Boy howdy, we’ve got an absolutely eerie trail ride through local history ahead, amigos and amigo-ettes.
Eerie, I say.
And it’s not even close to Halloween.
We’ve got Hollywood gangsters, dens of iniquity, fortune tellers and the eradication of a few million oak trees.
There’s also James Dean making an appearance here in Newhall — after his death.
I had to whisper the last part. Didn’t want to spook the ponies …
WAY, WAY BACK WHEN
I’LL TRADE YOU A VALLEY FOR A PAYCHECK — A paltry 187 years ago, the governor of Alta California, in lieu of back wages and, because they were buddies, granted nearly 50,000 pristine acres of the Santa Clarita Valley to army officer Antonio del Valle. Can you imagine that happening today? Asking Gavin Newsom for the SCV and the Hair Gel Emperor saying yes?
OUR MOST FAMOUS NOVEL — About 144 years ago, spinster and dime novelist Helen Hunt Jackson arrived at the Rancho Camulos and interviewed Blanca Yndart for research for her new book. The romance novel would eventually become a bestseller and turn the little ranch on what would later be Highway 126 into a major tourist attraction. The book would also be instrumental in bringing tens of thousands of easterners out to sunny Southern California. Special trains would bring tourists to the little rancho and, for a dime, children would bounce on the bed where Blanca was born. Title of the tome? “Ramona.”
YOU’VE GOT MAIL! — The Acton Post Office was founded on Jan. 24, 1888 by Richard Nickel. He’d be called, “The father of Acton” later and be the all-time most influential soul in that neck of the woods. There is some confusion as to whether El Padre Nickel’s first name was Richard or Rudolph. Both names are interchangeable on the SCV History website in various articles. Interestingly, for a brief period after California became a state, Acton was in strong consideration for being capitol of the state.
MISSED BEING OPEN FOR THEIR BIRTHDAY — It made headlines all over the state because it just closed earlier this month. But, back on Jan. 18, 1899, Martin and Richard Wood purchased the old Tolefree’s Eating House. They renamed it, “The Saugus Cafe.” Funny little note about the historic coffee shop. During the 1950s, there was another famed eatery in the valley. The Bamboo Cafe was sort of where the northwest corner of Lyons Avenue at Railroad Avenue is today. (They widened the road way back when.) Folks used to complain that the two primary places to eat in town didn’t have very different menus. Seems twin brothers who had been cooks in the Army during World War II were the chefs and they pretty much prepared the same darn thing in both places.
JANUARY 24, 1926
ABSOLUTELY EERIE KARMA — This one is positively— and let me repeat that — positively eerie. Early in the morning, Morris Feinburg was motoring up Soledad Canyon for a hunting trip in Acton. On the way up, he noticed a car was engulfed in flames. Feinburg pulled over to help the owner, Frank Kuentz, put out the blaze. Later that evening, Feinburg was returning to Los Angeles from his day of hunting. He didn’t notice the same car in the same spot on the road with Kuentz working to fix it. Feinburg fell asleep, veered off the road and killed quite dead the man he had helped that morning.
MIXING IT UP — Tom Mix was up at the Henry Krieg Ranch, filming a movie with several “wild” horses. In the meantime, Mix let Krieg stay at his house in Beverly Hills. Krieg’s ranch today is known as Vasquez Rocks. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Can you imagine being a kid and growing up with Vasquez Rocks as your backyard playground?
JANUARY 24, 1936
BLOWING THINGS UP — One of the biggest employers in the valley was the Halifax Powder Co. In the previous quarter, they had sold about 2.5 million pounds of explosives to a variety of companies and projects, including the fellows making the Hoover Dam. In a couple years, Halifax would sell its Soledad Canyon plant next to the Saugus Speedway to an Italian fireworks manufacturer, Pat Lizza. The new company would be called, “Bermite.” It was a playful name for a deadly product. Lizza took the first part of his plant manager’s name, (Bernie) and stuck it in front of the last syllable of “Dynamite.” “Ber …” and “mite …”
THE ALMOST FATAL BATH — Miss Virginia Harris lit a small gas stove to heat her bathroom. She had the window slightly open and while she was bathing, a wind blew out the flame on the water heater. While she passed out in the tub, fortunately, she didn’t drown. Her parents discovered her about an hour later and rushed her to the hospital. A few more minutes and Virginia might have died.
