Water We To Do?

January 28, 2021 steveboilard1 Comment

Editor’s note: Given limited travel opportunities these days, I decided each Thursday to post travel stories I’d written prior to starting this blog. The following is from July 2019. I hope you might vicariously enjoy this trip while we’re all hunkering down at home.

There are decided trade-offs to living in the LA area. On the debit side are gridlocked freeways, high taxes, homeless encampments, and monotonous suburbs. These are balanced out by thePacific Ocean, great weather most of the year, a vibrant music and arts scene, and close proximity (at least in terms of mileage, if not time) to some amazing mountain scenery.

Straddling between the good and the bad is a fascinating social and industrial history, and the bold, even arrogant physical infrastructure that goes with it. And that was the focus of today’s travels.

I was inspired by a book I’m reading about William Mulholland and his efforts in the early 20th century to bring water into the fast-emerging metropolis of Los Angeles. As I read the early chapters about the 230-mile aqueduct Mulholland built to transport water from the Owens River (in the Sierras) to Los Angeles, I decided it was worth a trip to see at least the southern portions of this project in the flesh (as it were). There are three sites in particular that are within a day’s round-trip travel. So this morning I saddled up the trusty Triumph and set out north on I-405.

I was in Santa Clarita (otherwise known as Magic Mountain) within an hour, and shortly after exiting the freeway I came upon the first site: the Cascades. This is essentially the southern terminus of Mulholland’s aqueduct. It was completed on November 5, 1913, when 40,000 souls congregated to watch the first gush of water come through the gates. Today, more than a century later, it’s still going strong. (In 1970 a second aqueduct was added, and both of them terminate here at the Cascades.) It’s simply a damn impressive sight. And the water makes the entire 230-mile trip solely by gravity. Here are a few pictures I took today:

Better than the flume ride at nearby Magic Mountain

You really have to check out the vido I took as well. It’s only about 10 seconds long:

All ashore that’s going ashore

There’s something mesmerizing about watching hundreds of cubic feet of water per second crashing along the sides of a cement canal as it tumbles down to enter the city water supply and be used to wash down the floors of barns. At least, that’s what my wife does with it…

Truth be told, the diversion of the water from the Owens Valley was very controversial, even 100 years ago. In fact, local farmers and others disrupted the pipeline with explosives and other tools of the sabotaging trade. But now, with 10 million residents, Los Angeles simply could not exist without external water sources such as this one.

After meditating on the Cascades for a bit, I rode up into the Sierra Pelona Mountains, about 40 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. (See paragraph 1, above.) It’s a lonely road through arid country.

Still, it was an enjoyable ride, with warm weather (see paragraph 1) and blue skies. It felt far from Los Angeles. What a great way to spend a Thursday. Ain’t retirement great?

Eventually, after turning onto ever-smaller roads, I encountered Site # 2: This is one of the power houses that belongs to the LA Department of Water and Power. It’s fed by three penstocks that take their water from the aqueduct.

It’s a stately structure from the 1920s, built with that same art deco look that all utility providers seemed to share in those days. The building originally looked like this (below) when it was originally constructed in 1920. Note that there were only 2 penstocks at that time:

The building I saw today had been re-constructed in 1929, for reasons that are connected to the upcoming Site #3. But first, let’s go back to March 12, 1928, when another motorcycle rider was coming along this same road that I visited today. That motorcycle rider was Ace Hopewell (I’m not making that name up), and he passed the power station a little before midnight. He didn’t notice anything unusual, and continued up the road another mile or two, when he heard the loud sound of rocks rolling down a mountainside. He stopped, smoked a cigarette (as one does), and when the sound faded away, he hopped back on his motorcycle and continued on his way.

It turns out that what Ace heard was the failure of St. Francis Dam, which is just a mile and a half from the power station. The dam had been constructed two years earlier at Mulholland’s order, in order to provide backup water storage for Los Angeles. Water was diverted from the Los Angeles aqueduct to fill the new reservoir behind the dam, and it had reached capacity just a few months before Ace took his midnight ride. Meanwhile, the dam keeper had been noticing cracks and water seepage, but Mulholland assured him that those were normal for a dam of this size. Indeed, Mulholland had personally inspected the dam and declared it safe earlier that very day. And now, a few minutes before midnight, the dam catastrophically failed. A wall of water 120 feet high crashed through the canyon, wiping out buildings (including that poor power station), homes, ranches, and, further away, several towns. The floodwaters eventually emptied into the Pacific Ocean, some 50 miles away, around dawn the next morning. Almost 450 people would lose their lives, making this the second worst disaster to befall California (after the 1906 earthquake and fire).

