Today we visited the Cabrillo Beach and Cabrillo Marine Museum. We last visited the marine museum some years ago. We remembered it as a small hole-in-the-wall museum. Wow, has it changed. The original marine museum is still there but they have added a touch tank.
But in addition, they've added a discovery center, a state-of-the-art marine research library, and a research area. We were completely blown away. My first impression was that it was nicer than the Boston Aquarium. Then I remembered the seals, the penguins, and Boston Aquarium's own touch tank. For children under the age of eight years, I would recommend the Cabrillo Marine Museum. It's smaller, a bit more educational for that age group, more intimate, less easy to get loss, but one really can't go wrong with either.
Oh, by the way, the Cabrillo Marine Museum is free. Yes, free. Suggested donation but my hunch is that most of the locals who visit frequently donate only occasionally.
But I digress. I assume most folks coming to a blog on the North Dakota oil industry are not interested in reading about a marine museum in southern California. There is another reason for writing about the museum.
As noted, the research library is a state-of-the art complex run by a very engaging librarian. She pointed out one of the library's new books, a history of the Los Angeles Port. Interestingly, every page in the book, it seems, refers to the port as the San Pedro Port, but that's another story.
There is a chapter in the book on the oil industry in southern California. There's an interesting story of a young woman who came from Boston to San Pedro, California, to teach piano lessons. She got caught up in the oil frenzy at the turn of the century, and actually invested in a well that happened to be located next to where she was living.
With the money she made from that first half interest in the well next to her, she bought her own rig, hired a crew, and started drilling.
To make a long story short, she ended up controlling ALL the oil from the Los Angeles oil field, one of the largest fields in the United States.
She continued to teach piano lessons.Summers expanded her holdings into real estate as World War I demand for petroleum increased her profits. She bought some of the first motion picture theaters in Los Angeles as well as apartment houses, several San Fernando Valley ranches, and a Wilshire Boulevard mansion.
As the Los Angeles oil boom waned, Summers moved into her elegant hotel appropriately named the Queen. Years later she recalled, “Oh, how scared I was sometimes! I would start in on a big deal and then get scared and wonder where I’d land. But I usually came out all right.”
Her name was Emma Summers. Her story can be read here. She became known as the Oil Queen of California.
