Of all the streetcar rides you could take around Los Angeles, I would imagine this one might have been one of the more scenic routes. This is a Pacific Electric Red Car heading south parallel to the Pacific Coast Highway near Huntington Beach on August 24, 1946. This is a time when oil wells still punctuated the landscape south of L.A. Depending on where you looked, you could either see the ocean waves coming to shore or those wells pumping up liquid gold.
This is an auto-colorized version of that photo, which I think does a pretty good job of bringing this scene to life:
Long gone dichotomy in Southern California; nature verses industry in such close proximity.
Oil along the ocean – White Sand, Black Gold:
https://uc.ink/K6qWa?pub=link
Think need to be mindful of few protections (if any) then. Beautiful to look at & at the same time dangerous, toxic places –
I can’t imagine there were any protections. And if there were, they probably tilted toward the oil companies.
If we fail to remember or recognize scenes like this, we are destined to repeat them.