So today, I’m standing in the same canyon where the floodwaters unleashed by the St Francis Dam had scoured everything from the surface. I tried to imagine what that must have been like. The scale is hard to fathom. And so to help me wrap my head around this disaster, I sought out Site #3: The ruins of the St. Francis Dam.

This took a little doing. After a few false leads, I found an abandoned road which had been barricaded with K-rail. I parked the Triumph and hoofed it along the cracked roadway, down into what had briefly been the dam’s reservoir.

The further I went, the more overgrown the road became, until it was barely a path hemmed in by brush:

But then, suddenly, the brush cleared and I was standing on the site where the St. Francis Dam once stood. It was eerie, in that desolate area, hearing nothing but the wind rustling the leaves of the (incongruous) Aspen (?) trees, and imagining the total collapse of that massive structure. All that was left were some large concrete chunks and some rebar. (The authorities long ago dynamited and bulldozed the portions of the dam that had been still standing, in order to discourage sightseers. Like me.) Anyway, here’s what I saw today:

“Then the wall of the city will collapse and the people will go up, every man straight in.”

Notably, Mulholland assumed full responsibility for the dam’s failure, and a few months later he resigned as the head of LA’s water and power agency, and retired. There are many things not to like about William Mulholland, but you have to admire his The-Buck-Stops-Here attitude which is almost entirely lacking among politicians these days. Mulholland is quoted as saying, “If there was an error in human judgment, I was the human, I won’t try to fasten it on anyone else.” After retiring, he became a recluse, and it is said he spent the rest of his life feeling devastated by the St. Francis Dam disaster.

As I headed home, returning to the LA freeways and encountering the crush of Angelenos returning home from work, texting while they drive and exercising almost no lane discipline, I tried to make some sense of what I saw today. On the one hand, I’m in awe of heroic public works projects like the Los Angeles aqueduct. Leaving aside the environmental implications and the morality of stealing water from the Owens Valley, the sheer engineering and execution of the project is astounding. It’s not Apollo 11, but it’s close. There’s something awesome about that, and it reminds us that we as a civilization have enormous power to change our environment — for good or bad. And yet. It’s interesting to bookend the Cascades, which are still working beautifully after more than a century, with the St Francis Dam, which failed within a few months. I suppose you could take from that a warning that we need to be more careful in our design and execution. But I take a somewhat different message. It’s that we are not in fact entirely the masters of our destinies. Just as the abandoned road I encountered was being taken back by nature, so did nature take back San Francisquito Canyon. And, in a strange way, I find that somewhat reassuring. Maybe it’s good that we’re not entirely in control. There’s something liberating about that.

Makeshift memorial by the dam site. For the 450 victims in 1928?

My Fair Lady

January 21, 2021 steveboilard3 Comments

Editor’s note: Given limited travel opportunities these days, I decided each Thursday to post travel stories I’d written prior to starting this blog. The following is from November 2018. I hope you might vicariously enjoy this trip while we’re all hunkering down at home.

For many years, my friend Vic and I have been talking about driving out to Lake Havasu, on the border between California and Arizona, to see London Bridge. As you may know, London Bridge was moved from London to Lake Havasu in the 1960s, and it’s always struck us as a “you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it” kind of phenomenon. But, despite the best of intentions, the trip never materialized. Until now.

So it was that last Tuesday morning I found myself at Ontario airport, picking up Vic who’d just arrived from Sacramento. A couple of illegal U-turns later, we were on our way to…….the site of the first McDonald’s restaurant, which is in San Bernardino.

It would probably help to explain that Vic shares my interest in unsung history. And while McDonald’s is hardly unsung, this particular site is something that the McDonald’s Corporation would rather be forgotten. For it was on this site in 1948 that the McDonald’s brothers built the first McDonald’s restaurant. But when Ray Kroc bought the chain from the brothers in 1961, he was infuriated to learn that the sale did not include the original San Bernardino store. He made the brothers remove the Golden Arches from that building, and change its name from McDonald’s to “Big M.” A decade later, the building was torn down, but the sign was saved, and remains to this day.

