This is part of our weekly series, Lost Masterpieces, about the greatest buildings and works of art that were destroyed or never completed.
I can still remember the first time I saw active oil derricks along the side of the highway in Los Angeles. My head snapped quickly away from staring down the taxi meter for a double-take, convinced I had just seen a movie set rather than one of the roughly 3,000 active oil wells in the city that stand as a reminder of oil’s part in its history.
Los Angeles hasn’t always been a one-industry town, and many of its richest denizens made their fortunes in the oil industry (see the Getty family or the Clampetts).