Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Los Gatos: the Midland/Odessa of the Santa Clara Valley

Another Moody Gulch article from a bit of Google searching, this time with a photo and progress update:

"Moody Gulch Oil Well Daily Expected to Come In" (San Jose News, June 24, 1930).

I also found this description of the 1880's Moody Gulch oil well infrastructure in a text version of Pen Pictures from the "Garden of the World", or Santa Clara County California":

Moody's Gulch, which is a branch of the Los Gatos Canon, at wells Nos. i and 2 (which are about one hundred feet apart), runs about north twenty degrees east. Altitude at this point, eleven hundred feet. At the bridge a little above, fine-grained sandstones and shales strike about north sixty degrees west, and dip sixty-five southwest. Within two hundred feet east of this bridge and seventy-five feet or more above the bed, and still higher up the hill, is well No. 5. East of this and yet higher is well No. 8. On the opposite side of the gulch and about two hundred feet from it is Logan No. I. Altitude, about thirteen hundred and eighty feet above sea-level. About three hundred feet south, twenty degrees west, from Logan No. i, is Plyler No. i. All the oil obtained from these wells is a green oil, known as parafline oil, and has a specific gravity of forty-four degrees. It is piped a distance of about a mile to the mouth of the gulch, where it is received in a tank that stands on a side track of the South Pacific Coast Railway. The first well, named Moody No. i, struck oil at about eight hundred feet. Unfortunately the detailed record of operations has been lost, but that of subsequent wells is complete.

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