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Vickers, Charles (audio interview #1 of 1)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION - Vicker's was interviewed in his condo in Bixby Knolls 7/26/1983
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- 2021-01-04
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- SUBJECT BIO - Charles Vickers retired as General Manager of the Long Beach Harbor Department in 1969 and played a significant role in the harbor's modernization and expansion. Some of that growth was financed by oil that was produced from under the harbor area. But there was a struggle over who owned the oil that was under the tidelands and submerged lands near the city; both state and federal governments tried to claim it. In this 45 minute interview, Vickers talks about his background and how he came to work for the harbor. When oil was discovered under the harbor, Vickers surveyed the area that had previously been considered useless. He also worked with other harbor officials to defend Long Beach's right to develop the oil and resist challenges to its ownership. He served in as General Manager of the Port of Long Beach for eleven years and worked for the Long Beach Harbor Department for forty-five years. This actual interview was 30 minutes longer; after the first 30 minutes, the recorder failed, but began again to record the last 15 minutes. The interview was part of a project to study the impact of the discovery of oil on the development of Long Beach. TOPICS - Vickers' family background; working as a surveyor for Long Beach harbor; working on a survey crew for the US Army Corps of Engineers; the discovery of oil in Long Beach harbor; the tidelands controversy; and Long Beach Oil Development;Vickers' family life; the Depression; Sam Vickers; and the Pacific Coast Association of Port Authorities;
- *** File: subcvickers1.mp3 Audio Segments and Topics: (0:00-4:51)... Introduction Vickers was born in South Dakota but came to Long Beach in 1919 and graduated from Long Beach Poly High School. His grandparents had already moved to Long Beach and his parents wanted him to finish school here. At Poly, he was on the cross country team that practiced by running up Signal Hill before oil was discovered. After he graduated, he vacillated between working and going on to school. He studied engineering at several schools, including Dakota Weslyan, the University of South Dakota, USC, and UCLA, but he never graduated. He almost went to South America with Standard Oil but instead went to work for the Edison Company building a tunnel between Florence Lake and Huntington Lake. He started working for the city of Long Beach on a survey crew April 1, 1925, before the Harbor Department was created. He saved enough money to go back to school for a semester, then came back to work for the city and stayed from 1925 to 1969. Long Beach harbor was started in 1906 by the private Dock and Terminal Company. Floods between 1914 and 1916 deposited silt in the harbor and filled the entrance channel. The company kept the upland areas and deeded the bottoms of the channels to the city so the city would have to dredge them. (4:51-8:51)... Vickers became the Chief Surveyor for the Harbor Department by 1938. Sometime in the early 1930s, the city was short of money, so he worked for the US Army Corps of Engineers; the Corps didn't have its own survey crew so Long Beach Harbor Department crews worked for them between Morro Bay and San Diego. Later, between 1936 and 1938, when the city completely ran out of money, he worked for the Corps for 2 years. He came back to work for the city just about the time oil was discovered in the harbor. Vickers ran the survey crews and did all of the survey work in the harbor oil field. (8:51-14:26)... The discovery of the Wilmington oil field brought drastic changes. The first oil well in the new field was in Los Angeles harbor near the Ford Motor Company plant and was brought in by General Petroleum. The first oil well on city owned land was drilled in 1937. The Westlake Greenland well was also an early well drilled on city property. In 1911, the state of California deeded the tidelands and submerged lands adjacent to them to the city of Long Beach. Before oil was discovered there, most people weren't interested in these areas. When oil was discovered, a great deal of interest developed. There was litigation over who really owned those lands. From 1938 to 1940, the litigation focused on disputed land beneath the channels. The title to the land had to be cleared. The city ended up owning the land below the channels. (14:26-16:38)... The Marshall suit was to determine whether the city or the state owned the tidelands and submerged lands inside the city's boundaries. These lands were between the mean high tide line and the three mile limit. In 1911 the state had granted these lands to the city for commerce, navigation and fisheries. The suit was significant because the lands' owner could produce the oil under them. The city won this suit. Then there was another suit to determine whether any of the land belonged to private owners or the state or the city. Among the private companies that claimed land in the harbor were Union Pacific Railroad, Pacific Dock, Edison, and Craig shipbuilding. All of these companies had interests in the lands. Vickers wrote the legal descriptions of all of that land. (16:38-19:05)... The outcome of the litigation determined who had title to the land. The courts confirmed the city's title to the land under the harbor and off