Views of and Bear Jasmine Citrus Lands and Oil Acres, Kern County, California [caption title]

Los Angeles: Manning Barber, Petroleum Properties, Inc, 1940. Very good.. [4]pp., on a single large folio sheet. Profusely illustrated with photographs, as well as a large pictorial double-page centerfold drawing of a bird's-eye view of Jasmine Citrus Lands & Oil Acres and a double-page plat map showing the area's oil fields. Additional mailing folds, minor wear and toning. An unrecorded pre-World War II land and oil promotional issued by a former Texas oilman who found bigger success in California. The promotional touts the latest citrus orchards to be sold out of the acreage tucked between Highway 65 and the Union Oil Company's leases next to Big Quinn Ranch in Kern County, California, near the border with Tulare County. Photographs here show the Shell Oil Company's seismographic crew drilling test holes, an "oiled county road" adjoining the Jasmine Citrus Lands and Oil Acres, nearby orange groves, cotton fields, and even the nearby Jasmine school house. The central bird's-eye view shows Wheeler Ridge, Maricopa Mountain at left, Coalinga and Visalia at right, with the Jasmine Citrus Land plats in the center, with drawings of oil derricks, the Southern Pacific Railway line, and associated oil pipeline roads and more. The double-page plat map below the bird's-eye shows nearby Mt. Poso, McVan, and Dominion oil fields, with the various owners (mostly oil companies) for each plat. The fourth page contains detailed text on the opportunities for land tracts, including "100% Oil and Gas Rights" in the area. The promoter of the investment proposition here was Manning Barber, a former Texas oil worker who became an oil lease agent and real estate broker in California from 1925 to 1940 before moving on to Oregon just before the Second World War. The artist of the bird's-eye view was C.S. Forncrook, who along with his wife were the principal artists of oil field maps in southern California during this period. The present promotional is not listed in OCLC. (Inventory #: 3781)