Well amen boy howdy, here we go, first Saturday in January 2025, on our very first time ride through the back canyons of Santa Clarita lore and history. Isn’t it just beyond grand, to be alive, atop a tall and noble steed, putting distance between ourselves and troubles and woes?  Bet you didn’t know USC’s mascot, Traveler, lived out here.  This is also the anniversary of Manly & Rogers’ epic hike from Death Valley to Castaic. We’ve also got the usual spate of rogues, desperadoes and gee-whiz information.  C’mon, saddlepals. We’re burning valuable New Year daylight …  WAY, WAY BACK WHEN   THAT HECK OF A HIKE & OUR CONNECTION TO DEATH VALLEY — I’m confident many of you veteran saddlepals will recall the epic trek of Manly & Rogers. It started in Death Valley in late 1849.  William Manley and John Rogers were part of the ill-fated Jayhawker Party that was stranded in the desert. The two men set out on foot to find help in San Francisco in northern California and ended up hundreds of miles off. They finally found San Francisco, but it was Rancho San Francisco. They arrived in the Santa Clarita on New Year’s Day, 1850.  While Manly & Rogers walked for help, the Bennett-Arcane group stayed at Death Valley. John C. Colton was one of the group that waited. In 1903, he recalled that hellish adventure of starvation and thirst. At first, the group began killing oxen, even boiling the hooves for soup. They watched members of their party die of exposure and disease.  Manly & Rogers eventually returned, with riders from Ignacio del Valle’s ranch to the rescue. They brought the group back to the Santa Clarita. Colton’s recollection: “Several days without water … struck Santa Clara River. Partly emaciated and nearly dead. Men who had weighed 200 pounds less than 60. Reached Rancho San Francisco Feb. 5, 1850.” About the del Valle hospitality, he wrote: “How we did eat, sleep and drink. We did nothing else for two weeks.”  He also noted: “(How we) have been cared for at the old milk house” which “must be preserved forever — it must remain a landmark — earthquakes will hardly capture it — I regret you didn’t leave a little pile of adobe to mark the locality of the old Ranche (sic) House that looked to our starved party like a palace.”  That address was from a letter from Colton to E.H. Bailey, Rancho San Francisquito; Surrey P.O., CA; Feb. 28, 1903.  By the way. Several of the Jayhawkers held reunions under the shade of an oak grove in Castaic up until World War II.  OUR LINK TO DEATH VALLEY — I remember reading, in a back page of The Mighty Signal, a story about how several of those ’49ers ended up staying in Santa Clarita. One woman was reported to have taken up roots here. She was the lady who looked out the back of a covered wagon after being rescued. She said, “Goodbye, Death Valley,” and the name stuck.  NOT SAFE TO WALK THE STREETS — We talk about the good old days, but sometimes, our memory can be a bit foggy. George Campton, son of the original Campton store builder, recalled that in Newhall’s early days, it was a tough frontier town and that a woman wasn’t safe to walk the streets after dark.  JANUARY 4, 1925  WOMAN. WOMEN. WOMYN. WHATEVER IT TAKES — The New Year was brought in with a modicum of rough-housing. Or so it was at the Newhall Woman’s Club bash. They brought in $107 and there wasn’t a single fistfight. (For some of you grammatical sticklers, that previous reference wasn’t a typo or even plain ignorance. For some odd reason, for nearly a century, the Newhall Woman’s Club was called just that — Woman’s, not Women’s.) Formed in 1900, it went all the way up into the early 1990s before being disbanded. The membership of our local and national chapters just all dissipated in the 1970s.  SEE? OUR EDITORIALS ACTUALLY WORK!! — The Mighty Signal’s editorial called on Newhall and Saugus to start the year 1925 by ending any grievances or rivalries. We noted that Newhall and Saugus took in hundreds of square miles of some of the prettiest canyons and vistas in Southern California and that we would be around for eons to come. Well, 100 years later, so far, so good…  THAT BONITA AIN’T SO BONITA — I’m not so sure I would have wanted to be Walter Beulke. He married Nellie Bayless, aka, Bonita Darling. Bonita (“Beautiful,” in Spanish) had a reputation around town for a life lived a smidgen past fast, nasty and deadly. In fact, Gus Lebrun, the last guy who proposed to her? She took the sap for several hundred dollars. The Gus “Shunned” Lebrun came back to her Railroad Canyon ranch and threatened to kill her. Instead, he murdered lawman Ed Brown. Constable Jack Pilcher then finished off Lebrun, emptying his revolver into Lebrun’s carcass, then, going back to his Model T to reload and shoot him some more. Bonita didn’t even get nicked (and, she kept all of Lebrun’s money).  