The Devil Made Me Do It

Since December I’ve been planning to spend a few days on a motorcycle ride along State Route 33, which begins on the coast in Ventura, makes its way north across the Transverse Ranges, enters a hellscape in Kern County known as The Petroleum Highway, and ends up about 50 miles south of Sacramento. I had blocked out this week to finally make the journey.

Alas, I’ve decided to postpone the trip. This is partly due to unsettled weather this week. Also, I figured that staying in motels and/or with friends is discouraged during a global pandemic. So, the Great Highway 33 Adventure will have to wait.

But yesterday the rains held off, and it seemed like a good opportunity to make at least a short day-trip out of the LA basin. I remembered a suggestion from my friend Bruce that I check out something called The Devils’ Gate, up in Pasadena. And so that became my plan.

Traffic on [the] 110 freeway was almost nonexistent, due no doubt to a shelter-in-place order imposed by the Mayor. (As I’m not a resident of the City of Los Angeles, I don’t feel bound by his orders.) In no time (well, 45 minutes, which by LA standards is no time) I found myself at the Devil’s Gate Dam.

The dam was built exactly 100 years ago, as a flood control measure to regulate the flow of the mighty Arroyo Seco. The Arroyo Seco today is little more than a trickle, but presumably back in 1920 there had been heavier snowmelt off the surrounding mountains, thus necessitating the dam. Still, with a name that translates into “Dry Creek,” the Arroyo Seco was perhaps never all that mighty after all.

The dam is named for Devil’s Gate Gorge, which is the narrowest part of the Arroyo Seco’s course and thus a good dam site. The gorge itself was named for an outcropping that supposedly resembles Satan. At least, that’s the story. And that’s what I was here to validate.

The dam itself is an attractive structure, designed with that classical vibe that characterizes most of LA’s water projects from the early 20th century.

The reservoir behind the dam is not especially impressive. It’s pretty small, compared to other LA reservoirs. It’s also undergoing a major renovation, as the county removes 1.7 million cubic yards of sediment that had slid into the reservoir after the Station Fire of 2009.

OK, all this is good so far as it goes, and it certainly fits within my suite of LA water infrastructure blog postings. But where’s the namesake Devil’s Gate that I’ve heard so much about?

A little exploration downstream of the dam revealed the answer. Down a steep embankment and nestled among sickly trees and stagnant water I found this:

OK, it’s a little creepy. But you ain’t heard nothing yet.

Shortly after the dam was built, people began to be intrigued by the rocky profile of Satan next to the hellish gates behind which was eternal darkness and slithering water. By the early 1940s, the tableau caught the attention of a local young man named Jack Parsons (1914-1952), who had recently converted to an occult religion called Thelema. Thelema is considered a proto-Wiccan religion, and some adherents also consider themselves Satanists. But far from being a loony, Jack Parsons was literally a rocket scientist. In fact, it was he who, with a few others, founded Jet Propulsion Lab on the far side of the Devil’s Gate Reservoir.

Parsons became the leader of the California branch of Thelema, and is said to have conducted orgies, practiced Black Magic, and otherwise engaged in occult shenanigans at his mansion, which became the “church” of the Thelema order. Some of Parson’s unearthly activities are said to have taken place at the Devil’s Gate. (Another figure related to these activities was future Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.) In 1944, Parsons was unceremoniously expelled from JPL due to his objectionable behavior.

A decade later, children began disappearing from the area. Speculation abounded about goings-on at the Devil’s Gate. A convicted serial killer named Mack Ray Edwards took credit for the killings, though none of the Devil’s Gate children was ever found. Edwards was a CalTrans worker, and one of his confirmed victims was discovered under the Santa Ana freeway. One wonders whether the Devil’s Gate children met a similar fate.

Feeling a bit uneasy in this isolated area, I figured it was time to go. I got a little turned around among the trees and bushes, and suddenly found myself in the center of some spindly wooden structures.

The freeway took me only 30 minutes to get home.