Top of June’s last Saturday morning to you, dear saddlepals. I’d step into the entryway, but I’ve got the spurs on and, no offense, I’d rather not leave those thousands and thousands of horses unsupervised.
Just dropping by to pick you saddlepals up for our weekend morning trail ride through local history.
We’ve got a passel of mischief to inspect, what with melees at Magic Mountain, the biggest Signal goof of perhaps all time, crooks, critters and bona fide historical gee whiz information.
C’mon.
I’ve got your favorite pony waiting to greet you with an appreciative snort and horse smile …
WAY, WAY BACK WHEN
THE LOST DAYS OF SKINNY DIPPING — Signal editor Fred Trueblood lamented his lost youth. He noted how the local Newhall Pool in 1953 had parents and a lifeguard or three. But in 1899, he recalled going down to the local tree-shaded pond and skinny-dipping, unsupervised and unclothed, save for a handmade straw hat. Fred remembered making sure he wasn’t the last one out of the water because if your pals got to your clothes before you did, they’d tie them in tight knots, get them dripping wet and it took you an hour to untie them.
GIFF WAS WORKIN’ ON THE RAILROAD, ALL, THE LIVE-LONG DAY — John T. Gifford was Newhall’s first citizen and the station master of the original train depot back in 1876. Prior to that, he was a paymaster on the construction of the railroad. Johnny earned $2.60 a day and worked with more than 1,000 Chinese laborers, 350 Irish mechanics, 60 woodchoppers and a whole passel of blacksmiths, cooks, teamsters and addendum helpers.
JUNE 28, 1925
THE ORIGINAL CONDO MONKEYS — Here is simply a story of monstrously huge historical significance. On this date, groundbreaking began on the first duplex in Saugus. Ed Rumsey bought something called the old church building. I’m not exactly sure where it was in Saugus, but it was 24 by 48 with a wide verandah. It was turned into a duplex with each rental unit housing two rooms. The birth of local condo living …
MUST HAVE A LOT OF POCKETS IN THEIR PANTS — Rural postmen had to do more than just deliver the mail. They were required, by law, to carry and sell stamps, envelopes, postcards and had to register and insure letters or parcels when asked.
BECAUSE IT’S GOT ONE HECK OF A BIG KICK TO IT — A San Fernando Valley man was arrested for selling white mule. That wasn’t an albino donkey, by the way. It was the street name for a powerful moonshine whiskey. It was still Prohibition and under the constitutional amendment, you couldn’t buy or sell alcohol for drinking purposes. Two local constables grilled the moonshiner, who led them to higher-ups who were manufacturing the stuff.
H20 BEAU COUP — A.B. Perkins, director of the local Newhall Water Co., installed a new $5,000 pumping plant that kicked out 175 gallons per minute. That’d just about fill up the bird bath at Dr. Rodger Phillips spread today …
KILL TO HAVE THE T-SHIRT — Here’s a meeting they don’t hold anymore. On this date, the Mint Canyon Farm Bureau met to discuss costs and new poultry feeds.
TEARING UP THE TOWN — Crews were busy at the old community of Sterling, past Mint Canyon and touching Agua Dulce. The men were tearing apart the Sterling Borax Mine. Everything — railroad tracks, buildings, machinery, you name it — was taken out and sold, given away or trashed. The community was a godsend to hundreds of local homesteaders over the years who paid for their farms by working there. Sterling was a thriving community with its own stores and modern schoolhouse.
JUNE 28, 1935
THE BIG, EPIC PLOW — Here’s a little trivia for you on the aftermath of the St. Francis Dam Disaster of 1928. When the dam burst, sending a huge wall of water down San Francisquito Canyon, not only did it take the lives of about 500 people, it ruined miles of pristine farmland. On this date, The Newhall Land & Farming Co. brought in a huge plow that created trenches 4 feet deep. The monster plow was brought in from Santa Ana to clear out debris and sand from the manmade flood. The plow was pulled by three big tractors. It cost a whopping $30 an acre to operate, but was well worth it. Newhall Land was paid nearly $1 million in damages from the city of Los Angeles, which built and operated the ill-fated St. Francis.
WHAT’S IN A NAME? — There’s absolutely no historical significance to this, but a Miss Halcyon Spencer stopped by to visit a friend in Newhall. The only reason I mention this is that I just love the name, “Halcyon Spencer.”
