Hilltop Park

Signal Hill passed through many eras of use, from the time when Native Americans were the land’s sole caretakers and used signal fires here to communicate with relations on Pimu, some twenty six miles away, to Spanish use of the hill after Spain claimed the region in 1492 and began settling Alta California in 1769. Early Spanish immigrants called the place Loma Sental and documented its use in the 1500's by the Puvuvitam Indians, and the fires here were among those seen by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo when he entered the Bay of Smokes. The hill’s first owner of record was Manuel Nieto, who received a Spanish land grant from King Carlos III of Spain in 1784. Over the years, the land supported horse breeding, cattle and sheep raising, and irrigated farming, including large flower fields. In the early 1900's, the Deni family used dairy profits to build a water tower and mansion nearby, and the hill also became the site of an unseen water source, a 1.2 million gallon reservoir buried below the park. People had long known that oil was present in the area from naturally surfacing crude, but in 1922 a gusher revealed the hill’s vast oil resources and took four days to cap. Two years later, the city of Signal Hill was established, and ranches and mansions gave way to dense oil development that made the area one of the richest oil fields in the world, nicknamed Porcupine Hill. Roads, refineries, and pipelines followed, and because oil production prevented the hill from being subdivided for housing, open space was preserved and Hilltop Park was ultimately created.

Signal Hill, California · United States