Soon, we are going to be living Santa Clarita’s 25^th year as a city. We have decided to mark this occasion with a countdown of the 25 Most Important Milestones from 1987-2012.

Every two weeks, we’ll be releasing a short feature on an event, milestone, or moment that has shaped Santa Clarita. We will proceed in a countdown fashion, moving toward the biggest events in Santa Clarita’s history as a city. By “big” and “important”, we’re talking about things that changed our day-to-day lives, unprecedented achievements, ends of eras, flashpoints—you get the idea.

By December 15, 2012–the anniversary of Santa Clarita’s 25^th year of cityhood–we hope to have assembled a concise retrospective that not only recounts important moments from the recent past, but that is also enriched by the memories and opinions of everyone who comments at SCVTalk.

As a first step, we’re brainstorming a list of potential events and milestones to include. We’ll eventually be culling this list down to 25. If you like, add any big items that we missed, and also weigh in on the order you’d rank these events (your top 10 list, etc.). Thanks!

1987

• Cityhood: Incorporation of the City of Santa Clarita

1988

• Newhalls Leave Signal: After 25 years, Scott and Ruth Newhall with son Tony Newhall leave local paper, Morris Media takes reigns
• Western Flank: First homes built in Stevenson Ranch
• COC Leadership: Dianne Van Hook hired at COC

1989

• Safe: Mitchell Adobe, oldest structure at Heritage Junction (built in 1865), dedicated

1991

• Shop On: Ground broken for the mall
• Yellow Ribbons: 180 Claritans serve in Gulf War

1992

• No to Slow: Measure A, the slow-growth initiative, fails

1993

• Buck Makes it Big: Buck McKeon, Santa Clarita’s first mayor, takes seat in US House of Representatives

1994

• Quake: Northridge earthquake causes $400M+ in damage to Santa Clarita, changes life in an instant
• PoFest: First annual Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival, nod to Clarita’s love of the West

1996

• Wicks: Beloved artist and political cartoonist Randy Wicks dies
• Elsmere Landfill: Congressman McKeon and Senator Boxer sponsor successful bill to prevent landfill in Angeles National Forest

1997

• Redevelopment: City Council approves Newhall Redevelopment Plan

2000

• The 4-Time Mayor: Jo Anne Darcy departs after seventh term on City Council

2001

• 9/11: Candlelight procession to honor the victims, Newhall firefighters go to NY
• Deputy Jake: Kuredjian shot and killed during raid of James Allen Beck’s house
• Spineflower: San Fernando Valley Spineflower, believed extinct, declared endangered after rediscovery at Newhall Ranch, challenge for developers

2002

• Caravalho to Ken: Ken Pulskamp becomes City Manager
• Old Glory: John Quigley sits in the limbs of a large oak tree threatened by road expansion, $1M+ spent on security and tree-moving
• On Screen: City creates film office, confirming/building major role in entertainment industry

2003

• 1220: Goldmans buy back AM-1220 from Clear Channel, broadcast as KHTS and increase community presence

2004

• Lennar: Acquires Newhall Land and Farming Co.

2005

• For the Vets: Veterans Historical Plaza opens
• Blog: Santa Clarita’s biggest blogs go online (WRB in Fall ’05, SCVTalk in Spring ’06)

2006

• Best in State: Canyon High is 2006 California State Football champion
• Bubble: Median home price in SCV hits $620,000

2007

• $100M: Settlement struck for clean-up of Whittaker-Bermite; hardly end of story
• Burn: Buckweed fire scorches SCV
• Stay Out: Tony Zinnanti, local attorney, leads crusade to have pedophile Jack McLellan prohibited from visiting SCV
• COC East: Canyon Country community college campus commences classes

2008

• Newhall Memorial Hospital: Expansion drama
• Disclosure: Bob Kellar refuses to disclose sources of income and may face jail time

2010

• Library Infamy: Santa Clarita makes national news and will inspire state legislation with hasty library takeover
• CVC: Cross Valley Connector finally completed

2011

• General Plan: City Council adopts One Valley One Vision

2012

• Literary Crown Jewel: The new Newhall Library opens (presumably)

Sorry the pause symbol is blocking his head; you’ll just have to take my word for it; Martin Sheen was at Vasquez Rocks telling Discovery channel watchers about how iron deposits were formed in Michigan’s upper peninsula billions of years ago.

