A most warm and Western howdy to you, Santa Clarita saddlepals.  We’ve a most interesting trail ride ahead through local history, one filled with dairy hijinks, blizzards and grisly posse duty.  I suspect most of you know the drill by now. Come on down from those condos and townhouses, pick a pony and hop up in the saddle. We’ve some Saturday morning moseying ahead …  WAY, WAY BACK WHEN   WHY WE’RE THE NAVEL OF THE LITERARY UNIVERSE — It would become one of the most significant books of the 19th century. Author Helen Hunt Jackson stopped off at the Camulos Ranch on Jan. 23, 1882, off present-day Highway 126. There, she interviewed the Indian maiden Blanca Yndart and from those tales was born the inspiration for the novel, “Ramona.” To say the book was popular would be a gross understatement. It has been ranked as one of the most influential novels in American history. With its paintings of a Garden of Eden existence, with people taking naps in orange orchards in January while people back east were under a yard of snow, it also helped fuel a migration westward to Southern California.  THE SPLENDIFEROUS RASCAL — Happy birthday to my pal and mentor, Scott Newhall. The firebrand editor/publisher of The Mighty Signal for a quarter-century was born on Jan. 20, 1914, in San Francisco. Scott was also editor of The San Francisco Chronicle and lived one of the most interesting lives of any human being.  SPEAKING OF PUBLISHING MOGULS — Rudolph Nickel, Acton’s most famous citizen, founded the Acton post office on Jan. 24, 1888. I think that pre-dates the Valencia post office by pert near close to a century. Nickel also founded the SCV’s second-oldest newspaper, The Acton Rooster, in 1900. The oldest local paper? Right around when Newhall was founded, a young clerk wrote, long-hand, a few newspapers long-forgotten. We don’t even know the names of the hand-crafted periodicals.  JANUARY 25, 1925  BUILDING A SCHOOL WITHOUT THE MIDDLEMEN — On this date, the Beswick Construction Co. of Long Beach won the bidding war to build the new Newhall Elementary School campus. The original plans were for a four-room building, which included an auditorium that would seat 450 and have a projection booth for movies. Back in those days, the building process didn’t have as many road blocks. Construction was scheduled to start Jan. 22 and take no longer than 100 days to complete. The current Newhall Elementary was built on what was called the Old Rodeo Grounds, on the land owned by Judge John Powell. The 9 acres was purchased for $7,500. The bid, by the way, from Beswick was $28,057 to build the school. Isn’t that something? I know it’s 1920s money, but $35,557 for the land AND the buildings is still rather amazing. They surely didn’t have that many middlemen involved in the process.  NOT AN UNCOMMON ACCIDENT FROM A CENTURY AGO — Ed Platt was late getting home to Agua Dulce. He rounded a corner near the grade at Goodknight Hill and ran into three horses in the middle of the road. He killed one of the horses in his flivver but Platt, himself, escaped injuries.  GIMME TWO BUCKETS OF CHILI AND A SODA POP! — We used to have a little diner called The Chili King in downtown Newhall. They sold the manly meal by the pail. Wonder if they offered spoons or you just drank your dinner straight out of the bucket?  JANUARY 25, 1935  STEERS. MILK COWS. WHATEVER IT TAKES. — All I can say is that there must have been city folks involved. On this date, one of our local Civilian Conservation Corps camps ordered a small passel of dairy cows to help feed the young male laborers. The herd arrived but ’tweren’t cows, ’twas steers. The steers ended up as steaks and the CCC camp had to wait for the dairy cows to arrive via reshipment.  PUT UP YOUR DUKES — One of the valley’s top weekend entertainment draws was boxing. The American Legion used to sponsor Friday night fights. Ladies were rarely seen at the bouts.  THE DOG RACKETS — One way the county raised money was by something called the Dog Tax. Anyone owning a male dog had to pay $1 a year. A female dog cost you $2.50. The dogcatcher went around, capturing the mutts and impounding them if the owner couldn’t pay the tax. It was quite a racket. The dog catcher was paid $1.50 to catch the dog and the dog pound concierge was paid 25 cents a day to board it.  TIMBER!!! — Hard to believe, but timber was one of our biggest resources in the late 19th century up until the 1930s. Joe Pearson ran a local mill and paid good money during the Depression for folks bringing in oak or eucalyptus in any length. He also went out and cut standing timber.  JANUARY 25, 1945  ONE LUCKY BABY — In the days before seat belts and child car seats, four people were injured, three seriously, in a head-on collision on Pico Canyon Road. Miraculously, the baby in one of the cars escaped without a scratch.  THE HORRIFIC HAULING OF THE BODIES — Newhall’s Mounted Posse had a grim detail. They were called over the hill to retrieve 24 bodies from an American Airlines passenger plane. Residents witnessed the ill-fated plane nearly brushing the roofs of local houses in a thick fog. It crashed into the hills here. Porky LeBrun led the posse, which had the grisly task of wrapping and carting out the two dozen corpses, most of which were burned beyond recognition. Two dozen riders solemnly carted out two dozen bodies, each tightly wrapped in blankets.  