Mesa Oil Field

The Mesa Oil Field is an abandoned oil field entirely within the city limits of Santa Barbara, California, in the United States. Discovered in 1929, it was quickly developed and quickly declined, as it proved to be but a relatively small accumulation of oil in a single geologic formation. While the field was active in the 1930s, residential development in most of the Mesa neighborhood of Santa Barbara came to a halt. The field included two major productive areas with a total surface extent of only 210 acres , and produced 3,700,000 barrels of oil during its brief lifetime.
The field occupied a small area on a mesa to the west of the Santa Barbara Harbor, within the limits of the City of Santa Barbara, now the location of the neighborhood known as "The Mesa". The mesa from which the neighborhood takes its name is about two miles long from west to east and about 3,000 feet across from north to south. The northern boundary is Lavigia Hill, which rises north of Cliff Drive; some of the oil wells were drilled on the southern slopes. The southern boundary of the mesa is the abrupt drop-off at the cliff overlooking the ocean. The cliffs rise 120 feet above the beach at the western end of the mesa, gradually diminishing in height to only 40 feet at the eastern end, near Santa Barbara City College. Prior to the oil field being developed, the flat top of the mesa was farmland, with one imposing former residence, the abandoned and earthquake-damaged "Dibblee Castle" built at the eastern end, overlooking Santa Barbara harbor.

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