Sheen joins William Shatner, John Goodman, the Power Rangers, and scores of other Hollywood notables who have used the distinctive rocks as a back drop.

Of course, no celebrity visit to Vasquez Rocks can top James T. Kirk’s fight with Gorn, the space lizard, in an episode of Star Trek back in the 60s:

From the Archives: Groundbreaking from CalArts on Vimeo.

From CalArts’ blog (new to me, looks really good!):

We’ve posted an audio track from the actual groundbreaking ceremony in which Thomas Lowe, then-president of the Newhall Land & Farming Company, addresses the audience on a vision for Valencia and how CalArts fits into that vision. The audio has been superimposed on film footage capturing the grading and construction of the campus and Main Building.

We’ve all seen the old-timey pictures of Newhall, Valencia, and Saugus before they were built, but having a video of the landscape back then is really special. Think of how new this place must have felt to everyone involved. And think of the context of the time: unending and deadly war in Vietnam, anti-war protests, race riots/rebellion in Watts, Newark and other cities, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, desegregation and busing  just around the corner, the hippie movement, urban decay and the end of a liberal epoch in American politics (Nixon became president in 1969 and expanded some big government policies but presaged the next 40 years of politics).

Valencia, a community built in the “New Town” school of development, came into being in this environment, just as the golden age of American cars was at hand and just as the interstate highway system was maturing. It was a suburb, but better than the obsolete Levittown-model that preceded it. To those who first toured the homes and home sites and saw COC & CalArts being built, it must have felt like a new world, or at least, a world apart from what they were used to in the SFV or elsewhere. If you think of it in that light, can you really blame the persistent no-growth undercurrent that followed?

Great stuff. I hope more old SCV videos get posted on the internet, there’s probably still a lot of old Super 8 footage out there.

But this is Santa Clarita. Place names don’t mean much here, as Mike’s mental geography exercises have proven. And we like to name our roads, monuments, train stations, parks and buildings after people, many of whom are still alive.

So with that in mind, let’s explore some names for Castaic high School, since it’s obviously not going to be named that. Here’s my list:

• San Francisquito High (Mascot: The Waves.  What? Too soon?)
• Aliklik High (Mascot: Indians. Aliklik is the derogatory name applied to our Tataviam Indians by the snobbish Chumash on the coast, who remarked that the language of the Tataviam sounded like “Aliklik”. I should add Aliklik High Indians is way more appropriate than Hart Indians)
• Del Valle High (Mascot: Barons, named after Antonio del Valle, a real Mexican Land Baron who lived over Camulos way and granted land to our own Henry Mayo, who already has way too much stuff named after him)
• MAC Peterson High (Mascot: Truckers, named after the primary business in Castaic which was and remains servicing truck drivers in many creative ways)
• Chaguayabit High (Mascot: The Spellers, for obvious reasons)
• Bower High (Mascot, The Raiders after the Reverend Stephen Bower who did none of the digging but all of the profiting from the discovery of a cave containing priceless Tataviam artifacts in Castaic. Bower then peddled each item off and now they’re located in Harvard’s Peabody museum).

I just came up with these names off the top of my head. I’m sure you can do better. So have at it- let’s beat the Hart District to the punch and list some good names for Castaic High. We’ll then have an official vote on the best names.

Give that boy an A++! Especially love the accent and the simulation of a falling wagon.

His film should headline next month’s Cowboy Festival.

The Deadwrite blog has some history about the Mesa:

Mystery Mesa is the name of the spot, and Kimi and I were lucky enough to get a tour of it recently. It’s not very well known outside of the ranks of Hollywood’s location managers, but in fact, it’s one of the most used filming sites in the entire Santa Clarita Valley.

The Mesa was once the site of Christian tent revivals in the 1920s. It later became a filming spot for the likes of William S. Hart in the silent Western days and has literally been seen hundreds of times over the years on screen.

It was here that Steven Spielberg filmed the conclusion of his memorable thriller Duel in 1971, where the killer truck drives off the same cliff as in the O’Brien clip (the cliff is only 120-feet tall, by the way). Spielberg came back here in 2005 to film several scenes from War of the Worlds. It was later used as the desert airport in The Aviator, and around the same time it doubled for ancient Egypt inThe Scorpion King. More recently, the mesa became the island of Iwo Jima in the South Pacific for Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima. Next year, the Mesa will show up on the big screen again in Kenneth Branagh’s fantasy Thor, which stars Natalie Portman.