JUNE 28, 1945
COWBOY MISHAP No. 1 — Ranching whoopsies were the top headlines 80 years back. In the first case, a big cattle truck flipped and caught fire. Local cowboys had to ride the back country to pick up the singed strays.
COWBOY MISHAP No. 2 — Then, a calf strayed onto the Espee (Southern Pacific) tracks and was killed by a locomotive. Almost to a person, everyone around town asked the same question: “Who got it?”
PIGBOY MISHAP No. 1 — Then, hog herder Vern McGiveron was declared innocent by a jury of if not his peers, his fellow citizens. He was accused of setting loose several dozen hogs north of Castaic. McGiveron’s defense was that their owner/his boss didn’t leave any feed for them and they were starving. So, he let them loose to forage. Several of the porkers’ descendants may still be roaming the hills today.
JUNE 28, 1955
PREPPING FOR ATOMIC WAR — With the Cold War the looming threat, Santa Clarita continued the local emergency preparedness games they started during World War II. The valley ran drills of what would happen if Russia or China dropped atomic bombs on Los Angeles. Projections at the time were that 160,000 evacuees from the city of L.A. and San Fernando Valley would show up on our doorsteps. Estimates were that nearly a million people would die if hit by a couple of 1-megaton bombs. At the time, the Soviet Union had the 20-megaton bomb.
THE MERCURY BUBBLED THEN FROZE — June can be a contrary month. We went from a heat wave topping off at 102 down to 72 a couple of days later.
A WOMAN WHO SERVED IN ORDINARINESS — We really should honor more of those people like Mrs. Leona Cox. They would build an elementary school in her name in 1963. On this date, the local Mint Canyon PTA honored her with a simple dinner reception marking her 25th year working for the Sulphur Springs Union School District. Leona had lost her husband during the 1920s and was forced to live on their humble farm with her three young boys and ailing mother. She took on three jobs as the school janitor, librarian and accountant. All that AND she worked her ranch and raised three sons. She was literally loved and respected by hundreds, if not thousands, of local students, parents and teachers. Seems like just yesterday I was talking with her son, Clem and his wife, Paula.
JUNE 28, 1965
BRRRRRR AND DOUBLE BRRRRRRR! — We had an odd weather pattern where the nighttime low, for about two weeks, was in the low 40s.
JUNE 28, 1975
AND YET, THE EDITORIAL STILL MANAGED TO GET PUBLISHED — Legendary Signal publisher Scott Newhall was robbed at gunpoint on this date of over $10,000 in rare coins and silver bars. While dictating a Mighty Signal editorial over the phone from his San Francisco home, Scott was interrupted by a man and woman claiming to be Mexican coin dealers interested in buying his collection. He let them in. They tied Scotty and his secretary, Dolly Rhee, to some chairs and made off with the goods. They also gagged the boisterous editorialist, which some of Scott’s more stringent critics may have found refreshing.
SCOTTY, PART II — A little sidebar. Eventually, they captured the crooks. Scott, who was missing a leg but was still very agile all his life, showed up to trial in a wheelchair.
AH, PROGRESS — On this date, they began widening Lyons Avenue (at Newhall Avenue) from two lanes to four. It now takes twice as long to walk across it. A little patriotic note: Everyone in the Fourth of July parade had to gingerly step around all the construction mess and watch out they didn’t fall into any trenches.
BUILDING TIP: DON’T PLANT YOUR BARN UNDER WATER — Who says the government doesn’t look out for us? On this date, representatives from a variety of agencies suggested that developers shouldn’t be allowed to build in the middle of a flood plain.
OUR PRE-CITY OF SANTA CLARITA GOVERNMENT — Planners for the new proposed Canyon County reached the magic number of signatures on this date — 9,500. This figure was actually about 2,000 more than technically needed, but, a formula showed that almost 20% of signatures on a petition can be bogus.
NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE CANYON COUNTY IN IDAHO — Canyon County, which would take in the traditional borders of the SCV, fell twice at the general county elections. But, had it made it, Canyon County — not to be confused with Canyon COUNTRY — would have been 735 square miles, or, about the size of Alameda County (with 1 million residents) or Alpine County (with 484 residents). At the time, the population of Canyon County would have been about 60,000 — making it the 33rd most populous of California’s 58 counties.
