Summerland Beach is a mile-long crest of sand just down the coast from Santa Barbara. The Santa Ynez Mountains rise directly to the north, pinning Highway 1 tightly to the coast. On most days, the surf is loud enough to mask the steady purr of cars. In the eighteen-nineties, oil drillers tapped into pools beneath the sand; new wells crept all the way to the surf’s edge, and eventually into the water. Droves of workmen were hired to build sturdy piers. By 1896, the offshore rigs were operational; their pipes extended down through several metres of water and a couple hundred more of seafloor sediment.

A bust inevitably followed. In 1903, a vicious winter storm reduced most of the piers to splinters, and by 1906 offshore oil production at Summerland had all but ceased. Still, a threshold had been crossed: Offshore wells proliferated. Steel piers replaced wooden structures, and rigs reached farther from shore. Along the Gulf of Mexico coast, drilling ships allowed for mobile “overwater” operations. Floating platforms moved into deeper waters. Between 1954 and 1971, offshore oil production in the United States expanded more than tenfold. Off the coast of Summerland, standalone platforms named Hazel, Hilda, and Heidi were erected in California’s waters, which extended five and a half kilometres from shore. Beyond that, in federal waters, were Hogan, Houchin, and Platform A.

On January 28, 1969, a drill extending eleven hundred metres into the sea floor beneath Platform A punched through a layer of rock and into a pocket of oil. When the crew retracted the drill to replace its bit, an overpowering jet of oil fountained from the well. They managed to plug the pipe, but growing subterranean pressure created cracks in the sea floor. Oil rushed through the sediment and rock and blackened the water. Eleven million litres of oil spread across an area of two thousand square kilometres.

Even after the leaks were plugged with cement, rivulets of oil persisted for months, and the oil spill’s ecological and cultural impacts lasted even longer. Dead seals and dolphins washed ashore. Fishermen found lobsters and crabs painted black and weighed down by oil. It was the birds, though, that seized the public’s attention and launched a movement. From Ventura to Santa Barbara, gulls, pelicans, murres, and grebes staggered along beaches, unable to fly. Locals mobilized to save them; a nearby zoo recommended feeding the birds butter to emulsify and flush out the oil in their throats. According to a Los Angeles Times report, birds fleeing their would-be rescuers instinctively waddled toward the water, and, “falling into the black liquid, they lay in the ooze, crying weakly.” Cormorants that tried to clean each other with their beaks died after ingesting the viscous muck. Others expired from hypothermia: the oil compromised their feathers’ water-repelling properties. Kathryn Morse, a professor of history and environmental studies at Middlebury College, has written that images of these birds marked a turning point in society’s relationship with the oil industry: “They contested older visual narratives of oil as abundant and powerful.” Around the same time, the Washington Post decried “the systematic fouling of our nest,” and the New York Times called the pursuit of petroleum “a survival issue both for sea life and for man himself.”

The political fallout was lasting. President Richard Nixon walked on the beach and flew over the slick in a helicopter. He vowed to take “more effective control” over the oil industry, and opined that “preserving beaches is more important than economic considerations.” The oil spill helped inspire the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. California declared a moratorium on offshore-drilling projects. In a blow to the fledgling environmental movement, however, a report by Nixon’s science adviser, Lee DuBridge, called for more drilling, not less. “The situation which makes leaks possible,” DuBridge wrote, “is the fact there is oil down there. The only way to prevent future leaks is to get the oil out.” In the summer of 1969, less than six months after the spill, several additional wells were drilled from Platform A. An entirely new rig was towed from an Oakland shipyard and installed just to the east of the platform. The offshore-oil industry had weathered the environmental reckoning and emerged intact, and arguably stronger.