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Humans in the San Gabriels

Humans have entered the San Gabriels in almost every conceivable manner. We have come into the mountains for a multitude of reasons. And we have come in great numbers. Few mountain ranges anywhere have been so viewed, swarmed over, dug into, and built upon by the human species.

What draws us to the mountains? Is it curiosity? The promise of adventure? The excitement of hunting and fishing? The chance of a better livelihood? The quest for mineral wealth? The longing to redeem and revitalize oneself, away from the hustle of urban life? The need for something spiritual or ego-satisfying? The long pageant of humans in the San Gabriels reveals all these motives, along with some that are not so readily identified. The fascination of the canyons, the ridges, the peaks, and the little flats that lie deep in the mountains has attracted human visitors since humans first made their home in Southern California. People have come to the mountains, have seen, have lingered, and in many cases have remained for life.

One might suppose that the San Gabriels would be worn out (ecologically) by all this human activity. Some parts are, particularly in the front range. Fortunately, though, there are other areas where human impact has been minimal, where nature still rules—thanks to the protective efforts of a handful of people who, for a variety of reasons ranging from enlightened self-interest to aesthetic values, have fought to save the mountains and the forests for the benefit of all. Humankind is not totally shortsighted, although we often appear to be.

The first humans in the San Gabriels were American Indian peoples of Shoshonean stock—Gabrielinos in the southern foothills, Fernandeños in the western canyons, and Serranos in the eastern and northern high country. (These tribal names were assigned by anthropologists. The groups named Gabrielinos and Fernandeños were associated with Missions San Gabriel and San Fernando, respectively. However, the indigenous name Tongva is preferred by American Indian activists and Gabrielino descendants. Serrano is derived from the Spanish word meaning “mountaineer.”) Other tribal groups in the Liebre–Sawmill–Sierra Pelona country were the Alliklik and the Kitanemuk peoples, also Shoshonean. Though their homes were generally below the mountains, these peoples depended heavily on the San Gabriel range. The mountains supplied them with food, water, and materials for building and hunting. For food, they hunted deer and rabbits and gathered acorns and pine nuts. They took water from the streams that gushed down from great heights. Chaparral was an abundant source of many necessities. Manzanita berries were pressed for cider, and the leaves were smoked. Greasewood provided arrow shafts for hunting. Yucca fibers were used to make nets and ropes.

To obtain these materials, and to visit and trade with other peoples across the range, American Indians made the first footpaths into the mountains. According to Will Thrall, foremost collector of San Gabriel Mountains history, who personally searched out these ancient routes at a time when they could still be followed, the main Shoshone trail across the range ascended Millard Canyon, traversed behind Mount Lowe to Red Box Saddle, descended the West Fork of the San Gabriel River to Valley Forge Canyon, climbed up that canyon to Barley Flats, went down and across the head of Big Tujunga Canyon and up to Pine (Charlton) Flat, and continued on to the west end of Chilao. Here, the trail forked. One branch followed the high country northeast to Buckhorn, and then went down the South Fork of Little Rock Creek to the desert. The other branch dropped northwest into upper Alder Creek, and then ascended Indian Ridge (where traces of the old footpath can still be seen) to Sheep Camp Spring on the west slope of Mount Pacifico, and dropped down Santiago Canyon to Little Rock Creek and along it to the desert. Another cross-range trail ascended the North Fork of the San Gabriel River, climbed over Windy Gap, and descended the South Fork of Big Rock Creek to the desert. For perhaps two or three centuries before the arrival of the white settlers, these and many shorter canyon trails were trod by hundreds of American Indians every year.

The arrival of the Spaniards changed life in the pleasant valleys below the mountains forever. In 1771, along the grassy banks of the Rio Hondo, Mission San Gabriel Arcángel was founded, and soon thereafter, the Gabrielinos were incorporated into the mission community. Mission San Fernando Rey de España, founded in 1797, became the home of the less-numerous Fernandeños. At the height of mission activity—around 1800—these two outposts of the cross numbered some 2,000 American Indians in their widespread flocks.

Several decades later came the era of the great ranchos, bringing a pastoral way of life to the valleys. These spacious cattle ranches that spread out below the south slopes of the range bore the familiar names of San Fernando, Tujunga, La Cañada, San Pascual, Santa Anita, Azusa de Duarte, and San Jose.

