The Making of An Urban Butterfly
The Making of An Urban Butterfly
by Lisa H. Sideris
The story of the El Segundo Blue butterfly’s fraught relationship with humans begins in the early twentieth century. An oil refinery was constructed in 1911 on the dune butterfly’s habitat. In 1927, a piece of land near the El Segundo dunes was chosen as the site for an airfield to serve the growing city of Los Angeles. Threats to the butterfly have continued apace into the present day. In the century-old tug-of-war between human and butterfly, the El Segundo blue can also be seen as “one of multiple tests to determine whether human beings would survive and deserved to survive our unthinking, rapacious, relentless desires,” as Sharman Apt Russell writes.
Like many American cities, Los Angeles experienced a boom of suburban home construction in the mid-twentieth century. One particularly wealthy beachside community named Surfridge became a casualty of urban expansion and industrialization. Originally part of a posh neighborhood known as Palisades del Rey (Spanish for “Palisades of the King”) that was constructed in the 1920s, Surfridge was designed as a “new wonder city” situated just north of El Segundo and west of the small airfield that would become LAX. In this well-to-do enclave, no one who was not of the “Caucasian race” was permitted to dwell, except those “in the employ of the resident owners.” Home to Hollywood elites like film director Cecil B. DeMille, the exclusive community found itself directly under the expanding flightpath of LAX.

With the advent of jet airliners, airport noise in these subdivisions became an increasing source of complaints that culminated in lawsuits between the 1950s and 1970s. Ultimately, to resolve the situation, the airport claimed eminent domain, bought up hundreds of homes in the El Segundo dunes area and condemned or demolished them. In the 1970s, the area was bulldozed to make way for the airport expansion.
It was at this point that the land claimed for LAX was discovered to be critical habitat for the butterfly whose numbers were in freefall. In 1976, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service granted the butterfly protected status under the Federal Endangered Species Act. This was and remains a relatively rare privilege for an insect species. Since environmental regulations prevented the airport from developing the land, LAX created a wildlife preserve overseen by the airport and the City of Los Angeles. Today, miles of fencing and barbed-wire surrounds the preserve. Vestiges of the former opulence of Surfridge remain here and there: scattered lampposts, some of them still functional, and palm-tree lined boulevards now turned to weed-infested slabs of rubble. To the human eye, Surfridge appears as a ghost town on the beach—a “gated community without the community.”

Between the mid-1970s, when the butterfly’s shocking decline became apparent, and the mid-1980s, when the airport was directed to protect it, a variety of additional challenges emerged. Many of these continue in some form today. Some argue that ice plant poses a steady threat to the butterfly and its habitat. A succulent shrub native to the coast of South Africa, ice plant is an invasive plant frequently found in home gardens and on beachfronts around the state where “misguided Californians” installed the plant in hopes of stabilizing erosion. Critics charge that ice plant actually outcompetes native plants for scarce resources, provides no appreciable food for animals, and changes soil chemistry, which makes it harder for natives to thrive. For creatures native to the dune ecosystem, ice plant is a menace, the ecological equivalent of Styrofoam or concrete. For the El Segundo blue, wholly dependent upon coast buckwheat, ice plant represents “the enemy of all that is good and holy.”
The town of El Segundo, after which the butterfly is named, takes its name in turn from the oil industry. Like the story of its entanglement with LAX, the butterfly’s relationship with Big Oil is another unlikely chapter in its tale of survival. El Segundo came into existence as a company town built by Standard Oil (now Chevron). The town’s name, which means “the second,” has a prosaic origin: the land that would become the town was the site of the second refinery built in the area by Standard in 1911. Hence, according to town lore, “A name that started out as a way to keep track of a company’s oil refinery soon became its official name when the city was incorporated in 1917.” In 1975, when the butterfly population had dwindled to a few hundred and just a year before it would be listed as an endangered species, an amateur lepidopterist discovered one of the butterflies on refinery grounds. With the help of an entomologist named Richard Arnold who specialized in rare and endangered species, Chevron El Segundo created a 2-acre preserve on company grounds.
Remarkably, and in ways that seem prophetic of the refinery’s eventual rendezvous with the El Segundo blue, the Chevron company logo is evocative of a butterfly in its general contours. During the second World War, designs for the logo even took the form of a flying V with prominent wings attached to the top of the letter to indicate the company’s material support for American victory in war. Over time the logo evolved into a simpler design still somewhat resonant of a stylized butterfly in blue and red. The similarity is all the more intriguing for being entirely coincidental, and apparently unnoticed by a corporate public relations machine eager to promote its protection of a rare butterfly.
The land occupied by the refinery, which covers 3,453,052 square feet of coveted beachfront, was recently assessed as having the highest value of any property in LA County. The largest refinery on the West Coast, Chevron El Segundo, processes close to 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day. An endangered butterfly bearing the name of an oil refinery could be a boon to public relations, company officials realized. The refinery’s website includes a fact sheet detailing Chevron’s local preservation efforts. The butterfly, moreover, plays a starring role in a Chevron commercial proclaiming the refinery’s commitment to always looking out “even for its littlest neighbors.” The advertisement emphasizes refinery workers as energetic “doers,” a word that regularly appears in Chevron’s promotional materials. In a Chevron Facebook post, the flattering portrait of “doers” is extended to the blue butterfly itself: Chevron “keeps this little DOER doing.” The corporation’s central slogan—“human energy”—promotes American values of innovation and a can-do attitude.
The butterfly’s livelihood is intimately linked with the history of industries and corporations that now dominate Southern California and have forever changed the face of once-glamorous and pristine oceanside communities. These industries are eager to avail themselves of the butterfly’s humble but alluring image and its compelling storyline to advance their corporate image and bolster their reputation in the community.
Over the years, the story of the blue butterfly has also attracted the attention of local historians, artists, bloggers, and documentarians, among others. Part of the appeal surely lies in the David-and-Goliath dimensions of the storyline: a miniscule insect facing down some of the most powerful industries known to modernity and surviving against the odds—for now.
Masthead image: Mines Field, pre-LAX. Source: University of Southern California Libraries, California Historical Society.
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