Posts Tagged ‘oil drilling’

In December 1919, full-page advertisements began running in San Diego and Los Angeles newspapers soliciting dollars for an audacious plan to explore for oil in San Diego. Remarkably, the instigator of the proposal was the city’s mayor, Louis J. Wilde. The scheme would attract thousands of dollars from hundreds of San Diegans, all anxious to follow their mayor in the “Jazz Cat Gamble.”

Read the story of a reckless scheme by the city’s mayor The Jazz Cat Oil Gamble.

Mayor Louis Wilde and his portable drilling rig. Courtesy Motor Transport Museum, Campo, CA.