Editing Openai/692724d9-ffa8-8000-98a9-53c2290cf502 (section)

===== 1. Was gasoline even available in 1885 California? =====

By 1885:
* Oil was already being pumped and refined in California. The Pico Canyon field near Los Angeles was producing by the late 1870s, and refineries were making kerosene for lamps.
* Gasoline as a fuel for cars didn’t exist yet in any real market sense, because cars didn’t.
'' But gasoline as a ''byproduct* did exist. Early refineries produced light fractions of petroleum (variously called “gasoline,” “ligroin,” “petroleum spirit,” “naphtha”) that were often: - used as a solvent or cleaning fluid, - used in gas stoves or lamps, - or literally wasted (vented or dumped) because kerosene was the main moneymaker.

So if your 1980s car appeared near a refinery, or in a major city where petroleum products were sold, you could plausibly buy or otherwise obtain a tank’s worth of some light petroleum fraction that we’d now call “gasoline”—though you’d be using it in a way nobody in 1885 had in mind.

So as to your literal question — could you fill the tank with gas? — yes, you probably could, provided you’re near the right kind of industrial operation or supplier.