but had proven economically unfeasible to bring to the surface with the technology of the day. Or maybe the science of geology had progressed enough to embolden the new oil prospectors. It is also possible that the San Francisco consortium that hired Capt. McKinney to organize efforts to look for oil in and around Yolo County was just following the lead of a Pittsburgh PA investor-backed corporation -- the Pittsburgh-Pacific Oil Company, which had earlier dug a prospect well near Williams, Colusa County just north of Yolo in 1917. Whatever the reason, though, the general consensus of professional petroleum geologists in 1919 continued to be that northern California was still "no oil territory", despite the lone wildcat well in Colusa County and the creeping northern advance of large oil field discoveries in the San Joaquin Valley (Kern County, Kings and Tulare Counties, Fresno County, even activity in western Stanislaus County, a mere 60 - 80 miles south of Sacramento).
Oil exploration fever heats up in northern California. Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1917, p.15.
Google Terrain Map of the Capay - Esparto foothills of Western Yolo County:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Capay,+CA+95607/@38.7628655,-122.1053186,12z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x808492ddd12f5229:0xbca389698c92caf9!8m2!3d38.7082349!4d-122.0507301!5m1!1e4
By 1919, Herman Hartwig and his wife Lena, had been living in the western section of Yolo County for nearly seven years, ever since they bought a 600-acre farm just south of Capay in Lamb Valley. Hartwig, a German immigrant but thoroughly Americanized, was on several farm boards, managed the local county baseball team, and was at one time the "Constable" of the Madison section of Yolo County. He would have known Eugene Elton through any number
of Republican organizations and/or county offices. Eugene himself had been working about 55 miles southwest of Capay in the Benicia Shipyards in Benicia, Solano County as a blacksmith throughout 1918. Sometime in the spring
or early summer of 1919, Herman Hartwig must have contacted him about a job helping an oil man by the name of Captain W. D. "Don" McKinney, who was surveying the western Yolo hill country for potential oil rights. As mentioned above, in early 1919 Capt. Don McKinney represented a San Francisco consortium of investors
interested in prospecting western Yolo County and nearby areas.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Capay,+CA+95607/@38.7628655,-122.1053186,12z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x808492ddd12f5229:0xbca389698c92caf9!8m2!3d38.7082349!4d-122.0507301!5m1!1e4
By 1919, Herman Hartwig and his wife Lena, had been living in the western section of Yolo County for nearly seven years, ever since they bought a 600-acre farm just south of Capay in Lamb Valley. Hartwig, a German immigrant but thoroughly Americanized, was on several farm boards, managed the local county baseball team, and was at one time the "Constable" of the Madison section of Yolo County. He would have known Eugene Elton through any number
of Republican organizations and/or county offices. Eugene himself had been working about 55 miles southwest of Capay in the Benicia Shipyards in Benicia, Solano County as a blacksmith throughout 1918. Sometime in the spring
or early summer of 1919, Herman Hartwig must have contacted him about a job helping an oil man by the name of Captain W. D. "Don" McKinney, who was surveying the western Yolo hill country for potential oil rights. As mentioned above, in early 1919 Capt. Don McKinney represented a San Francisco consortium of investors
interested in prospecting western Yolo County and nearby areas.
High Hopes for an Oil Bonanza in Western Yolo County.
Woodland Daily Democrat, November 25, 1919, p.1.
Sacramento Union, Oct 24, 1919, p.6
to be continued . . . .
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