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Unrecorded promotional map of the Oil Fields in Kern County, published by The Colorado-Pacific Oil Company in 1899.

The map shows the region north and east of Bakersfield, with the lands of the Colorado Pacific Oil Company highlighted in red.

At the right of the map, a prospectus like explanation of the company and its prospects is given, including a testimonial from the company's expert, calling the lands, which he considered "one of the most promising localities for oil," he ever saw.

We located a number of San Francisco Examiner advertisements for investment in the Colorado-Pacific Oil Company in January and February of 1900, and thereafter nothing until 1910 and 1917, at which the time the company was searching for oil in Vernal, Utah.

Of greatest interest is an article in the Bakersfield Californian of June 13, 1932 describing the discovery of a copy of this map.  

RESURRECTS KERN OIL MAP -- Colorado-Pacific Oil Company -- EARLY DAY WORK REVIEWED

Neal Needham, of the General Petroleum Corporation, has resurrected and forwarded to the Bakersfield Californian a photostatic copy of "an official map of the Kern River oil district, Kern county, compiled from public records and private surveys, drawn and published by R.F. Morton, . . . in 1889," wherein is depicted the current activities and future possibilities, as pictured by the old Colorado-Pacific Oil Company.

In fact, the map is nothing more or less than an illustrated prospectus. . . .

At the time the Kern river field boast about 12 producers and 24 drilling jobs.  The producers included discovery well, the Elwood well and the Santa Fe well on the southeast quarter of section 3, 29-28, on the northern edge of the Kern river.  Colorado-Pacific Oil Company proposed to prospect furthest north.

Kern County Oil

According to a California State Historical Marker of the original site in Kern County, "Oil was discovered at 70 feet in 1899, when Tom Means persuaded Roy Elwood and Frank Wiseman, aided by Jonathan, Bert, Jed, and Ken Elwood, George Wiseman, and John Marlowe, to dig here for oil. On June 1, 1899, 400 feet to the north, Horace and Milton McWhorter drilled this region's first commercial well." 

Rarity

We find no surviving examples in OCLC or otherwise.