Now, along comes a fellow named Albert Okura, who owns the Juan Pollo Rotisserie Chicken chain. (I’d never heard of it either.) He learns that this old McDonald’s property (with the original sign, and a new office building) is up for sale, so he buys it and moves the Juan Pollo headquarters there. But, supposedly because he “believes it is his responsibility to preserve the early history of the most successfulfast food restaurant chain in the world,” he devotes half of the office building to an unofficial McDonald’s history museum. Vic and I spent an hour checking out the old McDonald’s paraphernalia, as well as thousands of Happy Meal toys.

A little later, as we were driving across the Mojave Desert, we stopped at the “ghost town” of Calico. I use quotation marks because, while Calico was once a prosperous mining town that became all but deserted after silver prices dropped, it’s now a county park. In fact, to enter the “town” you have to stop at the entrance and pay $8 a head to the County parks ranger, who was asleep on a stool. (Evidently visitors are as scarce as residents in this ghost town.)

The ghost town of Calico, complete with historic satellite dish.

Calico is an uneasy mix of legitimate historic structures, kitchy craft stores, and hucksterism. Indulging in the latter category, we took the train ride (as the only two passengers) and visited the “mystery shack,” where water supposedly runs uphill.

At least this train ride isn’t cluttered with pesky paying customers…

Eventually, we made our way to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, where we got dinner and rested up for the next day’s assault on London Bridge. The story of how London Bridge ended up in the Mojave desert is fascinating. It’s all due to the efforts of Robert McCullough, an entrepreneur who was born in Missouri and eventually made his way to Lake Havasu, where he developed, tested, and manufactured boat motors. As his manufacturing facilities grew, he bought much of the surrounding land and founded Lake Havasu City. But he needed some kind of gimmick to draw people to this barren land. As he pondered this, he learned that the City of London was auctioning off the London Bridge, which had been built in 1831 but was gradually sinking inch-by-inch into the Thames. So, in 1967, McCullough’s bid of $2.5 million was accepted, and he became the proud owner of London Bridge. The structure was carefully disassembled stone by stone, shipped through the Panama Canal, and unloaded at Long Beach, CA, where it was then trucked inland 300 miles to Lake Havasu City. The bridge was re-assembled on the desert floor. Finally, a channel was dug to bring the Lake’s water under the bridge. The bridge was reopened in 1971.

It’s hard to express why I’m so intrigued by McCullough’s effort. Sure, it was a crazy idea. The very logistics of moving a bridge 5,300 miles are daunting enough. And to spend a good chunk of one’s personal fortune on it seems foolhardy, especially when the end result is a relatively useless structure in an unpopulated desert town. But I suppose it’s because of those things, rather than in spite of them, that I admire McCullough. Too often we let logic get in the way of our dreams. In a very small way, that’s why it took Vic and me so long to take this trip!

With the main objective of our trip now complete, we began our return drive along several stretches of historic Route 66. We headed up to Kingman, AZ (pop: 28,000), which is called out by name in Nat King Cole’s “Route 66.”

Geographically, Kingman is more like Route 66’s left wrist.

We visited Kingman’s Route 66 museum (which included a sweet Studebaker Commander), and explored some of the historic sites along the Mother Road.

That quirky look that’s so ugly that it’s kind of cool. Oh, and the car is pretty neat, too…

The next day we headed west on Interstate 40 (which replaced Route 66 in this region in 1984). But whenever a stretch of the historic highway was available, we left the interstate and motored along the historic pavement. Each time we transitioned off the interstate, I could feel my grip on the steering wheel relax. My eyes would open a little wider, and I’d feel more at one with the passing countryside.

One item that caught my heightened attention on Route 66 was a Chinese lion, cast out of cement, sitting about 20 feet off the road, all alone.

A waterproof journal was sitting on the pedestal, with an invitation to record our thoughts. There were many earlier entries, about half of which clearly got into the Zen of the thing, while the other half expressed puzzlement. I wrote something that was somewhere in between those sentiments. But I confess that a world with mysterious lions along the roadside is better than a world without such oddities.

A short time later we came upon the town of Amboy (pop: 4). Amboy was first settled in 1858, and became a boomtown when Route 66 opened up in the 1920s. In the 1930s, Roy’s Motel and Cafe were built by Roy Crowl. The complex included a gas station and a store, and the addition of a large sign in 1959 make Roy’s an especially popular, even iconic, spot along Route 66.

