Category: Oil Center California

Oil Workers, A.O. Co., Oil Center, California, 1911

Adventure and the quest for fortune have always been alluring to some young men. In the early 1900s the news of the oil strikes and oil fields out West was enough to lure two farm boys from rural Mercer County, Ohio, westward, on a quest to make their fortunes. Those two young men, Christian “Chris” Miller and Jacob Miller Jr, were my great-uncles, brothers of my grandfather Carl Miller. They left their farm life to work in the oil fields of Texas, Oklahoma, and California around 1910.