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Rowan, Thomas M. (audio interview #1 of 1)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - Rowan's single interview was conducted in his home near Virginia Country Club in Long Beach. The interviewer was introduced to Rowan by other people she'd met while working on the project to study oil's influence on Long Beach. 4/12/1982
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- 2020-12-17
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- SUBJECT BIO - Thomas Rowan Jr. grew up in the oil business. His father was Hancock Oil Company's drilling superintendent before he started his own drilling company. When his father died, after Rowan was released from the armed services, he took over the business. He liquidated the drilling business, but continued in other aspects of the oil and equipment business. In this single interview, Rowan discusses growing up in Long Beach during the oil boom. His father started out as a roughneck, started his own business and found work in the Philippines as well as in southern California. Rowan graduated from USC and serviced in World War II before returning to Long Beach. When his father died, he turned to other aspects of the oil business including starting his own oil well service company and, at the time of the interview, he owned an industrial valve company. Rowan's interview part of a project to study the impact of the discovery of oil on the development of Long Beach. TOPICS - oil industry; family background; Hancock Oil Company; Richfield compressor plant explosion; WWII, Depression; Kern Drilling Company; subsidence; and 1933 Long Beach earthquake;oil industry; childhood; Depression; WWII; and tidelands controversy;
- *** File: petrowan1.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-3:09)... Introduction His parents, Thomas and Margaret Rowan, were both born in 1897 in Missouri and went to high school together. During WWI his mother worked in Washington as a secretary in the Navy Department and his father went to France. They married in 1918 in Oklahoma. In 1922 his sister was born in Wilson, Oklahoma, a boom town. In Wilson, his Father met Sheridan Bailes, who had oil wells in Long Beach and talked him into coming to work in the oil fields in Long Beach. His parents came to Long Beach in 1922 or 1923 and his father went to work for the Jergins Trust Oil Company. (3:09-4:42)... His parents traveled to Los Angeles by train and then took the Red Car to Long Beach. They found an apartment and Rowan's father walked to work on Signal Hill. In the early 1920s, oil workers were not welcomed by the locals, who thought they would "dirty up the town." The feeling against them did not last because oil brought too much wealth to Long Beach. (4:42-5:55)... The Jergins Trust Oil Company lease where Rowan's father worked was located on the west side of Cherry Avenue. He worked on the drilling crew. He later became drilling superintendent for the Hancock Oil Company. Later yet, in 1931, he got his own drilling rig and went into business for himself as an oil well drilling contractor. Unfortunately he underestimated the depth of a well and went broke. Then he returned to work for the Hancock Oil Company. A couple of years later he got another rig of his own and became a contractor. (5:55-8:21)... In those days, drilling rigs were steam powered. Some oil wells on Signal Hill were a deep as 5,000 feet. Some companies owned their own rigs, but others hired people, like his father, with rigs to to drill their oil wells for them. Drilling contractors charged by the foot. A drilling crew consisted of 5 men plus a tool pusher. They worked around the clock. His father was successful and bought more rigs. He branched out and drilled wells throughout the state. While his father was working for Hancock, one of his crews was drilling a well near Atlantic and Spring, when there was an explosion at the Richfield compressor plant nearby and his father lost a Hancock drilling crew. (8:21-11:22)... During the Depression oil workers who had jobs were better paid than most people in other jobs. The jobs were scarce but the pay scale was good in oil and crew members had to work shifts. It was not until WWII that jobs in other industry jobs started to pay as well. In the early part of Depression, his father was often paid in stock because oil companies didn't have money. He knew Will J. Reid of Hancock Oil Company very well. He also knew Al Carey, a geologist who probably was as knowledgeable as anyone about Signal Hill. There's a book, The Little Giant of Signal Hill, written about Sam Mosher and the Signal Oil Company. (11:22-13:31)... Rowan's father started his company with a partner, Ed Richards and it was named Richrow Company. When they expanded they renamed it Kern Drilling Company. They drilled in Kern County and in the Long Beach harbor. Rowan's father brought the first gas power rig into the state of California. It allowed for more flexibility when drilling, especially in the desert where water was hard to get. Eventually these gas