TOOK US LONG ENOUGH — The move toward cityhood is an old one. The New Year of 1925 started with meetings about incorporating into a city. Saugus felt a pinch left out, hence, our editorial to soothe hurt feelings. Needless to say, we didn’t form a city of any kind out here in 1925. We had to wait 52 years to 1987.  PRE-LOWE’S — Long before we had Home Depot, or, for that matter, Fox Feed, we had Harry Carey’s Outpost. Besides being a rest stop for the weary traveler, a dude ranch, a posh VIP hideaway, gas station, coffee shop and trading post, the movie star’s spread included a rancher’s supply wing. Ag men from all around went there to get everything from creosote to barbed wire. The center was at the mouth of San Francisquito Canyon and was wiped out by the epic St. Francis Dam Disaster of 1928.  JANUARY 4, 1935  CAN’T BEAT THESE SALE PRICES — Times were tough during the Depression. The Mint Juleps Society held their annual Hard Times Dance to cheer things up. And Jack Berry tried to pump up the local economy by having a special New Year’s tire sale: no money down, pay when you can.  JANUARY 4, 1945  I THINK WE SHOULD HAVE A SCALE MODEL AT HART PARK — The S.S. Newhall sailed away from its docks in the Marin ship building yards and headed toward World War II. The tanker was one of thirty-two 8,260-horsepower tankers recently built and named after our local oil fields. Loaded with diesel, the 523-foot workhorse headed off to the Pacific to refuel other ships.   GIANT RANGE WAR, PART II? — Of all places, there was a small brouhaha going on in Castaic. Seems a gentleman rancher brought in some cowboys for branding time. They ended up branding every creature they could find, sometimes branding over existing marks or branding a heifer three or four times. Neighbors got riled. Some of the old-timers still remembered the great Castaic Range War where between 27 and 40 men lost their lives over brands and boundaries in the late 1800s and early 20th century.  TODAY? JIM’D HAVE A BILLION-DOLLAR RETIREMENT PACKAGE — Jim Biddison more than paid his dues. He retired as court bailiff, constable and sheriff’s deputy, having started carrying his first badge at the turn of the 20th century.  JANUARY 4, 1955  WE’RE FROM HART. COULDN’T BE PROUDER. IF YOU CAN’T HEAR US, WE’LL YELL A LITTLE LOUDER — Here’s an interesting historical first. On this date, the valley took its first cheerleading championship. Barbara Melby, Beth Parks, Jimmie Write and Pattie Perkins were part of the Hart High squad that took top honors at the National Cheerleaders Association competition, held at Pepperdine College. That was back in the day before the kids wore Las Vegas Keno waitress dance outfits …  BEGINNING OF THE END — It was a harbinger of the future. Los Angeles contractor Clyde Lovett moved up here and immediately began construction on the valley’s first major apartment complex. It’s still there, on the corner of 9th and Newhall Avenues.  JANUARY 4, 1965  WHEN ZAMBIA & THE MIGHTY SIGNAL LANDED ON THE MOON — One of the biggest landmark Signal issues of all time appeared on Dec. 31, 1964. For a year, the flamboyant San Francisco journalist Scott Newhall had owned this mighty community newspaper. He quietly took over and made a few changes here and there. But, 60 years back, he created a front page that set the valley on its ear. Scott had a Bay Area writer pen a fanciful front-page story entitled: “Will Zambia Be First on the Moon?” It was a satirical piece about how the tiny African nation was working on launching an astronaut into space — via a large catapult with the space craft being a 55-gallon oil drum. We even ran pictures of the African astronauts. One “Astronaut Mwango” was being held upside down on a picnic table, as the caption put it: “… to simulate a space angle.” Folks in town just didn’t know what to make of the article, which wasn’t labeled as “humor” or “satire.” Some laughed their heads off, some were angry, some confused. But — everybody read Scott’s paper and talked about it.  IT’S A GOOD LANDING WHEN YOU CAN WALK AWAY — What wasn’t satire was the crash landing in a Newhall onion field of a United Airlines double-propped passenger plane. All 43 ticket holders and four crew members walked away. Newhall Land & Farming and local law enforcement agencies rushed to the rescue and housed the fliers at their Castaic headquarters. A few passengers were treated with minor injuries and immediately released. Both engines had failed simultaneously and the pilot commented that he had had rougher landings on regular airfields. Kudos to Newhall Land for good and leveling plowing …  AMEN. BOY HOWDY. — I love Scott Newhall’s simple editorial 60 years back: “Our New Year’s Resolution is a simple one. We hereby resolve to give you, our readers, the best newspaper in the world.”   