HILLBILLY LOVE ENDS IN TRAGEDY — Using a .22 rifle, Marine Cpl. E. Kenaston took his own life in the Newhall home of his stepsister. Kenaston left a note of despondency, listing his unrequited love for his half-sibling.  WHEN WE BROKE AWAY FROM L.A. UNIFIED — On this date, the State Board of Education unanimously granted the Newhall-Saugus area permission to create its own high school district. A last-minute appeal by L.A. Unified School Superintendent (insert boos here) Vierling Kersey was thwarted. This opened the way for locals to have an election on whether to create said local school district and high school. We can pretty much thank the local Kiwanis club for leading the fight to have our own high school. They provided the legal and lobbying muscle for the Santa Clarita Valley to break away from the powerful L.A. Unified School District.  THE $11,000 I.O.U. — One reason why Dr. Kersey was peeved about the citizens breaking away from L.A. Unified was that he had just cut a check for $11,000 to The Newhall Land and Farming Co. to buy 20 acres to build a high school. Later, the new William S. Hart Union High School District would reimburse L.A. Unified. Of course, Kersey never returned any phone calls or letters from locals about the issue of local education and only sent a telegram to Sacramento the day the Board of Education made their historic ruling.  THE MIGHTY SIGNAL KICKS IN — Another entity to thank for a local high school district is The Mighty Signal. Back then, this paper was a weekly and came out on Thursday mornings only. Editor/Publisher Fred Trueblood took a loss by printing two special editions to publicize the school district formation election. And, the paper was published just so that the legal notice for election could be published in time for the special Jan. 29 election.  JANUARY 25, 1955  SNOWED IN — The California Highway Patrol had to call on the National Guard for a hand. And even then, that didn’t help. Huge snowdrifts on the Ridge Route covered up a communication tower. The “repeater” tower couldn’t be reached by neither horseback, foot nor by Jeep. A helicopter was borrowed, but they couldn’t find a place to land, either.  THE ORIGINAL SCV HISTORY BOOK — On this date, historian A.B. Perkins handed over a rough notebook of the history of the Santa Clarita Valley to the Hart Library. I believe a copy is still at the Newhall Branch today.  JANUARY 25, 1965  FLYING OUT OF THE POTATO FIELD — Flight 593 had an especially long lay-over. It crashed on a Saugus potato field a few weeks earlier and was stuck in the mud. United Airline engineers and local workers had to respectively repair the plane then grade a special runway to fly the passenger prop plane out. On this date, the Convair taxied out and flew from Saugus to Santa Barbara for refueling, then, off to San Francisco.  US vs. THE OLD TESTAMENT FLOODS — Col. Earl Peacock was in town, talking with some 300 local residents about a big plan for the valley. Peacock was the chief engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers and was in town to outline a massive flood control plan, which included over 770 miles of channels and cost a third of a billion dollars. The study alone took five years.  JANUARY 25, 1975  NICE PLACE TO BUILD A BARN — I’ve often lamented that it’s too bad we can’t bring modern money back into the past with us. On this date, the Wm. S. Hart board of trustees voted to sell an unused school site. They put up for sale the 21 acres in Sand Canyon for the proposed Los Robles Junior High. Asking price? Just $14,500 an acre for some beautiful oak-studded property.  HEAT WAVE IN JANUARY — Unseasonably high weather helped crowd Castaic Lake with boaters. It was in the high 90s on this date, 50 years back.  JANUARY 25, 1985  MUST’VE HAD A REALLY BIG GETAWAY CAR — The five men who pulled off one of our more unusual crimes were arraigned on this date. The quints stole $125,000 of crude oil from a Southern California Gas Co. storage yard here.  OUR HAUNTED MOVIE LOCATION — The old motorcycle racing park, Indian Dunes, has a small curse hovering over it. It was the site of a terrible accident during the shooting of the movie, “The Twilight Zone,” in which actor Vic Morrow and two child actors were killed in the 1970s. On this date, a helicopter carrying a stunt man and pilot crashed near the same site, during the filming of the TV series, “Airwolf.”  • • •   Thanks once again for the company, dear neighbors and saddlepals. See you next weekend with another exciting Time Ranger adventure. Until then? “¡Vayan con Dios, amigos!”   Local historian and the world’s most prolific satirist/humorist John Boston hosts an eclectic online store, book shop and multimedia/commentary website at johnlovesamerica.com.   The post The Time Ranger | Back When We Had to Pay a Dog Tax  appeared first on Santa Clarita Valley Signal.