THE DROUGHT OF 1936 — Farmers were joking — sort of — about the lack of rain. The Santa Clarita was nearly 100% dependent on agriculture 90 years ago. Much of the valley had been planted, but, with no rain in months, agrarian types were predicting they might be growing dried peas and apricots.
SCIENCE FICTION TECH FOR OUR LAWMEN — The few local sheriff’s deputies were in Los Angeles on this week 90 years back. They had to attend a clinic on the operation of a newfangled device that would make their job easier. It was called the two-way radio. Prior to this time, local law enforcement officers had to drive by substation No. 6 in Newhall. If there was a red light outside, it meant they had a police call. If it was green, they could go about their patrols. Or errands. The men also had a pocket full of nickels to call in.
JANUARY 24, 1946
BAD SPOT TO RENT A WHOREHOUSE — It was a story that had the entire valley buzzing. “Big City Vice Lords Captured Here” was The Mighty Signal headline. Seems some mobsters had set up a brothel-in-training in the swankest neighborhood in the SCV — right next to Judge Arthur Miller’s home in the Arcadia neighborhood. Seems they took wayward young women, drugged them up and trained them to become prostitutes. Police set up an actual, physical microphone wire stretching from Miller’s kitchen window to the house they were using next door. One of the hoods was described by The Signal as “a big man with a toothbrush mustache, handsome by Hollywood standards.” Hmmm. Guess there’s Hollywood good-looking and Newhall good-looking …
JUST SAY NO TO HOOKERS — Well. And their “johns.” In response to the above kidnapping and brothel school, The Signal penned a front-page editorial noting that Newhall was a good place for all manner of hide-outers but that we didn’t want that kind of new resident.
A DEADLY BATCH OF PEREZ-ICIDE — The brew was meant to kill rats, but it ended up killing a convict. On this date, Amado Perez had opened up a vat of pesticide. The barrel exploded and Perez became a human torch. Four others were seriously injured with second- and third-degree burns.
TOO MUCH INTERNET, TOO MUCH RADIO? — It’s an ancient issue: How to Live a Righteous Life. While today parents are looking into cable chips and computer screening, 80 years ago, Signal owner Fred Trueblood penned the editorial: “Horror in the Home.” It was about the effects of kids listening to too much crime drama on the radio. Trueblood recalled his own youth, when boys had penny novels.
But, “The radio is different,” Trueblood wrote. “When the villain takes the heroine by the neck and begins his strangling operations, she hollers bloody murder, and you can actually hear it. You can hear the old doors creak, the knife being honest, the pistol being fired, and poison being compounded drop by drop. Above all, you can hear the dire and ‘delightful’ moans, shrieks and gurgles of the victim.”
Trueblood felt radio drama was contributing to juvenile delinquency. “I should ask the parents a question. Would they wish their children to meet in person the kind of characters the children are permitted to meet in current radio crime programs? I am sure the answer would be in the negative. Yet these parents should remember that to a youthful imagination, as child psychologists know, make-believe people are often more real than real ones.” I don’t think dear Fred would have recognized America in 2026 …
JANUARY 24, 1956
PIG CITY — A particularly gruesome swine disease, vesicular exanthema, was in part responsible for changing the course of SCV history. For years, an unholy alliance of hog ranchers and Los Angeles government tried to turn this valley into L.A.’s personal garbage dump. A series of epidemics of V.E. wiped out tens of thousands of hogs and alerted the public to the health hazards of feeding garbage to pigs. On this date, 7,000 hogs were destroyed on C.J. Lyons’ pig ranch up Vasquez Canyon. The Department of Agriculture conducted the mass execution. Gruesome photos, on the front pages of the then four major L.A. daily newspapers, helped pretty much eradicate the wide-scale hog farms.
PASSING OF A PIONEER — Joseph Antone Suraco, scion of a pioneer family that had settled in Bouquet Canyon in the mid 19th century, died 70 years ago. He was born June 5, 1876 in the old adobe ranch house his father, Gianbattista Suraco, homesteaded. There are still relatives living here today.
AN EXTRA AND UNASKED-FOR ORIFICE — The most persistent injury of the SCV in the mid 1950s was the self-inflicted gunshot wound. (How many times have I mentioned that phrase?) On this date, Bob McLaren didn’t get the order right in his fast-draw attempt in a lonely offshoot of Bouquet Canyon. Bob shot himself real darn good in the caboose.
