Jiminy Christmas, would someone mind telling me where 2025 went? Less than a month and we’ve burnt another year.
Thank goodness for the miracle of time traveling, where we can mosey back when all things were fresh and uncrowded.
We’ve got an interesting trek ahead, with bizarre ranch accidents aplenty, football brawls and we’ll visit Mint Canyon when it was Arabia.
As Van Morrison liked to sing — shall we sail into the mystic?
WAY, WAY BACK WHEN
OUR FIRST WAGON WRECK — Phineas Banning drove the first stagecoach through the original 30-foot slice of Beale’s Cut on Dec. 5, 1854. The road wasn’t ready for horses and wagons and Banning had been warned by every teamster in Southern California. Still, he drove the coach down. He crashed and burned big time, but came out of the wreck with a big smile and much enthusiasm.
NO BOOZEVILLE — On Dec. 3, 1887, Kansas Gov. John St. John and investors purchased the old Lyon Station, plus other acreage. Their dream was to start a Prohibitionist community in Newhall — no mean feat when the town was only two blocks long and had four saloons. The idea fell like a lead balloon. In signing the title to buying property, a home or business owner agreed to forfeit their land and property if anyone was caught drinking alcohol on their acreage.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. TWO-GUN — Dec. 6, 1884, William S. Hart was born in Newburgh, New York. That date by the way? Pretty much everyone agrees on the day, but the year is still up for debate when Hart came into this plane of existence. Seems Newburgh didn’t start keeping birth records until after Hart was born.
HUMBUG? — The Tataviam Indians did not celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah.
INTERESTING FAMILY — Back on Dec 5, in 1890, a Mr. LeBrun was deeded the big San Francisquito Canyon ranch. He was the uncle of Gus LeBrun, who shot sheriff Ed Brown dead in the 1920s. Gus was immediately shot by Ed’s deputy, Ed Pilcher.
NOT SO WAY, WAY BACK WHEN —
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, POPS!! — My dad, the good horseman Walt Cieplik Himself, was born in Indian Orchard. That would be in 1928, Dec. 2. Everyone in this morning’s posse do please tip your Stetson and say happy birthday to Walt … (happy birthday, Dad!)
DECEMBER 6, 1925
LAX, ON McBEAN PARKWAY?!?!?!?! — The Mighty Signal went on record in a front-page editorial, demanding the Newhall-Saugus area build an airport. It would, too, right around where Granary Square is today. The strip would be the county’s main secondary airstrip and locals kiddingly referred to it as Newhall International Airport because we ran two mail runs a month into Mexico.
FROM THE DEPT. OF GLUB, GLUB, GLUB, GURGLE — A brief deluge dumped 2 inches of rain on the valley and a subsequent flash flood wiped out a bridge in Castaic. No one was hurt in the dampening.
WHERE WE GOT OUR PALM TREES — The silent flick, “The Lady Who Lied,” debuted this week 10 decades back. Locals were grinning sheepishly. The desert oasis for the Arabian exteriors were shot up here in Mint Canyon on the Branson ranch, complete with grazing camels and palm trees. One old-timer noted that that’s the reason why some of these spots in distant canyons have palm trees today — from the movie industry coming in and leaving behind exotic flora.
HERE’S A RURAL TIP: WOOD & FINGERS SHOULD BE TRIMMED SEPARATELY — Rancher H.B. Hensley at the B & Y Rancho learned this lesson the hard way when he was busting up some kindling. Ol’ H.B. took his index finger clean off, save for a sliver of skin. That allowed his sister to graft, in a most primitive way, the dangling appendage back to sort of/kind of its right spot.
DECEMBER 6, 1935
SHE SAID, IN A REALLY LOUD VOICE, ‘I SAID TO HOLD THE MAYO!!!’ — Eleven women and one man found a local waitress guilty for assaulting the cook at a Castaic restaurant. The trial took two days. The waitress was sentenced to 30 days in jail.
WHAT MURDER? — Among the more obscure aspects of local history were the passings-through of roving bands of gypsies. The wanderers settled down in Mint Canyon for several weeks as a man known as Adam held court. He was King of the Gypsies and was there to await his spoil from his subjects, who came from all over the world and country to pay tribute. Hundreds of gypsies would set up camp. While their cousins, bands of agricultural gypsies, came through town in big and colorful horse-drawn wagons, the wandering gypsies roared through in large cars and vans, setting up carnivals and fortune telling shows. Local police rolled on a report of a double homicide in one of the camps. When they got there, they were greeted by a mob of men who asked: “What murder?” The deputies left it at that.
DECEMBER 6, 1945
WHAT AN AMAZING INVENTION — Here’s a benchmark date. Eighty years ago this month, the chief engineer of the Southern California Automobile Club called for the construction of a statewide series of linking roads called “freeways.”