The Spanish and Mexican Californios used the mountains very little except as a source of water. When there were buildings to be constructed, woodcutters sometimes took timber from the lower canyons. Vaqueros did some hunting in the canyons and foothills. Grizzly bears, numerous in the range then, were stalked and captured, and then dragged to the bull ring in the Pueblo of Los Angeles to be sacrificed in brutal bear-bull contests.

There is no evidence that the Spaniards ever penetrated into the heart of the mountains, although they certainly explored the fringes. Gaspar de Portolá and Pedro Fages, on their epic journey northward in 1769, toiled through the narrow canyon of San Fernando Pass and found “high, barren hills, very difficult for beasts of burden” before dropping into pleasant Newhall Valley. On another path-finding trip in 1772, Fages crossed the eastern end of the range in the vicinity of Cajon Pass and continued northwest below the northern ramparts of the mountains, discovering the Joshua trees. Fray Francisco Garcés, the missionary-explorer-martyr, explored both sides of the range in 1776. Fray José María Zalvidea almost circled what is now Angeles National Forest in 1806.

It was the Spaniards who gave the mountains their name—two names, in fact, that have existed side by side until relatively recent years. In 1776 Garcés referred to the range as Sierra de San Gabriel, borrowing the name of the nearby mission, and this name was used in Spanish records frequently in ensuing years. But the mission padres usually referred to the range as Sierra Madre (“mother range”). Both San Gabriel and Sierra Madre were in common usage until 1927, when the U.S. Board on Geographic Names finally ruled in favor of the former. Today San Gabriel Mountains is almost universally accepted.

With the coming of the Anglos—from the 1840s onward—the San Gabriels began to receive more attention. Prospectors, hunters, bandits, homesteaders, and squatters were pioneers in unveiling the secrets of the mountains. These hardy individuals first entered the wooded canyons, and then forged their way over the ridges and into the hidden heart of the range—terrain the rancheros had scorned.

Stories of gold in the San Gabriels go back as far as the 1770s, but not until 1842, when Francisco Lopez discovered gold clinging to the roots of a cluster of wild onions in Placerita Canyon, near present-day Newhall, was there what might be called a gold rush. The San Fernando Placers, as the discovery was called, were worked on and off for about a decade, until strikes elsewhere drew the miners away. By far, the largest gold strike in the San Gabriels occurred on the East Fork of the San Gabriel River. The precious metal was discovered in the canyon gravels in 1854, and for the next seven years the East Fork was the scene of frenzied activity, an estimated $2 million in gold being recovered. A smaller strike occurred in Big Santa Anita Canyon about the same time. During the next half century, prospectors rushed into the mountains at every rumor of bonanza, tearing up hillsides in their frantic search for wealth.

Bandits, including Jack Powers, Salomon Pico, Juan Flores, and the legendary Tiburcio Vásquez, turned to the San Gabriels for refuge. They drove stolen cattle and horses up the canyons and pastured them in backcountry flats. Utilizing the faint network of old American Indian trails, these outlaws established isolated hideouts deep in the mountains.

The pioneer trail builder in the San Gabriels was Benjamin Wilson, who in 1864 reworked an old American Indian path up Little Santa Anita Canyon to the top of the mountain that now bears his name. During the next three decades, trails were blazed up all the major canyons of the front range, some of them continuing over the ridges and into the backcountry. In increasing numbers, homesteaders and squatters followed these trails and found favorite spots on which to build their cabins. The names of many of these early mountain men have endured to the present, attached to canyons, camps, and peaks—Wilson, Millard, Henninger, Newcomb, Chantry, Chilao, Islip, and Dawson, to name a few.

Almost all these pioneers came into the mountains for utilitarian reasons—to mine gold, to cut timber, to find refuge, to pasture livestock, or to establish a home. Around 1885 a new reason for going to the mountains arose—recreation. Great numbers of San Gabriel Valley residents journeyed to Mount Wilson on weekends and holidays to enjoy the cool mountain air and take in the fabulous panorama. (This was before air pollution muddled Southland skies.) Hunters entered the range seeking big game, plentiful in the San Gabriels until around the turn of the century. Grizzly bears, black bears, deer, mountain sheep, and mountain lions were stalked by bands of thrill-seeking hunters who penetrated far into the mountains. Sportsmen packed in for a week’s fishing on the trout-filled West Fork of the San Gabriel River. For the less energetic, there were Sunday afternoon picnics in such woodsy haunts as Millard and Eaton Canyons.

