Olinda grew after the Santa Fe Oil Company successfully drilled Olinda Well #1 in 1897 and the Santa Fe Railroad added an Olinda station two years later, drawing dozens, then hundreds, and by the 1920's as many as 3,000 workers and their families to a community intermingled with the oilfields across the hills, canyons, and valleys. The hot, dry climate of the Puente-Chino Hills made agriculture without irrigation difficult, while cloudbursts brought floods and mudslides, and the uplifted rocks of the hills trapped large pools of oil. After oil was discovered, derricks, storage tanks, roads, and pipelines spread across the landscape, new wells sometimes blew oil high into the sky before coating vegetation, and introduced species competed with native plants and animals. As oil reserves dwindled, technology reduced the number of employees, flood water from the canyons made life hazardous, and suburban development became increasingly attractive, so the earlier community disappeared even though the oilfield remains active. Today, old wells with new equipment continue pumping, Olinda Well #1 still operates over a century after it was drilled, new homes stand on the streets and home sites of boomtown Olinda, and the area's history survives around a museum and along the park trail amid panoramic views of Orange County.