Like the many other businesses along the route, Roy’s (and Amboy) fell on hard times when the interstate replaced Route 66. Roy’s went through several ownership changes, Eventually, the motel, gas station, and cafe closed, and the property fell into disrepair. Then, in 2005, a history buff and Route 66 preservationist purchased the town of Amboy with the intention of re-opening Roy’s and creating a Route 66 museum. I can attest that Roy’s is indeed now open for business, selling gas and supplies to the (scarce) passers-by. We saw active construction on the motel cabins, which look like they should be open for visitors sometime next year. And who is this savior of Amboy and Roy’s, who puts his money and time into saving a piece of history for the rest of us? Coincidentally, it’s Albert Okura — the same guy who created theMcDonald’s museum we’d stopped at 2 days earlier. And, like Robert McCullough, Okura isn’t afraid to purchase an entire town in the effort to fulfill his dreams.

So, as we headed home, Vic and I tipped our hats to Albert Okura, Robert McCullough, and all the others who work to make our world a little less jejune and a little more worthy of a road trip like this one.

For those who have their taste sense, but no other.

California history · Road trips

Eight Hours for a Hot Dog

January 14, 2021January 21, 2021 steveboilard2 Comments

Editor’s note: Given limited travel opportunities these days, I decided to post some travel stories I’d written prior to starting this blog. The following is from August 2019. I hope you might vicariously enjoy this trip while we’re all hunkering down at home.

Yesterday was a beautiful, warm, sunny day here in the so-called “Southland,” and more importantly, it was not a Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. Stick with me on this for a minute.

There’s an old restaurant high up in the San Gabriel Mountains. Named Newcomb’s Ranch, its lineage dates back to 1888, when a mountain man named Louie Newcomb built a cabin and became one of the first forest rangers in the new San Gabriel Timber Reserve. Louie ended up selling his land in 1929, and by 1939 the new owners had built a restaurant just a few hundred yards from Louie’s original cabin. Over the years this restaurant (largely rebuilt after a fire some 45 years ago) became a popular stop for motorcyclists. It sits about halfway along the winding, 66-mile, two-lane “Angeles Crest Highway,” which crosses the San Gabriel Mountains and was built by prison labor in the 1930s and 1940s.

I first stumbled across Newcomb’s Ranch a few years back while taking a day trip along the Angeles Crest Highway. Now, no one who knows me would ever use the term “biker” to describe me. But I was strangely attracted to the biker hangout as a way to prove that, yes, I can fit in with that crowd. I mean, I own a bike, right? But it was late in the day, and I didn’t have time to stop. So I made a mental note to return some day. A few weeks later I made the trip up the ACH again, with the intention of stopping for lunch at Newcomb’s. But I found the doors locked, and a couple of swarthy-looking bikers eating bag lunches on a picnic table in front of the place. “Are they closed?” I asked the bikers. The more sentient of the two looked up at me and said “Yep.” When it was obvious that I was looking for a little more information, he volunteered that the place is closed Monday through Wednesday. I was there on a Wednesday.

So Thursday of this week I set out for a third assault on Newcomb’s Ranch. I was enjoying the ride through the mountains when I abruptly encountered a “road closed” sign. It turns out the ACH experienced a landslide a few months back, and CalTrans is still at work clearing it and installing new retaining structures. Here’s a picture (from the web) of the goings-on:

A “detour” sign pointed toward a side road (though it contained no information as to length or destination). I tried it. Before long I was crossing the Big Tujunga Narrows Bridge, which is an impressive structure over 400 feet long from 1941. Here are a couple of my photos:

The second photo shows what appears to be an old overlook site in the foreground. The area was fenced off, but it was easy to get past the barrier. I got the sense that it was considered unsafe, and thus the public was discouraged from going out to this area. It felt like an old Conservation Corps project, or maybe a WPA project. But there was no plaque, and I couldn’t find any information about it online. I’d welcome any intel that readers might be able to share.

Eventually the detour routed me back to the ACH, some ways past the landslide, I presume. A few more miles and I came upon the fabled Newcomb’s Ranch. But wait: there were no signs of life through the windows of the building. And weren’t those the same two bikers I’d met weeks before, sitting out on a picnic bench? I walked up to these now-familiar figures, and asked if the place was closed. “Yep.” (I should have learned my lesson the first time.) I protested that “It’s Thursday!” One of the guys just shrugged, and said “sometimes something comes up. I think they might have lost their power.” I told them that I’d made a trip out here just to get a burger, so they pointed me down the road to a place called Sky High. How far is it, I asked. “About 30 miles.” That would take me just about to the end of the ACH, so heck, I decided to make the trip.

