The Oil Islands

In 1965, an empty expanse of Pacific Ocean reached away from the city's beaches, homes, hotels and marinas. Today, a chain of islands, complete with waving palm trees and towering high-rise buildings, is the view from the shore.

No sudden upheaval from the ocean floor, the islands are Long Beach's happy solution to a problem that has been nagging the city since 1961. That is, how to preserve the innocent charm of the beach front and at the same time exploit what lies immediately below the city and its bay: an estimated billion barrels of crude oil.

Several oil companies were eager to set up their equipment on drilling platforms offshore and start hammering away. The city said no—until someone came up with a bright new way to do the drilling behind a screen of camouflage that would make a Hollywood set designer envious.

Balconies Too. The idea was to make the whole thing look like a South Sea archipelago. In February 1965, a consortium of oil companies (Texaco, Humble, Union, Mobil and Shell) went to work hauling in rock and sand fill to build four ten-acre islands. Palm trees as tall as 60 feet were transplanted from Santa Barbara and San Diego, and architects were put to work sketching terra-cotta and steel shells for the oil rigs, designed to look like handsome balconied apartment buildings and soundproofed to keep the drilling noise from echoing across the bay.

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