MEMORIES OF MENTRYVILLE : PIONEERS RECALL PAST OF ONCE-THRIVING TOWN.

Byline: Cynthia Neal-Harris Special to the Daily News

The noise came from way down Pico Canyon Road. The car clambered and banged its way up to the The Standard, the former name of Mentryville, a turn-of-the-century oil boomtown.

It was 1909 and Ruth Saunders Albright was 6 years old. Ruth related some of her remembrances by letters and taped recordings to Carol Lagasse, who with her husband, Frenchy, leased Mentryville from April 1966 to February 1994 when their lifetime lease was canceled by Chevron USA.

John Saunders, Ruth's father, was an oil driller for The Standard. When he lost an eye in an oil rig accident the company offered him a night watchman's job. Mrs. Sanders was offered the opportunity to run the 75-man man boarding house. The work continued around the clock.

Mrs. Saunders had to prepare 35 lunches at 3 a.m. each day. The men would not allow anyone else to pack their lunches. The fee for her services was $1 a day, per man,, money that bought breakfast, lunch and supper.

Breakfast was really supper for the night crews who finished their shifts and feasted on steak, eggs, homemade biscuits and desserts from the bakery in Mentryville, plus gallons of hot steaming coffee.

All the supplies for the boardinghouse had to come from Los Angeles by train to the Southern Pacific station in Newhall. The Saunders would have to hitch the horse to the buggy to meet the train for the fresh groceries and produce.

Mrs. Saunders was attempting to do just that when the first car ever to come up Pico Canyon roared up the narrow dirt road. The horse became so frightened that he ran off with the buggy. She held on for dear life trying to stop the runaway buggy, but the horse ran for four miles to the old Lyons Bridge before the buggy overturned. Mrs. Saunders broke her hip in the crash, and was laid up for three months.

The accident was near Howe Hill, now the site Camping World and the International House of Pancakes.

This hill played a major role in the life of every resident of Mentryville.

In 1915, Helen Mace Burson was hired to teach 11 students of the Felton School in Mentryville. She signed the contract of $55 a month without ever seeing the one-room schoolhouse.

Her train arrived on an August afternoon in a huge downpour. Her curiosity was raised when the superintendent of The Standard, Mr. Young, and another oil employee met her train in a Haines touring car with four long boards strapped to the side.

The trunk was loaded and they headed out on Pico Road - now Lyons Avenue. The reason for the boards became clear at Howe Hill. As Young drove, the other man laid the boards in front of the tires. When the driver would reach the end of the boards the employee would run back to pick them up and put them down in front of the tires. This continued three times until the car was able to make it through the slimy adobe mud. Pico Creek was overflowing also, making travel even more difficult.

Most of the town's 43 residents lived across the creek. Miss Mace once ordered a Bible for a student but found it had gotten wet in the saddlebags as a mail carrier tried to cross Pico Creek. It took days to dry it out.

Mrs. Young, the superintendent's wife, gave Helen the northwest corner upstairs bedroom in ``The Big House'' in Mentryville for $10 per month. Helen was allowed to wash her clothes in the wash house. The schoolhouse had gas lights but no running water in the outhouses. The whole school had to drink from the same water bucket and dipper.

Some of the students in 1915 were from the McCartney, Galvert, MacIntire, Edmonson, and Cochuman families.

Mrs. Burson remembered a very lonely existence while living at The Standard. The Acton Community Center held a dance, but after Helen walked the five miles to take the train and walked back after the dance, she was scolded by Mrs. Young that it was ``not proper'' for a young school teacher to go to dances and return late. Helen never went to the dances again but did attend a few social activities in the community hall. Helen enjoyed playing tennis on the gaslighted tennis courts.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

PHOTO (1 -- ran in AV edition only) This photo from 1989 shows ``The Big House,'' a 13-room Victorian home.

(2) A historical plaque in Pico Canyon near Newhall marks the site of the state's first commercial oil well in Mentryville.

David R. Crane/Daily News