I didn’t encounter much traffic on the ride. Mainly just a few other guys on motorcycles. The road twisted over and even through the mountains. Here’s one of the tunnels, that I thought was picturesque:

I was becoming famished. What with the detour, and with the unexpected additional mileage to the Sky High restaurant, it was now almost 2 pm. But I stopped once again for another of the rare structures along this desolate road. It looked like an old lodge of some kind, with a stone tower and a bronze plaque bearing a poem from 1925. Here’s a picture of the tower. (Sadly, I didn’t get a picture of the lodge.)

The structures were immediately on the side of the road, and they were completely deserted. Other than the poem (“In the Pines,” by WIlliam Bristol) and the engraved names of the LA County Supervisors from early in the last century, there was no information as to what the heck I was looking at. Further research would explain that these are the remnants of the Big Pines Recreation Camp — a retreat owned by the County of Los Angeles to provide recreational opportunities like boating, hiking, and horseback riding on 5,600 acres of property in the San Gabriel Mountains. The camp was opened in the 1920s. Here’s a historic photo I found:

You can see that my mysterious stone tower had been part of an entry arch for the camp. The lodge-like building I saw evidently had been the recreation hall. At some point later in the century the facility came to be too much for the county to maintain, so it was turned over to the US Forest Service. I’m told that the recreation hall is now a ranger station, but there were no signs of life when I was there.

WIth hunger gnawing at my stomach, I got back on my bike and continued eastward on the ACH. Shortly I saw a sign for “Burgers and Pizza” at a place called “Sky High Disc Golf.” This must be the place. I turned onto a narrow, steep road for about a mile, and arrived at an old two-story building that seemed to serve as a ski lodge in the winter. Now, in mid-summer, the vast parking lot was deserted. I went up the stairs and found the door to be open. I was met by an older woman who’d evidently had a hard life, standing behind a lunch counter looking bored. I was the only person in the place that wasn’t paid to be there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I was her only paying customer for the entire day. She asked me what I wanted, and I (perhaps foolishly) asked her what she’d recommend. “Well, the chili cheese dog isn’t bad.” With a recommendation like that, how could I resist? Soon I was tucking into a slightly warmed generic hotdog on a soggy bun covered with shredded American cheese and some questionable chili. This was my quarry for the day.

After my repast, I got back on the Triumph and headed down the hill to rejoin the ACH. But then I figured I’d take a different route to head home, so I jumped onto the Big Pines Highway, which looped a little further north than the route I’d come. Most of the day’s travel was entirely rural, with almost no signs of habitation. Imagine my surprise, then, when I came across this sign which seems to promise some kind of real civilization:

Alas, Valyermo appears to have little to recommend it, other than some scrub brush and a couple of buildings. One of those buildings, surprisingly, is a sturdy post office. It was closed however. On a Thursday afternoon. I can’t imagine they get a lot of business.

The other notable site was this entrance to an 800-acre ranch, which had originally been owned by Bob Wian (the guy behind the eponymous “Bob’s Big Boy” hamburger chain). Bob died over 25 years ago, but his ranch, I’m told, is now owned by a guy named “Phil,” who renamed the place by inserting his surname into the first syllable of Valyermo. I guess it’s his version of Trump Tower.

The Name Game. Phily, Phily, Bo-Bily, Bo-nana Fanna Fo-Fily….

Continuing on, I found myself leaving the mountains and heading towards Palmdale, on the floor of the Mojave Desert. Here’s a photo looking down on the desert from when I was still higher in the mountains:

It’s striking how effectively the San Gabriel mountains separate the burning desert heat from the (relatively) cool ocean air of Los Angeles. And yet, cutting through this inhospitable, arid land is an aqueduct. This time it’s the California Aqueduct, bringing water from the Sacramento Delta down to Los Angeles. You have to wonder how much of the water evaporates before it enters the county.

Shockingly, even in this post-9/11 era, one is able to walk directly onto the banks of the aqueduct and, say, fish. (I saw a sunburned fellow in a lawn chair doing just that.) I amused myself by checking out the gate infrastructure:

When I got to an oasis of civilization near Palmdale, just before heading back south toward LA, I encountered something I hadn’t seen for about 30 years: real Golden Arches.

Not much to look at, compared to arches on the Big Tijunga Bridge at the beginning of the trip…

And, come to think of it, it might have been preferable to get my lunch at that old McDonald’s in the middle of the Mojave, rather than at Sky High Disc Golf in the mountains. But no matter. I learned a little more about the Los Angeles region. And it seems like every trip seems to bring more examples of aqueducts, dams, and other water-related facilities. It’s striking that this metropolis of 10 million people relies on so much far-flung infrastructure. From up here in the mountains, you get a whole new perspective on the town.

