In suburban Los Angeles, oil derricks have given way to fairways and greens.

The Summit House restaurant stands high on a hill overlooking Fullerton, Calif., offering a magnificent view of the lights of the city. The view was much different during the day. For the first seven years of its existence, there wasn't much reason to be open for Monday lunch. After all, who wants to eat their Caesar salad overlooking the barren expanse of an oil field?

Things are much different these days. Now the view of the area is beautiful -- even in the daylight. That's because the former eyesore below is now Coyote Hills Golf Course. Lunch is now served -- in part because of golf traffic -- on Monday.

Two hundred and fifty acres of the property have been turned into a spectacular Cal Olson design owned by Union Oil of California, managed by American Golf Corporation, and opened last May. There is some question as to which is more amazing, the transformation of the property or the fact that it is still a working, and more profitable, oil field.

The neighborhood that was known only for the regular clanging of heavy machinery taking oil from the earth now features one of the top public courses in the West. There is no question it also is a welcome addition to the crowded Southern California public golf scene. The front nine at Coyote Hills was cleverly routed up and down the hill, providing magnificent vistas of the area. From the seventh tee, which is 150 feet above the fairway, players can see downtown Los Angeles and Catalina Island. The back nine, an assortment of holes featuring badlands and streams, winds to the west and then back to the clubhouse. It's a unique par 70 that plays much longer than the 6,510 yards to the back tees with a sprinkling of working oil wells whispering throughout the course.

Prior to the course's opening, the only living creatures to spend much time on the site were the coyote and the California gnatcatcher (more on that later). For more than 100 years, oil had been pumped out of the hills, and with it came pollution and neglect. Growing ribbons of fairways on the site was thought to be impractical, if not impossible.

Dennis Chapman didn't see it that way. Chapman, vice president of property development for UNOCAL Land and Development, had watched since the late `70s as various proposals for the property had been made. One of those, in 1985, included a nine-hole course. UNOCAL built Imperial Golf Course in nearby Brea but later decided it wanted to use that land for housing. To do that, the company wanted to replace Imperial. Coyote Hills arrived about $30 million later.

"When we got the project approved we came over here and said, 'Now we have to build a golf course,' " said Chapman as he relaxed in Coyote Hills' first-class clubhouse. "We have to look at it differently. Oil prices were going in the tank, at the bottom. Our oil and gas people said, 'Maybe we can coexist.' In the past they wouldn't even talk to us. We said we -- the real estate division -- will pay the oil and gas group to revitalize the oil and gas field." And build that golf course.

It was a complicated project that got more complicated as it went along. First there was an unmapped oil field, whose pipelines, admitted Chapman, looked like "dropping uncooked spaghetti on a table." Then there was the soil, contaminated by more than 100 years of oil pollution, along with the rugged topography. East Bastanchury Road had to be widened. And then there were those gnatcatchers.

"When I first saw the property I just said 'Wow!' " Olson exclaimed. "There were lots of mountains to move. I always wanted to do something with that kind of terrain. I'm an engineer and that was the fun part."

Chapman had just the man for the job in Olson. Although not well- known nationally, Olson was well- known to UNOCAL. He had worked on several projects for the company and was uniquely qualified as an engineer, landscape architect and golf architect. He needed all of those skills to turn the land into a golf course.

"I think for somebody who was inflexible in their design, it would have been a disaster," said Chapman. "An absolute disaster. Cal had the ability to know when he had to bend. He made it successful."

Olson had to be patient. He did an initial UNOCAL study for the property in 1976. Chapman's project didn't get final approval until 1993. Then some of those "mountains" Olson and Chapman had to move involved government regulations regarding the rejuvenation of contaminated land.

The soil had been subjected to continual oil spills since the first well was dug in the 1870s. Condensation valves were left open on the pipeline, exposing the soil to a constant drip of contamination. The project literally had to grow dirt before work on the golf course could start. They had to move 10 million yards of it.

"We had to find it, dig it out, bring it to treatment areas," said Chapman. "Those were big platforms of dirt, five acres of one foot thick. We land- farmed it. We put fertilizer on it, watered it and tilled it, back and forth. The bugs that are created from the water, the air and fertilizer in the crude oil and the soil, eat the oil, break it down, ingest the oil molecules and spew off CO2 and it was gone."

The project also had to test grass to find out what would grow on the property. They went through 15 grasses before deciding on 417 Bermuda fairways, Crenshaw bent for the greens and 328 Bermuda rough.

When it came time to design the course, one of Olson's toughest tasks was to find a way to route 18 holes on a property that included an elevation difference of more than 300 feet. He worked up to the pinnacle with a series of solid par 4s and a devlish par 3, finally arriving at the top of the hill at the seventh tee. It was to a spectacular par 3 followed by the par 5 eighth -- that is, until the California gnatcatcher was discovered on the property. Four nests were found on what would have been the eighth. During the project the small songbird went on the Endangered Species List.

"We hire biologists to look at things and one day I came out and they said, 'Uh oh, you have gnatcatchers,' " said Chapman. "What the heck is a gnatcatcher? How do I get rid of them? They said you go to jail if you screw up. I understood."

There were105 acres of habitat and 17 gnatcatchers on the property, but Chapman, unlike many in a similar situation, decided not to fight the system. According to Chapman, the project got only the 17th building permit in the history of the Endangered Species Act. Now the gnatcatcher is being protected from its mortal enemy, the cowbird, and studies indicate the gnatcatcher population will grow.

The golf course did lose its par-5 on the front nine, replaced by the 403-yard, par-4 seventh and the 205-yard, par-3 eighth, which could be Coyote Hills' signature hole. In its place are the gnatcatchers.

There have been no complaints about the deletion of the par 5. With five sets of tees, Coyote Hills can be as hard as any player could want. The course is tight and the different elevations, especially on the front nine, can play tricks. The only minus is that the routing up the hill makes walking prohibitive.

Although Coyote Hills is a public course, it has a private club feel. That's by design. (Traditionalists may scoff at the music flowing from the rock-shaped speakers around the clubhouse, but Starbucks coffee at the concession stand has definitely been a hit.) The entire course was sodded and no expense spared to make the property a first-class course, right down to the 76 planted pepper trees scattered about the course and the $38,000 spent on tee markers.

"Everybody here was hired to take care of your every need and make it a most pleasurable experience," said head professional Jamie Mulligan. "I think we've accomplished that. With the lay of the land, the golf course and the service, I think we'll get a lot of return business."

UNOCAL has the best of both worlds. It has a terrific golf course and an oil field that has been modernized with production up 400 barrels a day out of 23 fewer wells. Upscale housing has sprouted up around the course. The view gets better every day. --Reid Hanley