powered engines came to replace steam engines for drilling oil wells. Rowan's father also had the first portable derrick used here; by the time of the interview, that was the only kind of derrick anyone used. (13:31-14:17)... The company also drilled oil wells in the Philippines after the war for the Philippine Oil Development Company. His father sent a crew to the Philippines before the war and they were either captured or became guerilla fighters. (14:17-18:27)... When Rowan's father started in the oil business, the men that knew the business were the men that actually worked in it. They hadn't learned about the oil business in school; they had learned by working. By the time of the interviews, companies require their employees to have a formal education in the industry. The oil business was the last industry were a man could make it without having to go to college. There were several other men who worked on Signal Hill that had learned the business by working in it like his father. Some Signal Hill landowners, under whose land oil was discovered, became active in the business. To learn more about Long Beach history a good man to talk to is Elmer Decker. For the supply end of the business, speak with is John Phillips and others such as Eddie Hiles and Bill Cree, whose father was a lawyer and helped write oil field law. (18:27-20:26)... Drilling began in Long Beach harbor beginning about 1939. A vast, new field opened up. But it was not such a good place for drilling contractors. The wells were easy to drill; they could drill several hundred feet in an 8 hour shift. Contractors didn't earn much per foot because there was so much competition. Long Beach Oil Development, the consortium that operated Long Beach's harbor oil field, was the brainchild of Hancock Oil's Will J. Reid. Lenny Brock represented the city in the deal. (20:26-22:15)... At first, most oil men did not realize that subsistence was caused by oil removal. But subsistence is mostly caused by the removal of gas, not oil. Richfield was the first oil company to recognize the connection between petroleum and subsidence. His father was a driller and only had a part interest in some of these wells. Not too many people would give a percentage to a drilling contractor in Long Beach because they knew oil was there. They gave a percentage to drilling contractors on wells where they were not sure they could find oil. Most of the Long Beach harbor field was drilled by major companies. (22:15-24:29)... The Depression made the drilling business tough. The 1920s, however, were boom times throughout Long Beach. Oil discovery in Los Cerritos was an extension of the boom. From 1928 on, there were other extensions of the field. One went up to Wardlow and Cherry. About 1929 there were deeper wells completed in that area. A real estate development had been planned there and gutters and curbs were installed. But the subdivision went broke in the Depression. There were some big wells around Wardlow and Elm. (24:29-26:03)... During the 1933 Long Beach earthquake Rowan was living on 36th Street in California Heights. He remembers looking out his window and seeing the oil fields on fire. The quake broke oil and gas pipe lines. They burned for days. (26:03-30:16)... There was a lot of gas in the oil wells that were drilled in Los Cerritos. One well blew out at Bixby and Pacific. Bottom hole pressure couldn't be controlled with the equipment available at the time. Many oil wells blew out on Signal Hill. A lot of those wells are still producing. The Petroleum Club was built in the 1950s and Freeman Fairfield, who owned a supply company, was instrumental in organizing it. Rowan was a member of when he was working in the oil business. (30:16-31:20)... Rowan was born in Long Beach in 1926 at Seaside Hospital. His family lived at 36th and Brayton at the time. Most of the people he knew directly or indirectly benefited from the oil business. End of tape *** File: petrowan2.mp3 (0:00-3:07)... Rowan attended Longfellow and Los Cerritos elementary schools and Poly High before going off to college. He grew up in a house his parents built in 1930 in California Heights. Parts of California Heights weren't developed earlier because they were too close to oil pumping wells, but these wells didn't produce very long. Then in 1939 his family built a new home in Bixby Knolls. Long Beach was a "nice town with 200,000 people" when he was growing up and he and his friends played in the bed of the Los Angeles River before it was paved. They camped and hunted and his family even kept a horse that someone gave his father at a nearby stable. (3:07-5:58)... In the long run, oil development had a positive effect on Long Beach. It's the reason that heavy industry and commerce developed in the harbor area. Development of the harbor led to building and extending the breakwater. Harbor developers may have been overly enthusiastic in building the breakwater because it destroyed "as pretty a beach as existed any place in the country." During the Depression oil prices fell as low as $.25 sometimes but it fluctuated