Back in 2007, an anti-war activist group held a photo shoot on the Mesa. Their plan was to have protesters lay down on the ground as if they were dead, then photograph them as a visual representation of the number of Americans who had died in Iraq up to that point. I covered the event then and it was my first trip up to the Mesa.

The Mesa certainly is a flexible spot for filmmakers and producers. I’m glad it was never developed. If you haven’t been there, you owe it to yourself to at least drive through Vasquez Canyon and check out the interesting geology in the area. It’s like nowhere else in the SCV.

Normally, I’d laugh such concerns off. Come on, does anyone really believe that if the City succeeded in taking over our libraries that they might start a banned book list? Really?

I know we’re not New York City here, but we’re also not Paintlick, Kentucky; we’re way more sophisticated and cosmopolitan than that!

But then I thought of the last year in SCV news and politics. Consider:

• The City Council’s support for a set of hard-right immigration policies to appease the mob prior to the council election in the wake of Kellargate. Their action foreshadowed by months the latest Congressional GOP fad: questioning the 14th Amendment and the “Birthright” clause
• Bob Kellar, sponsor of “In God We Trust” on the wall in the Council Chambers, hasn’t exactly been shy about using his office to promote moral causes
• Last fall, Hart District parents protested the District’s literature list because some  books had “vulgar language and sexual accounts”
• We’re not that far from Lancaster where the Mayor declared the City of Lancaster a “Christian kingdom.” I’ve often said we could swing either way- North County Crazy or LA Cosmopolitan
• Elements of the local Tea Party movement have been very forward about their belief that the separation of church and state is a mistake, that God belongs in the classroom and in the governing halls of power. You know the line, you’ve heard it a million times, but some in the local Tea Party movement are very open about it
• There is a long history of banning books in the otherwise freedom-loving USA
• While at Hart high school, I had a friend whose parents were very religious; I’ll never forget that when I borrowed a Clancy-esque techno-thriller book from that friend, his mom had already read it and blanked out curse words and tore out an entire chapter of the book that talked about the protagonist having sex. True story.
• Let’s just say I’m not sure about Laurie Ender’s commitment to freedom of information

Considering all that, I’m upgrading the threat of censorship of library books by the City from “laughable” to “possible, but not probable.” Why? It’s not hard to imagine some Facebook-powered group of parents in the future (Perhaps calling themselves something suitably 20th Century and creepy, like the SCV League for the Prevention of Vice, or SCVLPV for short) spontaneously forming and appearing at a Council meeting to ask the City to remove certain books from its collection.

And it’s not hard to imagine the City Council buckling under the pressure, as they have so many times in the past.

Like I said, possible, but not probable.

On the other hand, I’m encouraged by the reaction of Santa Claritans to an April Fools prank a few years ago. TimBen Boydston’s Canyon Theater Guild ran an ad in The Signal on April 1, inviting residents to come to Old Town Newhall to burn objectionable books. The ad was meant to excite people about Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 and a city reading event, but it resulted in “dozens of mystified, angry calls” flooding city hall and the Canyon Theater Guild, protesting the book burning.

Takuyaman ( or Tacuyamam) is the Ventureno Chumash name for the Tataviam village called Tsawayung (called “Chaguayunga” or “Chaguayabit” in the San Fernando Mission records). The original village was at the rancho of the mission called San Francisco Xavier (near the Magic Mountain amusement park).

Of course the fact that Ventureno Chumash knew of the place and had a name for it in their language doesn’t mean that it was their village. Similarly, the name Camulos is derived from the Ventureno Chumash name Kamulus, meaning something like ‘at the juniper tree’; however the original village at Camulos was inhabited by Tataviam Indians and was known in their language by a completely different name.

Wow. So we know that A) Takuyumam existed and B) it was the Chumash name for a Tataviam place we are familiar with, Chaguayabit, which was located near present day Magic Mountain and C) the marker in the map is apparently in the wrong place.

Different names for the same places. Not so odd when you think about it. We do it too with our geography in the SCV today. For instance, lots of people call the villages along Soledad “Canyon Country.” I, however, with my pro-Newhall bias, call it Rough Neck City.  Some call the villages along I-5 “Stevenson Ranch” while others call it “Stepford.”

