Chapter 6 – Mining and Agriculture in Simi Valley

Mining

The Gillibrand quarry in Tapo Canyon now produces sand and gravel for general construction purposes, but prior to the 1940’s the area was a major producer of shell limestone.

Recently, while hiking in the foothills north of Simi Valley, I came across a surprise: an apparent mine abandoned atop a 2100 foot tall mountain on the Marrland Ranch. The site was difficult to reach on foot and years of erosion and seismic activity had destroyed the road which even in its best days looked like it must have been precarious. The mine sits on a large deposit of limestone comprised of seashells. It seemed like a strange place for a mine, especially since the Gillibrand mine was far more accessible around the time that I believe this mine was active. A close-up view of the rock mill shown above shows that the equipment was patented in 1897.

Markings on the shovel shown here identify this piece of equipment as a P&H Model 206, made by the P&H Mining Equipment Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This piece of machinery was manufactured sometime in the 1920s or 1930s. Dozens of additional pieces of equipment were scattered around the area. It remains a mystery to me how the limestone was carted off of the mountain.

At the base of the mountain where I found the mine, a short walk leads to a natural oil seep. While the Northern California “Gold Rush” may have figured prominently in California’s early development, it was “black gold” that made it “The Golden State.” Marrland and the nearby Las Llajas oil field produced high-gravity petroleum for Getty Oil starting as early as the 1920’s. The fields were still producing oil well into the 1960’s, with some wells still pumping out crude into the seventies. Almost all of the equipment is gone except for thousands of feet of steel cables that used to drive “jack line” pumps (numerous pumps driven by one motor) and oil pipelines (as in the upper right corner of the photograph above).

Agriculture

This small stand of orange trees adjacent to the Simi Valley Civic Center is all that remains of hundreds of acres of orange and lemon groves that used to carpet the floor of the valley.

This line of walnut trees used to be part of a large grove. Some of the walnut and citrus groves were still around into the late seventies and early eighties, but all have been removed to make room for housing and commercial developments. The valley floor’s last major farm—a 35 acre seasonal strawberry, corn, tomato, and pepper farm at the corner of Tapo Canyon Road and Alamo Street—was bulldozed in 2003 to make way for a shopping center and low-cost senior housing.