Mentryville, California, Los Angeles County: Nestled within the picturesque Santa Clarita Valley, Mentryville was once a bustling oil boomtown in the late 19th century, thriving with activity and community life. Below is detailed information about the town.
County: Los Angeles County
Zip Code: Not available
Latitude / Longitude: 34.3789° N, 118.5745° W
Elevation: Approximately 1,500 feet
Time Zone: Pacific Time Zone (PT)
Established: 1876
Disestablished: The town began to decline in the 1930s
Comments: Mentryville was founded following the discovery of oil in Pico Canyon, which led to the establishment of California’s first commercially successful oil well, Pico No. 4. It was named after Charles Alexander Mentry, the oil well superintendent who was instrumental in its development.
At its peak, Mentryville had over 100 residents, along with a school, a barn, and a social hall. Mentryville was an oil drilling town in the Santa Susana Mountains in Los Angeles County, California Ghost Townlifornia, USA. It was started in the 1870s around the newly discovered oil reserves in that area.
The first oil strike was on September 26, 1876. The town is located at the terminus of Pico Canyon Road, four miles west of the Lyons Avenue exit from I-5 in Santa Clarita.
Remains: Visitors to Mentryville can still see several preserved structures, including the 13-room mansion once inhabited by Charles Mentry, a barn, and the schoolhouse. These remnants offer a glimpse into the town’s once-thriving community.
The last caretaker of Mentryville was Francis “Frenchy” Lagasse, who moved into the old Mentry mansion with his wife and children in 1966. The property’s owner, Standard Oil of California, wanted to raze the remnants of the ghost town, but Lagasse persuaded the company to allow him to restore the town.
With help from the Santa Clarita Historical Society, Lagasse eventually began offering tours of Mentryville. Lagasse was forced to leave Mentryville after the 1994 Northridge earthquake damaged the house. In 1995, Chevron (which had become the owner upon its acquisition of Standard Oil of California in 1977) donated the Mentryville site and the surrounding 800 acres (3.2 km2) in Pico Canyon to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.
The Friends of Mentryville group was organized to restore the buildings and open the old town as a historic park with docent-led tours.
Current Status: Mentryville is now a ghost town, managed by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy as part of Pico Canyon Park. It serves as a historical site and is open to the public for tours and educational purposes.
Mentryville was eventually abandoned, partially because the amount of oil slowed over time, and partially because of changes to the oil industry. During the 1930s, most of Mentryville’s remaining residents left, many tearing down their houses board by board and nail by nail, and taking it all with them.
By 1962, Mentryville had become a ghost town, with only a caretaker family living in Mentry’s old 13-room house. That year, a camp visitor reported that “rusted oil equipment cluttered the canyon,” toppled derricks lay rotting, and the cemetery was “choked with weeds, hidden and forgotten.”
Remarks: Mentryville’s legacy as a pioneer of the oil industry in California is a tribute to the American spirit of innovation and exploration. It stands today as a monument to the industrial history of the state, attracting history buffs and nature enthusiasts alike who desire to explore the past and enjoy the scenic beauty of the surrounding parkland.
The site is now registered as California Historical Landmark #516-2. A fire nearly destroyed Mentryville’s historic structures in 2003, and a storm in 2004 washed out the visitors’ parking lot and flooded the historic buildings. Mentryville and Pico Canyon have become popular shooting locations.
They were used in motion pictures, including Steven Spielberg’s “The Color Purple” and “Walking Tall Part 2”, and in television series, including “The X-Files”, “The A-Team”, “Murder, She Wrote”, and “Highway to Heaven.”
