Decades before movie moguls produced celluloid heroes, oil claimed the spotlight in Los Angeles. California's oil industry took off in the mid-1870s just 30 miles north of what would later become Hollywood Boulevard.
By the 1920s, the Los Angeles Basin had become the state's leading oil-producing region as prospectors frenetically developed one oil-rich deposit after another. The rush to drill triggered explosions, fires and gushers that unleashed torrents of oil, rocks and debris in the fastest-growing metropolitan region in the country.