California history · Road trips

Ghosts

November 16, 2020December 22, 2020 steveboilard1 Comment

Funny thing happened when I was checking out of my No-tell Motel this morning. I found the door to the office locked, and so I tried ringing the doorbell at the night window. No one ever materialized, and a hand-lettered sign in the window indicated there were “NO ROOMS!” It’s as though the proprietor suddenly got fed up with all these pesky customers showing up, so he vamoosed. Either that, or I was checked in last night by a ghost.

Speaking of ghosts, on my way out of Porterville I passed an old, ornate, and somewhat creepy Victorian mansion complete with gables, dormers, and a mansard roof. The place, which at some point seems to have become a museum, was locked up tight and surrounded by a gothic wrought-iron fence. Surely a place like this has a story.

It turns out the place was built in 1891 as the home of a Bohemian immigrant couple. (I don’t mean they were unemployed pot-smokers who composed folk tunes for sitars; I mean they immigrated from the Kingdom of Bohemia.) And sure enough, the family (named Zalud) suffered a string of tragedies that has led to rumors that the house is haunted. Death was a constant companion: a daughter died of tuberulosis; a son in law was shot to death by a would-be lover, and a son was killed when he was thrown from a horse.

When the last of the Zalud children died (of natural causes, in 1962), the home was donated to the city of Porterville and it became a museum. The house contains the bullet-riddled rocking chair in which the son-in-law was seated when he was shot, as well as the saddle on which the son was seated when he was fatally thrown. Given all this, the Zalud house must be a very tempting venue for any self-respecting ghost. And indeed, paranormal activity at the Zalud house has been chronicled by the “Ghost Adventures” television series.

Just before I passed out of Porterville I figured I’d get a bite for breakfast. I encountered this tempting offer:

That pretty much covers the waterfront of fine cuisine.

The centerpiece of today’s ride was CA Route 43, which skirts the eastern Central Valley from a little south of Fresno to a little west of Bakersfield. It’s primarily flat, agricultural land, and a far cry from the winding mountain roads I was taking yesterday. But I’m on a mission to ride all the California routes, and this number came up. Just don’t expect any scenic photos.

One notable sight along this route is the ghost town of Allensworth. The town was established in 1908 by an escaped former slave, Allen Allensworth, who’d joined the Union forces during the Civil War and retired in 1906 as the highest ranking African American officer in the US Army. With several compatriots, Allensworth purchased this land and created a colony for African American families.

Allensworth is credited as “the only town in California founded, built, governed, and populated by African Americans.” After only a short while, though, the well water that supplied the town began to decline in quality and quantity. By the 1950s water problems and other concerns had caused many residents to leave. The town was purchased by the state in 1970 and was made a state historic park. Today, most of the buildings have been renovated or rebuilt.

One of the early homes, constructed by Wiley Howard in 1915. It was still inhabited in 1970 when the California State Parks department purchased the entire town.

Restored boxcar from the 1880s, which had been the residence of Allenworth’s railroad station agent.

A short while after leaving Allensworth I passed through the city of Wasco. Prominently featured on a corner is the town’s Amtrak depot. The depot was constructed in 2006 to replace a historic, century-old depot that had been used by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (AT&SF) railroad. That old station fell into disrepair after AT&SF terminated passenger service in 1971.

The new Amtrak station has some attractive architectural features, and passenger trains continue to stop there several times each day. So you’d think that’s a happy ending. However, in response to Covid, Amtrak has locked up the station and when I visited it today it looked post-apocalyptic: boarded up, tagged with graffiti, beset by homeless people. The landscaping has been let to die, and the entire scene is depressing.

The Wasco station today. It’s only 14 years old.

Further down the road, the historic AT&SF depot at Shafter presents a much prettier picture. It’s been renovated and turned into a museum. It was closed today, however, and I was only able to see it from the outside.

Note the semaphore signal in the backgroud.

The depot dates back to 1917, and it closed, like so many other passenger depots, in the 1970s. It’s been operating as a museum since 1982.

After some more driving I connected with Interstate 5, and I headed over the Grapevine into the San Fernando Valley. There were still a couple of more railroad sites to behold. In the city of Santa Clarita there’s a massive freeway interchange between Interstate 5 and CA 14. It’s an overwhelming tangle of on-ramps, off-ramps, flyovers, and suchlike, originally constructed in the mid-1970s.