NO RELATION TO WHITNEY HOUSTON — Old Waite Phillips sold his 631-acre Whitney Ranch (at the end of Newhall Avenue by Highway 14 today) to Jack Albert. There were seven buildings and 13 oil wells on the property back then. You can still see foundations and remnants of old paved roads on today’s wilderness trek.
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. OR, A BODY. — On this date, James Dean’s “Rebel Without a Cause” opened at the American Theatre. No chance that Dean would show up at our local Spruce Street movie house (which today is the American Legion Hall behind the Newhall Library). The iconic movie star died in September the year previous, after having his last meal at a Castaic restaurant.
‘SEE, THEM TUMBLIN’ DOWN’ — You old-timers will fondly remember a pest of yesteryear: the tumbleweed. Steady and powerful winds sent the Russian immigrants rolling across the valley where they would get stuck in everything from oak trees to L-shaped buildings. Some were 10 feet in diameter.
JANUARY 24, 1966
WHEN WE WERE NATIONALLY FAMOUS FOR BEING DESOLATE — A decade later, not only were the tumbleweeds and winds still here, so was Life Magazine. A photo taken of the Plaza Shopping Center on Lyons made the national magazine. Seems the little strip mall formed a perfect dustpan, collecting a giant pile of the drifting flora and blocking access to several businesses. Literally thousands of the weeds, a century earlier accidentally brought to the U.S. by Russian immigrants crossing the plains, were all over the valley.
JANUARY 24, 1976
THE ENEMIES OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT — Repeating the story, it sounds like the beginning of one of those complicated and paranoid conspiracy movies. But, in retrospect, there were odd forces at work, either on purpose or out of flat ineptitude, trying to thwart the birth of Canyon County. A supposed unbiased report from L.A. County was riddled with inaccuracies, including impossibly high tax rates, multi-million-dollar salary figures for just 16 government workers and tens of millions for the valley’s countless homeless. County formation patron and attorney Dan Hon had a great line about L.A. County: “They’re assuming that we would run things with the inefficiency of L.A. County.”
THE COUNTY SHOVEL LEANERS — Speaking of the county, they finally finished part of the Lyons Avenue repaving. It took them over a year of constant upheaval to complete.
MAKING AN ASS OUT OF THEMSELVES — This one is rife with punchline possibilities. On this date, we held the one and only “Great Jackass Roundup.” Seems some kids got into Hank Litfin’s pasture in Happy Valley and spooked four donkeys, three mules and four ponies. The creatures broke through a fence and were wandering on Lyons Avenue when captured.
JANUARY 24, 1986
‘HOW DO YOU LIKE SCHOOL?’ PEE-WEE HERMAN ONCE ASKED — So once said the famous California Institute of the Arts grad. Speaking of schools, one of the valley’s most innovative — and sometimes controversial — administrators, James D. Foster, left for a much-deserved vacation in Hong Kong. Foster had been with the Saugus Union School District for 20 years, seeing it through unprecedented growth pains. One of Foster’s biggest challenges was finding a way to market and make palatable the concept of “year-round school.”
OAK OF THE ANCIENT DREAM — It was a familiar story, one that has been going on since the valley was colonized in the 1700s and since, oak trees in the millions have been cut down to make way for progress. Developers cut down several heritage oaks to make way for homes on Chiquella Lane. And, if you’re presently living in an SCV home, chances are good there used to be an oak tree where your dining room now sits …
WITCHCRAFT AT $1,000 AN HOUR — Janie Stevens was arrested on this date and released on $1,000 bond. Charge? Misdemeanor fraud. Janie ran a palm reading outlet up Sierra Highway and “read” a local woman’s fortune. The future didn’t look too good for the lady. But Janie said that for $1,000, she could lift some curses and stave off impending death and doom, not necessarily in that order.
• • •
Hope to see you next month at Rancho Camulos off Highway 126 just west of Castaic where I’ll be lecturing on the Ruth & Scott Newhall history days at The Mighty Signal. It’s Sunday, Feb. 22, and starts at noon. There’ll be a slight admission fee and stay tuned to these paragraphs for more details. That shameless plug aside — ¡Vayan con Dios, amigos y Feliz Navidad!
Local historian and the world’s most prolific satirist/humorist John Boston has launched his new eclectic bookstore — johnboston-books.com. His hilarious adventure/family/supernatural sequel to the national bestseller, “Naked Came The Sasquatch,” — “Naked Came the Novelist” — is on sale now. Ditto with his two-volume “MONSTERS” series about the supernatural in the SCV.
