West Kern Oil Museum

Taft, California.This museum/plantation is one of a kind. I have never been to any type of museum catered to petro. The equipment and the sizes are jaw dropping.They have a gigantic oil drilling rig in the middle of the park... It was surreal to see how this old school mechanism worked w/ the plethora of pullies made from wood and rubber. Access/Roads: APaved.Parking: BPlenty on dirt.Distance: CAppx 120 miles north of DTLA.Appx 40 miles southwest of bakersfield.Costs: AFreeNearby Attractions:Jack dilly squat. hmm. there's some dirt everywhere.Conclusion: AThis is one of my favorite museums between LA and SF. It's a must for anyone who cares about these things. No one cares for Taft or the nearby region, and there is no reason too except to visit this museum or visit the nearby prison. Safe travelings.IG @cigarcpa.

This museum totally, totally rocks. A museum, in an ideal word, guides you to another plane or sphere or alternate universe. It transforms, transfigures, transports. It blows your mind and tells you a story in the process. Thanks to our incredible 93-year-old volunteer docent Pauleen and museum staff Agnes and Esther, our minds were officially blown. WKOM provides incredible docents and volunteers who are locals and know the history of the area intimately . What an experience to hear about growing up in a tent house next to an oil rig, dealing with gushers that spewed oil for miles, the positive impact of the oil industry on the area! We came here expecting to spend about an hour, max, but thanks to the incredible volunteers, spent over three hours touring the museum and visiting the gift shop. Now, before people start to message me because they are totally pissed off because "Oil kills" etc., let me tell you that I agree. I recycle. I try to economize on my trips to save gas. I believe in preserving the environment. But history rocks, too.. And when you are presented with a museum of this caliber, created and maintained totally and 100% by volunteers, it is a reminder that the power of community is also something worth preserving. Thank you, all, for an incredible journey back in time.

Unless you work at the prison or are employed in the agricultural or oil sectors, you probably don't have a reason to visit Taft. There's still oil here although you won't see the over 7,000 wooden derricks that dominated this landscape until the mid-1960s. Now, legions of squat metal rigs controlled by computers far, far away pump like hearts even on 100-degree days.The West Kern Oil Museum seems to be a place created out of sheer will. Ancient oil vehicles have come here to die like whales on a beach. Outdated heavy metal tools and machinery litter the grounds. It's a walk through ruins. Casting a long shadow in the center of all this is a recreation of a wooden oil derrick.The oasis-like koi pond near the museum building entrance offers a clue that this museum is not all about oil. Inside the museum building, it's clear that the Taft community is trying to tell a larger story. There are the expected sections devoted to oil and geology but there are also simple dioramas depicting a doctor's office, a school, a photography studio, a pharmacy, a residence, and a mouse invasion -- yes, that's right -- that occurred a long time ago. There is a model train setup, a case devoted to some toys and another case devoted to one woman's glass slipper collection.My favorites were a saber-toothed tiger skeleton on loan from the LaBrea Tar Pits -- the teeth on this over 12,000 year-old animal look like they can still do serious damage -- and a series of black & white photographs of the community during oil's heyday. I was also taken with a common object used by oil workers: a stink pot lamp. Used on drilling rigs until about 1912, oil-soaked rags were placed in each of the two spouts then ignited. These smoky lanterns provided light so drilling could take place in the dark.This museum obviously runs on fumes and the dedication of volunteers. It's a community center, really, that opens a window on the sincerity of the folks who built it.