5 Freeway and 14 Freeway interchange Los Angeles California United Stock Photo - Alamy — ..and it’s been successively rebuilt after the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, the 1994 Northridge earthquake, and a major tunnel fire in 2007.

Now, hidden unnoticed near the bottom of this jumble of freeway lanes is a Southern Pacific railroad tunnel originally constructed in 1875. Don’t believe me? Here’s a picture I took this afternoon:

Now, remember those tunnels up in Tehachapi that allowed trains to travel over the Tehachapi range from Bakersfield to Mojave? Well, trains moving through there would eventually make their way down to Santa Clarita, where they’d be blocked from further southern movement by the San Gabriel Mountains. And so the Espee built a new tunnel — the San Fernando Tunnel–to allow its trains to enter the LA basin. It was another impressive engineering feat. To expedite the job, SP crews dug from both sides of the mountain, and when they met up in the middle they were only misaligned by one-half of an inch. That’s impressive, given the rudimentary technology of the late 1800s. The completed tunnel measures 6,966 feet long, or over 1.3 miles. It was the fourth longest tunnel in the world at the time. And today, its entrance just sits there, forlorn and unseen by the many thousands of people passing above it every day. But it’s still in use. In fact, I saw a Metrolink train emerge from the portal this afternoon.

It seems that much of this trip centered around the Southern Pacific’s 1876 rail line that connected northern and southern California, mountain ranges be damned. And so there was just one more site to see: I headed northeast from Santa Clarita, on the self-same CA 14 that originates on top of the old San Fernando tunnel. In 10 minutes I was in front of a picturesque stretch of railroad right-of-way called Lang Station. Partially hidden behind some scrub brush was an old bronze plaque set in a stone block. The plaque commemorates an event that happened here in 1876, just a few weeks after the San Fernando tunnel was completed.

For at this spot, on September 5, 1876, the president of the Southern Pacific, Charles Crocker, drove a golden spike to complete the laying of track linking San Francisco to Los Angeles. And that’s a fitting conclusion for this road trip.

Track at the site of the Golden Spike ceremony. (Evidently the spike was removed; I looked.)

MAIL BAG

You’ll remember that Uncle Edward worried that a trip like this would be depressing, given all the Espee sites that have vanished in recent decades. He wrote to point out that the burning of the Tehachapi depot, which I recounted on Saturday, proves his point. But he also shared with me this photo of the depot that he took in 1967.

Also, we had a number of excellent submissions to yesterday’s photo contest. Our celebrity panel selected as the winner this caption, submitted by Loyal Reader Alison C.: “The Future of the Republican Party.” It’s worth noting that Alison is a lapsed Republican. Her caption might also fit in with the title for today’s blog post.

California history · Road trips · trains · Uncategorized

Boring Work

November 15, 2020December 22, 2020 steveboilardLeave a comment

When I awoke in Tehachapi this morning it was 37 degrees. By mid-day, though, the temperature was flirting with 60, so most of the day’s ride was pleasant enough. But clearly this is going to be my last trip into the mountains until next spring.

My first order of business (after choking down the microwaved egg and sausage biscuit that the Fairfield Inn calls their “complimentary breakfast) was to check out some of the 18 Southern Pacific tunnels that were bored for the Tehachapi line in the late 1800s. Tunnels are one of my favorite railroad features. Each represents a triumph over physical obstacles, but in a way that is more elegant than brutal. I say that because, viewed from the outside, very little of the mountain is altered. If not for the portal at each end, you wouldn’t know the mountain had been altered at all. And these particular tunnels along the Tehachapi route are especially impressive when you realize that they were dug without major earth moving equipment. It was mainly picks and shovels, wagons pulled by draft animals, and of course TNT.

Heading west out of Tehachapi parallel to the rail line, I caught glimpses of 4 or 5 of these tunnels. Even early in the morning the long trains with multiple locomotives were moving in and out of these tunnels with a carnal symbolism that made me blush.

After reaching my limit of double entendres, I began my long, winding ride north through the Sequoia National Forest. The last town (and last railroad infrastructure) I passed before I began my climb into the southern Sierra Nevada was the town of Caliente. Like the city of Tehachapi, Caliente owes its existence to the Southern Pacific and its Tehachapi Line. In the late 1800s Caliente was a reasonably prosperous town, with plenty of jobs related to the railroad. The town at one time had about 60 buildings, about a third of which were purportedly saloons. Today, Caliente still sees plenty of rail traffic. But most of the buildings, and the population, are gone.

