Drillers Martin and Dudley accidentally discovered the Lost Hills Oil Field in July 1910. They were drilling a water well for livestock grazing; instead of finding groundwater, however, they struck oil, specifically the Etchegoin Pool at a depth of . Other drillers, encouraged by the find, including the mighty Standard Oil of California, which had recently been subject to antitrust litigation and broken up by the Supreme Court, began drilling for more nearby; they soon found the Cahn and Reef Ridge pools, in 1913, and then the Tulare pool in 1915. There were relatively few wells on the field for the first several decades; indeed, by 1979, there were only 39 wells producing from the Monterey Formation, and each of these wells only produced an average of eight barrels per day. It took the development of advanced recovery technology to turn the Lost Hills into a high-producing oil field.