shore. The city charter created a 5 person harbor commission, appointed by the city council, to oversee development and operations in the harbor. Oil companies drilling on privately owned land revealed which parcels of land had oil and which did not. (19:05-23:31)... Long Beach Oil Development was organized by Standard, Hancock, Signal and several smaller oil companies to develop the oil in the harbor area. In the contract between LBOD and the city, the city was to get 30 percent of the revenue; the oil companies got 14.45 percent, and 55.55 percent was to reimburse the oil companies for their capital investment. The oil companies participating in LBOD promised to buy all of the oil that was produced. At the time the contract was signed, demand for oil was low, so this was an important aspect of the contract. LBOD also advanced all of the capitol for the equipment to get the drilling and production started. A local newspaper, The Independent opposed the contract; later, when one of the newspaper's owners, Frosty Martin, became head of the Harbor Commission, he defended the contract and wouldn't let anyone change it. Martin was one of the partners in Martin and Decker that made oil field equipment. (23:31-30:22)... In June, 1939 5 Long Beach city council members were recalled. Vickers supported the recall. The new council majority hired a new city manager and new Harbor Commissioners were appointed. One of them was Frosty Martin who kept his position as chairman for the next 15 years. Eloi Amar came over from Los Angeles harbor and became head of the Long Beach Harbor Department and Robert Shoemaker became Chief Engineer. Shoemaker was a lot better engineer than Amar was manager; Vickers became Amar's assistant and when Amar retired, Vickers finally got to be the manager. Vickers loved working with Frosty Martin. When oil was first discovered, representatives of the federal government threatened to take the land away from the city. Martin worked hard and used his influence to prevent this from happening. Vickers often went to meetings with Martin since he had run the surveys in the harbor. One time when federal representatives threatened to sue Long Beach, Martin and Vickers just walked out of the meeting. Swafield and Swafield were the attorneys hired to represented the city in the litigation. End of tape *** File: subcvickers2.mp3 (0:00-3:08)... Vickers' first wife was born in Iowa and she was training at Seaside Hospital to become a nurse when he met her at the Majestic ballroom in Long Beach. All of the survey crew members went to the Majestic. Vickers and his wife had three children, two boys and a girl. Vickers became interested in Camp Fire Girls through Herb Davies' wife, who was recruited by some of the Bixbys. He accompanied Davies to a place in the mountains where Camp Fire planned to build a mountain camp. He was recruited because the survey was screwed up. They managed to get labor and materials donated to straighten things out. When the camp was finished, it could hold about 125 girls, with a mess hall, kitchen, little hospital, and places to sleep either inside or out. His sons were in Boy Scouts but he wasn't involved with them very much. (3:08-8:34)... When he first came to California, there were few houses in California Heights; all the land north of Bixby Road was oat fields and south of Wardlow, there was not much development. There was a developed strip between Wardlow and Bixby and that's where he and his wife bought a house on Brayton where he lived from 1931 to 1971; he moved after his wife passed away in 1970. There weren't many oil wells on Brayton. During the Depression, the city couldn't pay him and he had a house, a wife, two children and no job. He tried to give the house back to the mortgage holder, but instead he worked out deal to keep the house. He finally got a job with the Works Progress Administration which built the first transit shed in the harbor. The WPA also provided money for the city to hire people to install sewer pipes. When Vickers worked for the Corps of Engineers, running a survey crew, he earned $1800 a year. (8:34-11:34)... Long Beach has always had a problem with absentee ownership. People came into the city, put money into buildings and milked out the profits rather than maintaining the buildings. That's why buildings began to collapse after 50 or 60 years of use. And voters always voted against proposals to spend money to improve the city. Vickers' brother, Sam, became Long Beach City Manager for a number of years. He came to Long Beach after he graduated from college in South Dakota in 1934. Vickers could never get his brother to be a good city manager. He always wanted to do everything himself. Vickers, however, believed in hiring the best assistants he could get and delegating authority to them. (11:34-13:42)... Vickers retired in 1969, and for the next 5 or 6 years he served as executive director of the Pacific Coast Association of Port Authorities. He worked out of Long Beach, oversaw ports in California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii and British Columbia. He retired from that job when he was 67; he said he wanted to leave while everyone still liked him. Then he lived in Palm Desert 3 years, but returned Long Beach. At the time of the interview, he was delivering for Meals on Wheels one day a week and serving as chairman of the board of the building where he lives. In that job, he said, he has 52 little old ladies to tell him what to do. End of tape
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