Is it caliente in here, or is it just me? (Sorry, I’ll stop now.)

Immediately after leaving Caliente my route narrowed to a thin road twisting up into the mountains. I was headed for Lake Isabella, named after Queen Isabella of Spain. The town of Isabella (no “Lake” yet) was founded near the end of the 19th century, and when the Kern River was dammed in the 1950s the original town site was submerged under the new Lake Isabella reservoir. The town was re-established on nearby dry land, and renamed Lake Isabella. I’m telling you all that because there’s really nothing else of interest about Lake Isabella. I just chose it as a arbitrary, midway target for today’s travels.

It was a pleasant ride through the forest. Here and there were signs of long-past settlements. It seems that gold rushes over the years had brought miners to these mountains, just as 49ers flocked to the Mother Lode country up north.

I didn’t see many other people along my route, but I did come across this arachnid. Can anyone identify it?

Along the route I noticed a rustic-looking sign with the words “Cowboy Memorial” hanging over a broad corral gate. Flanking the gate were figures of a cowboy and a cowgirl. I stopped to investigate.

The plaque reads: “Cowboy Memorial and Library established June 17, 1980. Dedicated to THE COWBOYS….”

It turns out this “memorial and library” was the brainchild of one Paul de Fonville. I couldn’t find out much about him, other than he’s a former cowboy and rodeo champion. The museum and library was supposed to provide accurate information about real cowboys, as opposed to the Hollywood versions. I’m told the complex was always a little quirky and disorganized, but now it appears to be shut down entirely. I don’t know whether de Fonville even still walks this earth, but given that he was born in 1923, I doubt it. I did consider jumping the gate, but posted signs warned me not to. Skulls mounted on the fence posts convinced me that it wouldn’t be a good idea.

Just before I arrived at Lake Isabella, a cluster of ancient buildings caught me eye on the left. A large plaque memorialized the area as “Silver City Ghost Town.” It seems that in the 1970s a local by the name of Dave Mills decided to rescue a number of historic structures from deteriorating mining towns throughout the Kern Valley. (It was really a very different age, when you could just go in and uproot buildings and take them for yourself!) The buildings came from colorfully-named towns like Whiskey Flat, Hot Springs, Miracle, and old Isabella. Dave re-sited the buildings here in Silver City, and charged people to see ’em. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Silver City closed after only a few years. In 1990 it was purchased by a new owner, and it remains open to the public today. So I plunked down my $7.50 and took a stroll around. I think the idea is similar to that of Bodie State Park: To keep the buildings in a state of “arrested decay.” That is, you prevent further deterioration, but you don’t try to fully restore anything. The objective is to have these places looking like that would in a real, uninhabited, ghost town.

There were about 20 buildings altogether, and while the signage was a little wanting (most buildings just had an 8-1/2″x11″ sheet of paper with a few paragraphs of purple prose stapled to the outside), it was a fun way to spend an hour.

Many original artifacts are contained within the buildings, such as this post office.

Old church, with a coffin on a bier and a deteriorating organ inside.

The Apalatea/Burlando House, originally from Kernville, has been used in some old western movies, like this one. It’s also supposed to be haunted.

After consuming a BLT in Lake Isabella, I headed northwest through the mountains with the ultimate goal of reaching Porterville for the night. It was simply a beautiful ride.

It was one of those afternoons when you feel at peace with the world. The sun is shining, the air is clean, there’s no one else around, you’re just communing with God’s world.

And then.

It turns out that lighting started a fire (the “SQF fire”) back in August, which is still burning in the forest and has closed my route to Porterville. I took a detour through a winding, snow-scattered pass and eventually made it to Porterville by nightfall. Near the end of this detour I managed to find one more Southern Pacific-related site: Dutch Corners/ the town of Ducor. Here’s the text from a plaque: “In 1885 four German homesteaders, Chris Joos, Ben Spuhler, Fred Schmidt, Gotlet Utley, sunk a common water well where the corners of their land met. This junction became Dutch Corners. In 1888 the east side line of the Southern Pacific railroad was built and the name was condensed to Ducor.

Tomorrow I’m traveling south on State Route 43.

CAPTION CONTEST!

It turns out Porterville doesn’t have a single decent brew pub. So in lieu of a Brew of the Day, I offer this photo from today’s travels near the town of Loraine. Please submit caption ideas. The mind reels.