WEST KERN OIL MUSEUM is located just off Highway 5, that great thoroughfare that takes you from Los Angeles to just east of Oakland, and back. Aside from the occasional open-bin tomato truck filled with millions of colorful tomatoes, and the fascinating BRAVO FARMS restaurant and gift shop at Kettleman City, there is not much to experience on Highway 5 except for severe boredom. WEST KERN OIL MUSEUM is another attraction, but it requires a short side trip to Taft. The short drive from highway 5 to the City of Taft provides close-up views of operating oil wells. On the grounds of the museum, one finds an out-of-doors lot that is filled with elderly oil mining equipment. Visitors are free to touch the equipment and to pose for photos right in front of the equipment (see my photos).Inside the oil museum building, one finds models of an offshore drilling platform, a refinery, and an oil field. The oil museum has a gift shop. I suggest supplementing your visit by touring a similar museum which is located in nearby Bakersfield. This museum is: The Kern County Museum, 3801 Chester Ave., Bakersfield, CA. The exhibits at the Bakersfield museum are glitzier and more seductive than the humbler exhibits at the West Kern Oil Museum. Thus, I suggest visiting both museums, for that complete California oil industry-experience.For people who travel the BARSTOW/BAKERSFIELD HIGHWAY (Route 58), especially if you like museums relating to geology and industrial equipment, I recommend Borax Visitor Center, Rio Tinto Borax Mine Center, and 20 Mule Team Museum.Also, for those of you who thrill to the sight of antique industrial equipment, I also recommend the logging museum located in Elsie, Oregon. This logging museum is called, "CAMP 18 LOGGING MUSEUM." The logging machinery at CAMP 18 is almost as interesting as the oil processing machinery at West Kern Oil Museum. CAMP 18 also has an impressive restaurant that takes the form of a humongous log cabin, where the items on the menu have fanciful names that invoke the logging industry (www.camp18restaurant.com). West Kern Oil Museum is likely to whet your museum-taste buds, thereby causing a longing to visit similar museums.

I admit to having a mildly perverse fascination with the West Kern Oil Museum. In spite of all the damage inflicted on the planet by our insatiable demand for petroleum products, there's something quaint about a monument to crude, staffed by friendly volunteers who love oil and the oil industry.The West Kern Oil Museum is a rambling, folksy, low-key affair. A group of low-slung buildings contain artifacts providing ample history on West Kern in pre oil-boom days, including a full skeleton of a saber-tooth cat. But it's the boom-town memories and curiosities that steal the show, including stories on historic mouse-infestations and local school outings, to photos and stories of the largest US oil spill in history (the Lakeview Gusher in 1910, which spilled 9 million barrels of oil, twice the BP Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010). Outside are several acres of aged drilling equipment and other outdoor oil paraphernalia. The sum of it all portrays the area around Taft as a cross between Mayberry RFD and "There Will be Blood" (a reproduction of a early 20th century derrick on museum grounds was used to create an identical model for the film). As much as the artifacts fascinate, they would be nothing without the warm, hospitable volunteers staffing the West Kern Oil Museum. They are uniformly friendly, helpful, and steeped in the history of the boom-bust cycle where most appear to have spent much of their lives. But while the facilities and people are down to earth, the place has some generous benefactors, with a donors plaque listing Chevron and Texaco near the top of the list. Apparently a folksy picture of oil's rich history in California also makes good PR for today's multinationals.

A free museum, how can that be bad? A very well done museum about the history of oil production in California and the towns of Kern/Taft. The museum also covers other significantly historical moments from the region such as the migration of the Okies from the dust bowl region. Well worth the stop, wish we had more time to go through it, but we still learned a lot. Interesting that California used to export oil, now it imports oil, though California produces over 750,000 barrels a year. Or how the town was over ran by mice during a flood. The mouse plague lasted months. They had to call in an expert to poison them. They counted 4mill mice per acre. To read more stop in @ the oil museum. Have fun!

What a nice museum. Very interesting and great people that help you out. The only thing I would like to see would be for there to be more signage put around all the out side things so you know what your looking at. Our friends from Phoenix really enjoyed their visit to the museum.

If you want to know all about oil industry go to the board museum in Taft they have the knowledge they have is amazing and they'll tell you all about it where we come from where we end up everything about the oil industry all the equipment they had from the old school stuff my first started to the blowouts to everything

THIS PLACE IS FOR OLD OLD OLD PEOPLE THEY HAVE EVENTS COME DOWN ON SATURDAY THEY CHARGE YOU FOR YOUR MEALS WHICH ARE NOT WORTH $15.00 the cakes are made by the old staff and they are not very good. also the people that donate there time and bring there cars down to show for free dont even get a free meal . not worth the trip

This oil museum was the best I've been to. The staff, especially Sharon, went out of there way to make sure you had a chance to see and hear all the interesting stories. There are way to many fun things to look at to recount here. Their website works fine on my notebook but not in my phone. They do have many origins artifacts from the early days of the oil rush here. It was fascinating to see how people lived in the heat of summer while working the rigs. Highly recommended.