The Hathaway Ranch & Oil Museum in

Santa Fe Springs, California Santa Fe Springs (''Santa Fe'', Spanish for "Holy Faith") is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is one of the Gateway Cities of southeast Los Angeles County. The population was 16,223 at the 2010 census, down from 17,43 ...

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 Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

and

ranching A ranch (from es, rancho/Mexican Spanish) is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of a farm. These terms are most often ...

, as well as the major transition when

oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) & lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated ...

was discovered in the area. The property includes a

machine shop A machine shop or engineering workshop (UK) is a room, building, or company where machining, a form of subtractive manufacturing, is done. In a machine shop, machinists use machine tools and cutting tools to make parts, usually of metal or plast ...

with multiple antique

machine tools A machine tool is a machine for handling or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformations. Machine tools employ some sort of tool that does the cutting or shaping. All m ...

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. 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 home's architecture and contents represent a time capsule from that era. 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 A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be trans ...

, antique farm machinery, vintage

diesel engines The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-calle ...

, and oil field equipment in the region.”Hathaway Ranch Museum,” City of Santa Fe Springs Web site (http://www.santafesprings.org/about/history/hathaway_ranch_museum.asp), Retrieved 11-14-2011

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hathaway Ranch and Oil Museum Museums in Los Angeles County, California Agriculture museums in the United States Petroleum museums History museums in California Steam museums in the United States Technology museums in California Ranches in California Santa Fe Springs, California Energy museums in the United States

See also

References

External links