And while I call Newhall “home,” others are likely to call it Little Tijuana. And so on.

So it is today with Google, which is apparently displaying an unfortunate Pro-Chumash bias by naming this place Takuyumam rather than Chaguayabit on their maps. I say unfortunate because the Chumash always get good, sympathetic press (there are 551,000 results on Google alone) while our hometown Tataviam (only 6,300 results) are largely forgotten and ignored by those outside the SCV.

Maybe a petition is in order to restore the proper name for this old Native American village on Google maps.

Many thanks to Dr. Johnson and Dr. Pollack for helping us clear this up!

MORE RESOURCES ON THE WEB:

Chumash Place names in SCV

Leon Worden article on Chaguayabit, the intersection of the Chumash and Tataviam

Timeline of SCV History

Dr. Johnson’s paper on Tataviam Geography and Ethnohistory

I found a curious thing on Google maps recently. For the last few weeks, they’ve been labeling, quite substantially, a part of Newhall as “Takuyumam.”

Obviously, it’s something related to Native Americans. But unlike other parts of town with Native American names (Cashtuk, Chungyabit, etc), I’ve never heard the word “Takuyumam.”

Well it turns out all the Google links and map references to this place are based on something from the US Geologic Survey:

As you can see, the USGS page says Takuyumam was a Chumash Indian settlement.

Hold your horses USGS! Chumash? Really?

The Chumash are a people who inhabited mostly coastal southern and central California. Our Natives weren’t Chumash, in fact, little is known about them, we only know what others called them, the Tataviam (People of the Sun) or aliklik, which was a name derisively given to our natives by the Chumash because of the sound of their language.

So I checked out the 100 year old referenced book on Google Books and searched it for Takuyumam. No results. Then I searched for Newhall and found one reference to a place called “Kashiwe”, a “former Chumashan village near Newhall, Ventura County, California at a place now called Cuesta Santa Susana.”

Interesting, but a dead-end.

I searched SCVHistory.com and there are no results for Takuyumam either. So I hopped onto JStor and a few other academic indexing services, and none of them reference a place called Takuyumam.

So what’s the deal? Why is Google putting a big fat place marker on Newhall that relates to the Chumash when just about everything we know about the SCV indicates the Tataviam people lived here?

I think it’s probably a mistake. But it’s one mistake I’m going to have fun hunting down. Because I’m nerdy like that.

Part Two of a Seven-Part SCVTalk Series, chronicling Valencia’s Final Residential Developments.

The story of the greater West Creek development is one of starts and stops.  For perspective, the West Creek project was scoped and submitted to LACo around the same time as Tesoro del Valle in Saugus (Mr. Worden has your back story).  Bill Clinton was president, Ferry and Weste were Council newbies, and the north end of the valley looked vastly different than today.  Fast forward twelve years:  SunCal completed the Tesoro project (which was timed almost exactly with the housing market boom), some of those homes have even foreclosed and now house new buyers.  Yet West Creek and West Hills (the name for the tracts on the north side of Copper Hill) remain in their early stages of development.

Before you dismiss this as “just another project,” note that without the West Creek development, there would be arguably be no Decoro bridge, no Copper Hill extension, and probably no Rio Norte Middle School.  This project has been through the ringer, including a trip to the California Supreme Court and worse — survived the wrath of Lynne Plambeck.

Major milestones for West Creek:

• 1998 Nov: A new “Rural Feel Development” is announced by NLF, encompassing two communities split by Copper Hill- one higher density “Copper Hill Village”, the other modeled after Valencia Woodlands tentatively dubbed “Canyon Estates” (names were subsequently and thankfully changed to West Creek and West Hills, respectively)
• 1998 Dec: Copper Hill extension project gets underway
• 1999 Jan: West Creek originally planned as largest gated community in LA county, dubious approval based on safety concerns
• 2000 May: NLF drops gates on higher density side, wins county approval, SCOPE cites concerns including water availability and native oaks
• 2000 Aug: SCOPE sharpens arguments, alleges dirty tricks involved with the EIR; files suits along with Sierra Club in LA & Ventura courts
• 2000 Dec: LACo Board of Supes approves project
• 2001 Jan: Groundbreaking of Rio Norte and Decoro Drive bridge over San Francisquito creek
• 2001 Mar: Ventura judge issues restraining order on the Decoro bridge, citing water impact to farmers per SCOPE suit
• 2001 May: Arroyo Toad is spotted in San Francisquito Creek; Friends of the Santa Clara River file a suit in Federal court to suspend NLF permits
• 2001 Jun Santa Barbara Judge lifts earlier Ventura court ban, Rio Norte and Decoro Drive bridge continue construction
• 2001 Nov: LA Superior Court rules in favor of NLF from SCOPE’s earlier EIR challenge
• 2002 Nov: SCOPE appeals the ruling
• 2003: Decoro Drive bridge is completed
• 2003 Feb: Court of Appeals reverses the Santa Barbara decision and orders a new EIR rather than one based on a “dream of water entitlements”; NLF appeals
• 2003 Jul: State Supreme Court affirms the Appeals court, NLF goes back to the drawing board on water and EIR
• 2003 Sep: Rio Norte Opens

• 2004 May: Another toad, this time a Western spadefoot, found by NLF, who voluntarily puts the brakes on. “I’m very pleased they discovered it” quoth Lynne Plambeck.  It was later determined the toad wandered to the area from elsewhere.

Western Spadefoot toad

• 2005 Jan:  New year, New EIR. Antonovich spokesman: “The water analysis of West Creek rivaled that of the analysis that was done for Newhall Ranch.” SCOPE alleges perchlorate in a nearby well.
• 2005 Mar: Revised EIR OK’d by LACo supes, Yaroslavsky dissents over water.
• 2005 Jun: Perchlorate confirmed in one of the water supply wells intended to serve West Creek, development stalled
• 2005 Jul: Board of Supes signs off on the final EIR; NLF initiates perchlorate cleanup effort, Plambeck undeterred
• 2005 Oct: Lauffer says homes in West Creek will be available “next Fall” and “priced in the mid-threes through the mid-eights”
• 2005 Dec: SUSD negotiates with NLF to have them build West Creek Elementary.  Developer-built school would be a first in SCV and one of ten in California.  Lauffer: “Private developers are able to get it built faster than school districts”
• 2006 Jan: LA Superior Court sides with NLF on what is the last of the SCOPE / West Creek lawsuits
• 2007 Apr: Groundbreaking on $35M West Creek Elementary. Modeled after Tesoro Elementary, SUSD Supe Fish, sticking it square in the eye of Helmers parents, declares West Creek “the most beautiful school in the valley”

• 2007 Oct: Terry R. Miller Memorial park opens, named after a construction supervisor for Newhall Land
• 2008 Feb: First homes completed in West Creek, 3000-sf “Patina” series feature solar power and tankless water heaters
• 2008 Jun: NLF parent LandSource declares bankruptcy
• 2009 Jan: Construction complete on 15 acre West Creek park, but a final inspection puts a damper on its opening
• 2009 Jul: “Patina” series put on ice in favor of higher density “Aria” series
• 2010 Jan: West Creek park opens, Antonovich keynotes the dedication
• 2010 Feb: Lennar consolidates West Creek, West Hills, RiverVillage sales offices into one structure across from Rio Norte

Today, there remains more dirt than stucco.  The land is fully improved; green Edison utility boxes are burrowed between the weeds, ready for hookup in the not-too-distant future.  Parks, schools, grand entrances, and clusters of completed homes stand next to graded lots.  Paseos are paved and lighted, common areas are planted and irrigated; block wall fencing lines the named, paved, empty streets.  Standing in an open lot looking down, weeds and native shrubs provide natural shelter for the naked dirt.  Looking around, camo-wearing kids scuttle to a makeshift fort clutching air rifles.  Looking out, panoramic vistas from east to west await, enticing the precious homebuyers that will ultimately dictate the timing for this storied development.

West Creek entrance off Copper Hill

West Creek park path, north side.

New construction in West Creek.

Upper area in West Hills, facing north. Note the improvements.

Kids play near a makeshift fort in West Hills.

Camo and air guns.

Next, an inside look at the campus of $35M West Creek Elementary – the lynchpin of SUSD’s future plans and Valencia’s last new school for the foreseeable future.

West Creek Elementary, main entrance.