Energy landscape: Los Angeles Harbor and the establishment of oil-based capitalism in Southern California, 1871–1930

In the first three decades of the twentieth century, the Los Angeles metropolitan area emerged as the fastest growing urban–industrial economy on the Pacific Coast. This was a significant achievement for a city without a natural harbour. Despite formidable barriers presented by physical geography, the gradual development of a deep-water harbour in Los Angeles was fundamental to the emergence of oil-based capitalism in Southern California. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, under the municipal governance of a Board of Harbor Commissioners, private oil companies developed Los Angeles Harbor into a modern transhipment facility comprising infrastructures and technologies dedicated to the efficient transportation, storage, and refining of petroleum and petroleum-based products. From this perspective, Los Angeles Harbor needs to be understood as a long-term, fixed-capital investment into oil-based energy as fuel for industry and transportation. As a transhipment facility, Los Angeles Harbor also functioned as a critical outlet for surplus energy after the discovery of several large fields in the Los Angeles Basin in the early 1920s. By focusing on a particular built landscape, this paper aims to contribute insight into how geographies of fixed-capital investment play a role in the regional dynamics of energy transition and establishment.