Mentryville

Heart of Heavy Steel: A Mentryville Story by Darryl Manzer, 4-9-2020 >>I have a few items of family memorabilia I've carried around from place to place as I transferred and moved for the Navy and in retirement. This one item, above all, is a memory I can't seem to let go. It was such a happy time when it came into my life, and when it became mine, it was a very sad time.<< https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/dm20200409.htm

Mentryville is closed (along with pretty much everything else) >>In the Santa Clarita Valley this includes but is not necessarily limited to East Canyon, Ed Davis Park in Towsley Canyon, Mentryville, Michael D. Antonovich Open Space, Newhall Pass Trailhead, Pico Canyon, Rice Canyon, Santa Clarita Woodlands Park and Whitney Canyon Park.<<

SCVHistory.com CN8005 | Pico Canyon | Mentryville Docent Group, June 1980 https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/cn8005.htm

Follow link, scroll to Book View >>Scofield was a young geologist from the Pennsylvania oil fields who had come to San Francisco to enter the marketing end of this new business. But when he heard of the oil seepage near Newhall, he headed south and acquired acreage in the well-nigh inaccessible Pico Canyon. [...] It took them a month to drill the first well, C.S.O. No. l (Pico No. 1), to a depth of 120 feet where 11 barrels a day of 32 gravity oil were recovered. But it was a...bandoned because of the small flow. C.S.O. No. 2 was the same sort of producer, and it, too, was abandoned. The third hole was dry. A steam engine was brought in and the fourth hole was taken to the prodigious depth of 300 feet. There, on September 26, 1876, 77 years ago next month, C.S.O. No. 4 was completed for 30 barrels a day and a fair amount of gas. Soon, squat 30-foot wooden derricks sprouted all through the canyons and ridges of the territory.<< https://scvhistory.com/scvhisto/standardoiler195308pico.htm

Both exteriors and, apparently, interiors of Alex Mentry's 13-room mansion in Pico Canyon serve as the stage for Roy Rogers and Gabby Hayes in two scenes from "Days of Jesse James" (Republic Pictures 1939). We get a double dose of "Echo Mountain," which Rogers sings inside the house in both clips, near the beginning and at the end of the picture. The house is featured as the home of the love interest, Mary Whittaker, played by Pauline Moore, and Whittaker's grandfather (Hayes...). Moore (1914-2001) started out as a magazine cover model (Cosmopolitan, McCall's, Ladies Home Journal) and was still a teenager when she launched a film career that spanned more than a quarter century, beginning with 1931's "Frankenstein" with Boris Karloff (she played an uncredited bridesmaid). Moore appeared in five Roy Rogers pictures. Under contract with Republic, she was paid a grand total of $300 for her work in this film. The lawman who wrongly accuses Rogers in the second clip is played by Harry Woods (1889-1968). Not seen here, 2019 Newhall Walk of Western Stars inductee Dan White is uncredited but has a couple of lines in the film. SCVHistory.com LW3658 | Film-Arts | ''Days of Jesse James'' Clips: Roy Rogers in Mentryville, 1939 https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/lw3658.htm

SCVHistory.com CN7702 | Pico Canyon | SCV Historical Society Board Visits Mentryville, 1977 https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/cn7702.htm

NOV 13 in #SCVHistory: 1966 - Pico No. 4 oil well listed as a National Historic Landmark > http://ow.ly/U3Z430pSMX0

From KHTS AM1220

Follow link, scroll down to Book View SCVHistory.com SZ2901 | Pico Canyon | Mentryville: Origins of Standard Oil Co. of California (1929) https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/sz2901.htm

SoCal gold stock certificates from 1865 are rare enough, but this is a PETROLEUM stock certificate from 1865 -- eleven years before Alex Mentry did his thing in Pico Canyon. Follow link for story, which takes off in peculiar directions. https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/lw3623.htm

SCVHistory.com CN7701 | Mentryville Dedicated as Calif. State Historic Landmark 516-2: Program Book, 10-8-1977 https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/cn7701.htm

SCVHistory.com CN7601 | Mentryville 100 Celebration, 9-26-1976: Crude Oil Sample, Pico No. 4 Follow link for story & more photos: https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/cn7601.htm

OCT 4 in #SCVHistory: 1900 - Pico oil driller Alex Mentry (as in Mentryville) succumbs to typhoid fever at California Hospital in Los Angeles > http://ow.ly/7PBx30pFgMa