Hathaway Ranch & Oil Museum

Hathaway Ranch & Oil Museum
Location 11901 East Florence Avenue
Santa Fe Springs, California
Coordinates 33°56′08″N 118°04′47″W / 33.935595°N 118.079786°W / 33.935595; -118.079786
Type History museum
Website http://www.hathawayranchmuseum.org

The Hathaway Ranch & Oil Museum in Santa Fe Springs, California is a museum of five generations of Hathaway family and Southern California history. The five-acre facility includes hundreds of artifacts and buildings showing the initial usage of the land in farming and ranching, as well as the major transition when oil was discovered in the area.[1][2]

The property includes a machine shop with multiple antique machine tools that are powered with flat belts from an overhead line shaft. This system, which allowed all the machinery to be powered by one steam engine, rather than individual electric motors on the machines, was common in machine shops a century ago. The shop is fully intact from when it was in use, and looks as though the machinist just stepped out for a moment.[3]

The property has a 1933 Spanish-Mediterranean-style ranch house on it, as well as another home, in which members of the Hathaway family lived. The homes’ architecture and contents represent a time capsule from that era.[4][5]

The numerous outbuildings are a reflection of the needs of a working ranch, as well as the oil industry. The museum houses one of the largest collections of steam engines, antique farm machinery, vintage diesel engines, and oil field equipment in the region.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ ”Step back in time,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, Nov. 27, 1992.
  2. ↑ ”Lakeland wins national award,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, Sept. 17, 1996.
  3. ↑ ”Mother lode of ranch-house history,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, Apr. 19, 1997.
  4. ↑ ”It’s an original,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, Jul. 26, 1999.
  5. ↑ ”Museum shows early life in city,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, Mar. 26, 2005.
  6. ↑ ”Hathaway Ranch Museum,” City of Santa Fe Springs Web site (http://www.santafesprings.org/about/history/hathaway_ranch_museum.asp), Retrieved 11-14-2011
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