WHO WAS TO BLAME FOR PEARL HARBOR? — Signal Editor Fred Trueblood lambasted the nation’s media a few days before the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Trueblood was incensed that “the big isolationist press” was going after President Roosevelt after his death in the form of a lengthy investigation on those involved with Pearl Harbor.
DECEMBER 6, 1955
DO, PLEASE, TAKE CARE OF YOUR VALUABLE DIGITS! — Odd how some of these things happen in 10-year-increments. Remember old H.B. Hensley of the B & Y Rancho? He chopped off his finger with a hatchet in 1925? Sheldon Huntsinger nearly lost four fingers in an accident at the famed Bouquet turkey ranch when he got his digits caught in an alfalfa grinder that was still moving.
DECEMBER 6, 1965
UNDERWATER LIONS & TIGERS & BEARS, O MY! — I can’t recall a more weather-plagued area (including the Polynesian Mobile Home Park) than Africa USA. Today, it’s still a big cat reserve. The location in upper Soledad Canyon has long been a home to exotic predators and big game creatures. On this date, the park was yet again just about wiped out by flash floods and rising waters of the Santa Clara. Last-minute bulldozer and volunteer shoveling save the retreat. Workers from Pacific Telephone put together an impromptu bridge to evacuate 60 animals.
DECEMBER 6, 1975
OUR FAMOUS JAILBIRD PREACHER — Controversial evangelist and fundraiser Tony Alamo had left the Santa Clarita Valley for Nashville, Tennessee. He and his wife had started a church in West Hollywood years earlier but left after 150 raids by the L.A. Police Department, mostly on child endangerment and drug charges. The Alamos settled in upper Mint Canyon in an old, sprawling restaurant. There, they ran a profitable empire where they would send hundreds of street kids into Hollywood and L.A. to collect money for their church. While out here, the Alamo Foundation initially earned community support with their help and donations (they built the bleachers for Canyon’s football stadium and also operated several small businesses). But charges ranging from fraud to kidnapping drove them out of state, to Dyer, Arkansas, where they started the same scam of taking homeless kids and using them as essentially “Christian” slave labor to run their enterprises. Tony’s wife, Susan, was diagnosed with cancer on this date. Oh. A little trivia. Tony Alamo was actually born a Jew in 1934 and changed his name from Bernie Lazar Hoffman. Hoffman was briefly a singer and changed his name because, in his words: “The Italians were all making it as crooners at the time.”
AND THE OSCAR FOR BIGGEST IDIOT HUNTER GOES TO … — I’ve got filing cabinets filled with Idiot Hunter anecdotes. This one takes if not the cake, then the venison. On this date, some bozo shot a deer and took it to the Sky Blue Mesa Elementary School campus to gut and clean. When custodians arrived early Monday morning, they found the disgusting remains right there on the playground. On the bright side, they were there early enough to clean up the mess before the children arrived.
DECEMBER 6, 1985
THE GREAT TURKEY HEIST OF 1985 — Teamster George Patterson pulled his refrigerator truck off the side of Interstate 5 to catch a few Z’s. Thanksgiving may have been over, but someone’s hunger for game birds was still a mite palatable. While Patterson slept, someone quietly broke into his rig and made off with $1,700 (wholesale) Foster Farm turkey breasts.
PIG IRON FISTICUFFS — It was one of the worst football brawls in local history. Parents and fans from the Santa Barbara High School side swarmed out of the bleachers at the College of the Canyons stadium to engage players and locals in a free-swinging, bottle-throwing melee. Ahh. How we in the media like that phrase: “bottle-throwing melee.” Hart won the CIF quarterfinals game — and the fight, by the way. Funny. I always thought Santa Barbara was populated by non-violent limousine liberals …
THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS — It was appropriate, so close to Christmas. A jury unanimously found Ron Whitelaw NOT guilty of felony child endangerment and kidnapping. Whitelaw had, seven years earlier, taken his two young daughters to Oregon to raise them, despite the girls being in their mother’s custody. Whitelaw’s attorneys showed a history of abuse by the mother, plus, several threats to kill Whitelaw.
• • •
Thanks for the company, dear saddlepals. Looking forward to riding with you dear friends and neighbors again next weekend with another exciting Time Ranger adventure into the backtrails of SCV history. Until then? Vayan con Dios, amigos!
“Naked Came the Novelist,” Boston’s long-awaited sequel to “Naked Came the Sasquatch,” is on sale at JohnBoston-Books.com. So’s his various SCV history books, including the two-volume SCV Monsters set. John Boston, with 119 major writing awards, is Earth history’s most prolific humorist and satirist.