with the discovery of new fields. There were oil wells on Signal Hill that produced tremendous amounts of oil. The Haas lease there, for example, held the record for the largest amount of oil taken out of an acre of land. Long Beach oil production had an impact on world oil prices. It became so well know that it attracted people involved in the oil business from all over the country. Oil workers tend to migrate to follow booms. anyway (5:58-10:09)... Long Beach is unique because it is bounded on the west by the harbor and on the south by the ocean. The deterioration of downtown Long Beach is no different than the decline of other downtowns. Regional shopping and commercial centers such as Lakewood led to the decline of downtown Long Beach; oil development wasn't a cause. The Mallon case has also had an impact of downtown Long Beach. Since it was decided, civic leaders have tried to find projects on which they could legally spend tidelands money. One result has been the construction of a modern harbor with container handling facilities. Los Angeles controls half of the harbor but because a fault runs through there, the Los Angeles side contains little of the oil in the Wilmington Oil field; most of the oil is in Long Beach. There is also a fault that runs through Signal Hill and it separates the oil producing areas from others The development of oil in Long Beach in the 1930s led to the exploration and discovery of oil in Huntington Beach. (10:09-14:09)... After he graduated from high school, Rowan went into the Navy. When he got out of the service, he went to college at USC on the GI Bill. Since his father was working in the Philippines, he encouraged Rowan to study foreign trade, so he took business courses. Then in 1947 went to the Philippines to work with his father. Then he served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War but he was never sent to Korea. By the time he got out of the service again, his father had passed away and he started an oil well service company that took care of existing oil wells. Drilling contractors charge either by the foot, if they have an idea of how far underground the oil is located and what the underground strata is like, or by the day for their equipment and crew. On wildcat wells, when drilling contractors have no idea of there is oil or now, they charge by the day. All this changed, however, during WWII when there was more demand for drilling rigs than there were rigs to satisfy the demand. This is when wells were drilled in the harbor near the Naval Base and by Union Pacific Railroad on the rights of way they owned. (14:09-17:06)... Dr. Henderson has a clinic on Redondo that treated people injured in the oil fields. When Rowan broke his arm as a kid, that's where he was treated. Another early emergency clinic was Bishops Clinic at Virginia Rd. and Roosevelt. When Rowan went there a few years before the interview to get "some shots," they still had his records from 25 years earlier. (17:06-18:42)... Long Beach was a small beach city until oil was discovered. Oil exports brought a lot of business into the harbor. The next major local development was the discovery of oil in the harbor and after that, Douglas Aircraft built its plant near the airport and the Navy has long been a source of employment and local income. The decline of downtown happened at the same time as a slowdown in oil production but the two events weren't related. (18:42-21:30)... When Rowan was growing up, other families also kept horses and many kids rode and played in the unpaved bed of the Los Angeles River. There were stables and corrals and even a landing strip for private airplanes. (21:30-26:10)... Rowan's father died in 1953 about the time that he got out of the Marine Corps. Rowan didn't know how to run a drilling contracting business, so he liquidated it. Then he started building his own service company. The center of local oil activity in the 1950s was in the harbor although there was some secondary recovery on Signal Hill. Shell and Texaco were active there and will probably eventually flush out all the oil under Signal Hill. Only about 1/3 of the oil in Long Beach has been produced, so water flooding projects have the potential to produce much more. There is little subsidence on Signal Hill; there is not enough to be a problem But in the harbor, it is a unique problem caused by natural gas and oil extraction. (26:10-28:29)... Most of the men in the oil business came from the midwest and had worked in other oil fields. This was a common bond among them. Will J. Reid was the exception; he was a banker from Canada, but most were from Oklahoma and Texas. Most of these men did not have a formal education and they learned the oil business by working in it. (28:29-31:02)... Many oil businesses were headquarters on Cherry Avenue including Rowan's father's. The war changed the career plans that many of the men his age had made. Rowan's current business is an industrial valve company; getting into the drilling business was very expensive.
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