Ask any 10 people what ever became of the A.B. Perkins Collection of rare Santa Clarita Valley and Southern California history books once housed at the Valencia Library, and odds are, none of the 10 will know.

Until now.

If not for a recent chance comment by Cathy Martin of the SCV Historical Society, this writer wouldn't have known.

To spare you the suspense, they're at College of the Canyons.

When I asked COC Head Librarian Peter Hepburn about them a couple of months ago, he said I was the first person ever to ask to see them — except for a student one time who was interested in a particular title she found in a card catalog.

They've been there since 2013, collecting dust these past six years. (Only figuratively — they're in a sanitary environment.)

Nobody knew they were there. Not the county library, not the city, not even COC administration initially.

Here is the rest of the story, as best I can piece it together.

For decades, if you wanted to know about SCV history, you asked Arthur Buckingham Perkins. "A.B." or "Perk," to friends, was a young man of about 28 when he arrived in 1919 to manage the Newhall Water Company. He became a civic leader, served as a judge, built homes in the growing community, and developed a keen interest in local history. He collected local family photographs that became the nucleus of the SCV's historic photo collection; and he kept our valley's history alive by writing about it in both The Signal and its onetime rival The Sentinel, as well as in academic journals.

By 1970, when he was displaced from his home of 45 years on Lyons Avenue for the coming widening of the street, he had amassed a huge collection of history books and papers.^[1]

Perkins circa 1960. Click for more.

Perkins initially thought to place his book collection in the old Newhall Library on 9th Street, where many of his historic Santa Clarita Valley photos were on display. It's unclear whether his books ever went there — the Newhall Library was deemed too small to hold them — but a more permanent solution presented itself in 1972 with the opening of the L.A. County Valencia Regional Library.

Records of viewership of Perkins' collection of approximately 300 volumes at the Valencia Library were first kept in January 1974. (The books and periodicals could be used on-site but not checked out.) The books reportedly arrived there a short time earlier.^[2]

The collection filled four bookcases in a back room of the library and included rare works — such as an edition of Thompson and West's "History of Los Angeles County" (1880) that once belonged to Newhall's first train stationmaster, John Gifford — as well as journals of the Historical Society of Southern California, some of which included articles that Perkins wrote.

Shortly before his death in 1977, probably about the time the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society incorporated in December 1975, Perkins passed the bulk of his photograph collection to the society's first curator, Jerry Reynolds. His book collection remained at the Valencia Library.

For one thing, the Historical Society had no place to store books. The society was homeless. Not until 1980 would the society have its own physical location when it acquired the Saugus Train Station and moved it to Hart Park. The train station became the society's museum.

Much later, the society would create its own library and reading room.

As the valley's population exploded in the 1980s, viewership of the Perkins book collection grew with it. So, in 1988, when the county librarian announced plans to move Perkins' books to the San Gabriel Valley where they would join a centralized, 12,000-volume collection of California history materials, the community objected vociferously.^[3]

It is important to remember there was no public Internet in 1988. Researching SCV history required a trip to the library.

Among those leading the charge to keep the Perkins book collection in Valencia were officials from the newly formed city of Santa Clarita; Betty Evans, Historical Society president and a former Canyon Country librarian; and Councilwoman Jo Anne Darcy, field deputy to Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich and a Historical Society board member.

In the end, it seems it was A.B. Perkins' son, Richard Perkins, who prevailed in keeping the collection in the SCV.

"It ain't leaving," the famously cantankerous Richard Perkins told The Signal. "My father loaned it to the library, and I have the file to verify that. ... There's absolutely no intention that that collection will be removed from this valley."^[4]

News articles had previously characterized the collection as a "donation" to the county library.^[5] Queried in 2019, a county official said, "(The county) librarian tells us that they believe that although it was housed at Valencia, the Perkins family retained ownership of the collection, and that the Santa Clarita library still has it."^[6]

The Santa Clarita Public Library doesn't have it. Never did.

The 2011 transition of the three branch libraries within the boundaries of the city of Santa Clarita from county control to city control (Valencia, Newhall and Canyon Country) was politically tempestuous. Many frequent library patrons were upset that the county staff librarians they had known and befriended were going to be replaced.

Nobody quite knew what would become of the "special collections."

Selections from the Randy Wicks Cartoon Collection that had been displayed in the Canyon Country Jo Anne Darcy Library remained in the control of the Wicks family. They were removed and eventually placed in the county's Stevenson Ranch branch library when it opened in 2015.

What of the Perkins book collection?

Back in 1988, when the collection was threatened with removal to Rosemead, another Perkins family member reportedly suggested donating it to College of the Canyons.^[7] They proved to be prophetic words.

Reviewing his records, Hepburn, the COC librarian, said Maggi Perkins, A.B. Perkins' granddaughter, "reached out on March 20, 2013." (Hepburn started at COC a month earlier.) Asked specifically about ownership, he said: "The books were a donation. ... They were to be made available to the public, which they are."^[8]

Perkins' book collection in the Valencia Library in 1980. Click to enlarge.

Today, the 206 titles in the A.B. Perkins book collection fill two bookcases in the Special Collections reading room in the COC Library — a back room you might not know is there unless you ask. Students may check them out, and the general public is welcome to use them on-site, Hepburn said.^[9]

Comparing the collection at COC to a 1980 Signal photograph of the collection in a back room at the Valencia Library reveals similarities.^[10] Mostly what's missing are the journals of the Historical Society of Southern California.

But that's OK. This is a different time. Other copies of the same journals can be found online.

The last two decades have revolutionized the study of local history in Santa Clarita and elsewhere. Rare, out-of-print volumes that once required a trip to the library are available on the Internet, with more coming online every day.

That's not to say the Perkins collection doesn't include some unique items. It does, such as a manuscript documenting the history of the Agajanian family.

What the collection truly does, as a whole, is provide insight into what informed Arthur Buckingham Perkins' understanding and interpretation of local and regional history.

And with it, the only formal Santa Clarita Valley history that anybody knew for decades.

The COC Library houses one other special collection of local interest: selected papers of former U.S. Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon.