Here's some of what we learned. Five major oil companies—Texaco, Humble, Union, Mobil, and Shell, or THUMS, as they’re known— won a bid to lease the fields from the state.
Long Beach had already voted to lift a ban on drilling within city limits when a “beautification clause” had been inserted into the language of the proposal. This meant THUMS had to find a way to build a major oil operation that was not only profitable but virtually silent and invisible to residents and tourists along the waterfront. So the four man-made islands were designed to appear as tropical settings and to hide the development from view.
Construction began in 1965 and continued through 1968. Every element had a purpose. The large waterfalls were designed to muffle the sounds of the oil derricks and machines, and the sleek curving melon panels hid oil equipment. Borrowing tricks from Disney, derricks and even some trees and shrubs were placed on tracks for quick mobility.
But underneath the waterfalls and behind the sculptures is a complex oil operation just like any other. Hard hats, forklifts, heavy pipes and computers to monitor the hundreds of wells. And even though the ratio of water to oil has increased significantly as the wells get older, it's still profitable and a pretty amazing operation.
It was a great tour. We learned a lot and had fun.
And even though we know about THUMS, I'm sure we will still called them the Astronaut Islands (after four fallen astronauts, Grissom, Chaffee and White who died in the Apollo 1 fire and Freeman who crashed while piloting a jet for NASA.)
