Berry Petroleum Company History
Over 100 years ago a man with determination and not much else set out on a journey to find riches that would lead from the gold claims of the Klondike to the oil fields of central California. One lasting result is Berry Petroleum. Browse our Company's journey over the past 100 years in the booklet to the left and read the remarkable story below. Click here to view the booklet.
| From the farm... to the oil patch.. and the gold in between! |
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There were many luminaries of the gold rush days - wild, fantastic, flamboyant characters whose names are still remembered - names like Soapy Smith, Diamond tooth Lil, Swiftwater Bill Gates and the "King of the Klondike," Alex McDonald.
They were center stage in the razzle-dazzle that was the big stampede, that great unraveling at century's end, and their escapades light up the imagination like a firecracker.
Clarence J. Berry wasn't one of them.
He was too sober, loyal, hardworking, home-loving and, yes, straight-laced to light up anybody's imagination. And yet he was a big man, a robust man, a man's man who could hold his own in any crowd.
Clarence and his wife, Ethel, who made their first million long before most people even reached the Klondike, were not part of the Dawson fast track. When they did allow themselves an occasional fling, it was of a simple nature. For example, Ethel had the only Jersey cow on Eldorado Creek; it lived in a sawdust padded barn and was fed hay costing $400 a ton.
Clarence, general all-around good guy that he was, got his kicks in another way. He filled a coal oil can with gold and put it in his front yard along with a bottle of whiskey and a sign that read "Help yourself." And people did.
Sad to say that most of the high flying personalities of the gold rush died penniless.
Clarence Berry was not one of them.
He was unique in the annals of gold rush lore. Not only was he honest, industrious and self-disciplined, but he struck it rich, not once, not twice, but four times. First in the Klondike; second at Ester Creek; third at Circle; and fourth near Taft, California. Oil, of course.
The fortune Clarence amassed developed into a corporate dynasty that thrives today in Taft, California and is known as Berry Petroleum Company. It is now traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
Not bad for a poor fruit farmer from Fresno who landed in Alaska with $3.60 in his pocket.
