I can’t imagine a Sunday drive down Atlantic Ave in Long Beach would have been a particularly pleasant way to spend an afternoon in 1948, when this photo was taken. The closest I’ve been to an oil well is watching James Dean strike it big in “Giant” (1956) but I imagine there would be some clunking metal-on-metal noise and the heavy stink of crude oil that rolling up your windows wouldn’t keep out. And the most pleasant things to look at would have been those billboards.
And they’re still pumping black gold on (the 2900 block of) Atlantic Ave (March 2019.)
I can’t imagine a Sunday drive down Atlantic Ave in Long Beach would have been a particularly pleasant way to spend an afternoon in 1948, when this photo was taken. The closest I’ve been to an oil well is watching James Dean strike it big in “Giant” (1956) but I imagine there would be some clunking metal-on-metal noise and the heavy stink of crude oil that rolling up your windows wouldn’t keep out. And the most pleasant things to look at would have been those billboards.
They’re still pumping black gold on Atlantic.
https://goo.gl/maps/SGAmrpLoJaSPBdHj9
I do remember driving through the derrick canyons as a kid and wondering how many trees it took to build one of those.