Old Town Newhall Gazette, Feb.-March 2008


		THE GAZETTE. February-March 2008 • Year 14, Number 1. SCV Weather 101. By DARRYL MANZER Gazette Correspondent. Rain, snow, fire, floods ... Newhall has it all. Did you know Newhall exists because of a drought? How about the town being relocated because of the railroad and lack of water at its original site at Old Saugus? Weather has been a huge factor in what happened and what will happen to the Santa Clarita Valley. Pick a year, any year, and the SCV has some sort of weather story. Rain, snow, fires, floods ... take the year 1962, for example: Rock slides in Weldon Canyon and the Newhall Pass. Highway 99 closed over the summit in Gorman. The Santa Clara River was flowing bank-to-bank and still rising. Wiley, Pico and Placerita creeks were full and flowing over roads and outbuildings. For a time, folks wondered if the new car wash north of Old Town Newhall would still be standing – or would it be washed down to the Santa Clara and out to sea? The rains came in ever-increasing amounts. Some thought the Saugus Café and The Rib restaurants could be washed away by the churning, light brown waters. There were concerns in Castaic that the waters could reach the elementary school and county park. Val Verde was nearly cut off from Highway 126. You traveled up San Francisquito Canyon Road at your own risk because the water was flowing under and over the bridge just north of downtown Saugus (near present-day Lowe's). In the early 1960s, flood control was knowing you shouldn't build anything too close to a creek or river because those dry expanses of sand and scrub brush just might turn into a raging torrent, come a couple of inches of rain. Then, unlike now, just about every creek and river was free of concrete. The paths they took were not hindered by any man-made channel; they were free-flowing and destructive in the power of a heavy rain coming in from the ocean. Even the railroad was having problems. Washouts in Soledad Canyon and the tracks to the tunnel south were in danger of having a mudslide cover the only other major transportation route south out of Newhall. The way north was blocked by snow, and travel to the Antelope Valley was also hindered by high water and rock- and mudslides. Same goes for heading west. Highway 126 just east of Fillmore was being undercut by the raging Santa Clara River. The SCV was about as isolated as it could get. Local ranchers and farmers watched their fields flood and fence lines slide down the hillsides. Cattle, sheep and horses knew enough to find high ground in the deluge, but some people didn't and got stuck in the waters. The Newhall Land and Farming Company was concerned out the feed lot located where Magic Mountain sits today, as they were about the headquarters buildings not far from the river. It is called Castaic Junction for a reason: Castaic Creek joins the Santa Clara River there. Can we say, "flood"? Meanwhile, back on our "ranch" in Pico Canyon, the creek was threatening to wash away the big barn. The old Wolcott barn across from the Felton School was full of calves, and we couldn't get over to feed them. Our chickens and hogs were on that side of the creek, too. We lost ten of the calves to respiratory infections and a lack of food. Later that same winter, it snowed and isolated our valley once again. Fire season came, and the hills from Castaic to the San Fernando Valley were blackened. There were more floods and mudslides the following winter. The cycle of Southern California weather hasn't stopped. It was during those storms that a young geologist from the head office of Standard Oil was working in Pico Canyon for the company. He told us, "The world will run out of oil in the next twenty-five years." During the snows of that year, some climatologists were claiming that the next ice age was soon to come – caused by all of the pollution in the air blocking the warmth of the sun. Go figure. I don't think we can know what the weather will be doing in a couple of weeks, let alone in a hundred years. I'd like to be around to find out. Old Henry Mayo Newhall did a pretty good job when he relocated his namesake town from what is now Saugus to its present location. The creeks are far away from the town center. The nearest low hills are not prone to mudslides, and the streets don't tend to flood in the heaviest rain. He moved because the railroad moved the station and the new town needed water. They didn't have that in Saugus ... except when it rained. Then it had too much of a good thing. Weather has been and will be a significant force of change in the SCV. Mr. Newhall was able to buy much of his land because of a prolonged drought that was bankrupting the original ranching families. Had it not been for that drought, he might not ever have bought the land, and a whole different history of the SCV could have been written. You might find it odd that I call the fire season a type of weather. Strictly a Southern California phenomenon, but here is how I see the colors of the SCV seasons: green rain season followed by the brown dry season, just before the orange-red, dark smoke season, ending in the black (hillside) season. This completes your SCV Weather 101class for today. Everyone back in the pool. Darryl Manzer grew up in the Pico Canyon oil town of Mentryville in the 1960s and now lives in Virginia. ©2008, Old Town Newhall USA. All rights reserved.

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