CASTAIC JAWS?!?!?! — Hard to believe, but there was a small threat of Castaic Lake being home to sharks. Certainly nothing like a great white. But, there had been discoveries of leopard sharks being found in the California Aqueduct as far south as Bakersfield. It was believed that the sharks got in from the San Francisco Bay and started making their way down south — toward us. No fisherman (or bather) encountered a shark in local waters.
RE: THE ABOVE — Yet.
FORE! — On this date, Valley Federal Savings & Loan opened their branch at the corner of Soledad and Whites canyon roads. The historical significance is that Canyon Country now had their very own major time and temperature tower, just like the one at the Valley Fed bank on San Fernando Road in Newhall. The darn thermometer at the CC branch never worked right. Today, the Newhall bank is the former home of the Roger Dunn golf store.
JUNE 28, 1985
TRAFFIC MONSTER — Lou Muto of the Regional Planning Commission testified that if all the developers’ plans to build in the SCV were developed, then traffic congestion of Old Testament proportions would be common here. And so it came to pass.
SAVED BY THE KRISTOPHER — Every Parents’ Nightmare had a happy ending 40 years back. Four-year-old Kristopher Sokolik pulled his 3-year-old friend, Brian Porteous, from the pool where he nearly drowned. Without hesitation, Kris jumped into the deep end of the pool and kept his younger friend’s head above water until the parents rushed out of the house. Wonder what those boys are doing today with their lives …
AND THAT’S WHY TODAY WE HAVE UNINSURED MOTORIST COVERAGE — This marks the anniversary when the state of California required that all drivers carry proof of insurance with them.
SO DO YOU HAVE A LICENSE FOR THAT BOBCAT AND BTW, YOU’RE UNDER ARREST — Here’s an unusual police report to write up. On this date, Earl Joseph Mitchell was arrested on a variety of charges, including leading officers on a high-speed chase in a stolen pickup while carrying a bobcat, which is illegal to own. Boy howdy. I sure would have loved to be at the arrest scene to get ol’ Earl Joe’s accounting of the events that led to his adventure.
STABBING MOUNTAIN — Speaking of adventure, Magic Mountain is known for its wild rides and its wild rides. On this date, five people were stabbed in a gang melee with 20 being arrested. One female sheriff’s deputy was kicked in the head. Of course, to put a positive spin on it, there were 25,000 people at the Happy Hump that night and 24,995 did not get stabbed and 24,980 were not arrested at the annual all-night revelry. Signal editor Scott Newhall, in one of his infamous front-page editorials, noted: “A Pacoima man was slashed in the back in the shadow of Bugs Bunny …” Several park employees barricaded themselves inside closets and food courts to save themselves from the roving gangs, er — misunderstood youths …
MEN DANCING PERT NEAR NAKED — NOT that I ever went, but we used to have a racy nightclub in town called the Limelight. Wednesday was Male Exotic Dancer Night. I could name names, but I won’t and those of you ladies riding with us this Sunday morn can just lower the brims to your Stetsons and blush in privacy.
WHAT CAN WE SAY. WE’RE HUMAN. — Speaking of blushing, this was one of the all-time — ahem — goof-ups in Signal history. On his last day of employ, a reporter was covering a story on The Newhall Land & Farming Co. inadvertently cutting down a 500-year-old oak tree. The offending graf:
“The tentative agreement came just three weeks after construction workers cut the tree down and 2-1/2 weeks after company officials were made aware of the ****-up.”
The day that paper hit the streets, word spread around town like wildfire and The Signal phones were ringing off the hook with a few chuckles but mostly with people who had a few choice words themselves about the controversial paragraph on page 14 of your community paper since 1919.
What can we say?
We, uh, ahem — GOOFED up.
• • •
I truly treasure these rides with you, dear Santa Clarita friends. See all of you next Saturday, in print or online, with another exciting Time Ranger adventure, and, until then — vayan con Dios, amigos!
Local historian and the world’s most prolific satirist/humorist John Boston hosts an eclectic bookstore and multimedia/commentary website at johnlovesamerica.com/bookstore. Pick up his two-volume set on SCV ghosts, maniacs, murderers and monsters about America’s most-haunted town — the Santa Clarita Valley — and other books.