JANUARY 4, 1975  LET THE CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY — Another decade. Another white holiday. Santa Claritianites were greeted by a snowstorm on New Year’s Day, 1975. Newhall proper is about 900 feet above sea level and we had about 2 inches of rain. But, just 1,000 feet higher, the rain turned to snow. All the hills were covered and the usual drill of closing the Grapevine was honored. Winds were so stiff, they literally blew an empty double-rig semi off Interstate 5 and down an embankment. I wonder if the truck was fully loaded with a more manly man cargo it would have saved it from the devil winds. The truck hauled Laura Scudder’s potato chips.  STILL. LESS THAN A SINGLE TACO — A little trivia. On Jan. 1, 1975, the newsstand price for a Mighty Signal jumped to 15 cents. That worked out to about a penny a pontification.  LIGHTS ON FOR THOSE WITH LIGHTS OUT — I’m not sure we need to bring this back, but it’s an interesting look at the times. The Newhall Bowl used to have little clip-on lights that came with their drinks. When you were finished, you turned the light on and — hopefully — the waitress would rush over to your table with a refill.  OUR VERY OWN PAIR OF DEATH ANGELS IN WHITE UNIFORMS — We nominate the old Newhall Emergency Hospital for the Unclear on the Concept Award. A man fell on the streets of San Fernando Road, right across the street from the little health care facility. People rushed to his aid and one man sprinted across the street to get a doctor. Two receptionists were rather cool to the request. “I can’t disturb Doctor. He’s with a patient.” The good Samaritan frantically explained that a man had fallen and looked like he was dying. The pair of snooty receptionists repeated their mantra that they don’t disturb Doctor when he’s with a patient. The man who ran for help happened to be a Signal reporter and responded: “Doctor is going to find his name on the front page of The Signal Monday for refusing to help a dying man!” The message got through and the doctor rushed to help (he would have in the first place had he gotten the message). But, he was too late. The fallen fellow died. Signal Editor Ruth Newhall noted later: “But people who won’t react to an emergency don’t belong around a hospital.”  JANUARY 4, 1985  SO WHO GETS THE HORSE IN THE DIVORCE? — Many couples divorcing fight over the custody of children. Some want the dog. When the famed Monty Montana couple split, they fought over who would get a horse. Famed cowboy star and Agua Dulce resident, Monty Montana, left his wife, Elly, for a younger woman. He also tried to take Larry. Larry? He’s the horse. The judge in the case needed a little more time to solve the issue. In the short term, he made a Solomon-like decision. The Montanas used to ride in the Pasadena Tournament of Roses parade. The judge ruled that for 1985, Larry would be ridden in the parade by Montana’s grandson, 22-year-old Jess Montie Montana.  LET IT SNOW. AGAIN. — Yet more snow on the hills surrounding the valley. We got a pleasant dusting from the 2,000-foot elevation and on up.  BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE. ATOP A FINE STEED. — Here’s a little more horse trivia, especially for you USC fans. Newhall resident Richard Saukko not only had one of the best seats in the house for home games, he also watched from horseback. The 64-year-old retired salesman was the warrior who rode atop Traveler III, the white horse and mascot for USC. The Hasley Canyon horseman was also T-III’s owner. He was also owner of Atifa, the mare who sometimes doubled for Traveler. Seems Traveler had a bad temper. “He’s a typical stallion,” Saukko noted. “People come up behind and slap him on the rear, and he wants to react. He’ll kick.”  • • •   Well sirs and madams. We’ve got No. 1 out of 52 trail rides behind us. See you back at The Mighty Signal’s hitching post next weekend with another exciting Time Ranger into SCV’s vaunted history and lore. Until then? “¡Te deseo buenas adventuras y vayan con Dios, amigos!”   Local historian and the world’s most prolific satirist/humorist John Boston hosts an eclectic online store, bookstore, YouTube channel and multimedia website at johnlovesamerica.com.   The post The Time Ranger | Snow & the SCV’s Worst Woman. Ever.  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.