Huntington Beach Happenings
by: Chris MacDonald
Published: January 12, 2026
HUNTINGTON BEACH...This is a link to an article I did on The Sunset Beach Sanitary District Project.
Huntington Beach Assistant City Clerk Juan Esquivel said: The next regularly meeting of the City Council/Public Financing Authority is being held on Tuesday, January 20, 2026, at 6:00 PM, Civic Center, 2000 Main Street in Huntington Beach.
Huntington Beach City Historian Jerry Person presents Remember When -
Lets not forget former civic leader Art Wilson
The Huntington Beach Rotary Club has been a driving force here in our city since it received its charter in July of 1923 and for this week we are going to remember one of it's past presidents, Arthur F. Wilson.
Wilson was born in 1894 in the small California town of Tres Pinos, located twelve miles south of Hollister on State Highway 25 and within nose shot of Gilroy, the garlic capital of the world and for those of you who still remember your high school Spanish, Tres Pinos means 'Three Pines.
"The Southern Pacific railroad had a line running from Gilroy to Tres Pinos and Wilson's father owned and operated a stagecoach line from Tres Pinos to the New Idra quicksilver mine. Wilson's coaches brought the miners to their jobs in the mines and back daily and this was the environment that Arthur Wilson grew up in.
Art attended Hollister Elementary school and in 1912 he graduated from Hollister's San Benito High school. While in high school, Art made extra money working at a local stationary store, where he continued working after graduation until 1913 to earn enough money to attend college.
In 1914 Wilson entered Stanford University in Palo Alto where he majored in Civil Engineering and while there he took up track, running in one and two mile races and in school-sponsored cross country runs against other schools.
During his summer breaks Wilson worked as a surveyor for the Standard Oil Co. and after four long hard years at Stanford, Wilson graduated and went back east to attend Boston Tech University where he learned naval aviation.
At this time the Great War, World War I, going on and so Wilson was transferred to the Key West Naval Flying Station in Florida to further his flying education where he finished his flying instructions at the Naval Flying School in Pensacola and where he received his commission as an ensign in the U.S. Navy. The navy sent him to Miami to teach flying to those early daredevil pilots. When the war ended Wilson left the navy in 1919 and returned to California to work in the engineering department of his old employer, Standard Oil.
After a short time in their San Francisco office, Wilson was sent to the company's Elk Hills oil fields as a field engineer and in 1920 Art was transferred to its newest oil strike located in the small beach town of Huntington Beach and for ten years he was in charge of constructing many of the town's wooden derricks and also during those oil boom times here he watched as the black gold flowed out of those wells and into the coffers of the company.
Standard Oil then send him to their Kettleman Hills oil fields in central California in 1929 as their field engineer and three years later brought him back to us in Huntington Beach. A year later the big earthquake of 1933 would damage many of our commercial buildings in the downtown and Wilson and his oilmen were there to help remove the fallen facades and bring the town back to order.
Now as Standard Oil's Production Foreman Wilson he supervised bringing in many of those oil wells and his office was on the old Standard oil lease located at Goldenwest Street and Orange Avenue.
It was not long after returning to Huntington Beach that he became a member on the Huntington Beach Union High School Board and would later serve as chairman of that board.
Arthur joined our Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce and served on its board as a director. The chamber was also a powerful force in those days with Bill Gallienne as its manager and being on its board was quite a privilege.
Art Wilson also chaired the Orange County Coast Association and belonged to the American Petroleum Institute which most of our powerful oil men did in those early oil boom days.
But it was his membership in the Huntington Beach Rotary Club that was special to him. In those later days, the Rotary Club held their meetings at the Golden Bear Cafe. Arthur Wilson's life paralleled our own city's growth and through the years Wilson took an active place as a civic leader in our community.
Not bad for a fellow who came from a town of three pine trees.