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History of Oil in the Channel

The presence of oil under the Santa Barbara Channel coast was well known even in prehistoric times ,as evidenced by the many ways the Chumash aborigines employed asphaltum in their culture. They used it to caulk their unique tomol plank canoes, to waterproof their basketry, and to affix flint barbs to their weaponry and fish hooks. Inexhaustible sources of this substance were available from tar pits near Carpinteria beach, surface deposits on the present University campus near Goleta, and from extrusions along the sea cliffs between More Mesa and Dos Pueblos. " From the Irony of Oil, written by noted historian Walt Tompkins in a 1977 article for Santa Barbara Magazine called The Irony of Oil.

The first written record of the surface tar was recorded by Padre Pedro Font, a member of De Anza’s colonizing party in 1776, the same year of American independence on the East Coast. Tompkins describes that " while plodding along the beach around Coal Oil Point on the way towards Refugio Beach, he begrimed his priestly sandals and the hem of his habit with smears of the pesky black stuff the natives called capopote, or in Spanish, la brea. The adhesive goo had been cast ashore from petroleum seeps in the ocean floor, and no amount of water, soap, or elbow grease would clean it off his clothing.

From prehistoric tomols to plastic milk bottles and automobile fuel, from instant millionaires to devastating oil spills, oil has had an enormous impact on the lives of Channel coast residents for thousands of years.