Other people entered the mountains for a different reason—exploitation. Most Americans of that day assumed that our natural resources were inexhaustible and therefore there was no need to conserve them. Lumber was needed to fuel Southern California’s great boom of the 1880s; why not use the timber close at hand? Indiscriminate cutting of forest trees appeared imminent. Furthermore, the value of chaparral for the mountain watershed was little understood. Brush fires, some deliberately set by cattlemen to clear land for grazing, raged across the mountains until extinguished by rain. Fortunately, some farsighted residents in Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley became alarmed at this exploitation and devastation of the local mountains, and they began working to preserve the lands.

One of these was Abbot Kinney, a rancher, botanist, and land developer who lived at his Kinneloa Ranch above Altadena. Kinney is best remembered as the creator of Venice, the Southern California beach town that once had canals for streets, but it was as chairman of California’s first Board of Forestry that he did his most important work. In the first report of the Board of Forestry to Governor George Stoneman in 1886, Kinney urged “intelligent supervision of the forest land and brush lands of California, with a view to their preservation.” This California movement for forest conservation, sparked by Kinney and others, soon became part of a national movement. John Muir, using his eloquence in a series of magazine articles urging forest protection, was the leading spokesman.

Congress finally responded by passing the Forest Reserve Act of 1891, granting the president the authority “to set apart and reserve … any part of the public lands wholly or in part covered with timber or undergrowth.” As a result of this act, and strong pressure from Southern California civic leaders, President Benjamin Harrison signed the bill establishing the San Gabriel Timberland Reserve on December 20, 1892. This was the first forest reserve in California and the second in the United States. (The first was the Yellowstone Park Timberland Reserve in Wyoming, established by presidential proclamation on September 16, 1891.) The designation was at first rather ineffectual; for one thing, forest rangers were not assigned until 1898. But gradually the San Gabriel Timberland Reserve was brought under efficient forest management and protection. In 1907 the name was changed to San Gabriel National Forest, and the following year it became what we know today—Angeles National Forest. A succession of capable supervisors—Everett Thomas, Theodore Lukens, Rush Charlton, William Mendenhall, Sim Jarvi, William Dresser, and Paul Sweetland—have made the Angeles one of the most effectively run national forests in the nation.

Clouds over southeast ridge of Mount Wilson (Hike 45)

Worldwide fame came to the San Gabriels in the 1890s with construction of the Mount Lowe Railway, considered one of the engineering wonders of its time. This breathtaking cable incline and trolley ride—along with associated hotels in Rubio Canyon, atop Echo Mountain, and on the slopes of Mount Lowe—was the brainchild of inventor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe and engineer David Macpherson. The famed mountain railway-resort complex attracted more than 3 million visitors during its 43 years of operation.

Professor Thaddeus S. C. Lowe (center) and party on Mount Lowe (1892)

The human quest for scientific knowledge played its part in the story of the mountains too. In the days before city lights and air pollution interfered with sky viewing, Mount Wilson’s broad summit was ideal for astronomical observation. The first telescope on Mount Wilson was the 13-incher of Harvard University Observatory, placed on the summit in 1889 (but removed the following year). The year 1904 saw the beginning of the Carnegie Institute’s famed Mount Wilson Observatory, one of the 20th century’s great scientific ventures. Largely through the initiative and enthusiasm of astronomer George Ellery Hale, several of the world’s greatest telescopes were erected on the mountaintop, the most important being the 60-inch reflector (1908), the 150-foot solar tower telescope (1912), and the 100-inch Hooker reflector (1917), the latter the world’s largest optical telescope for 31 years.

Before highways crisscrossed the San Gabriels, the mountains were the delight of hikers. Mountain historians call the period from about 1895 to 1938 the Great Hiking Era. Multitudes of lowland residents enjoyed their weekends and holidays rambling over the range. Trails that today are almost deserted vibrated to the busy tramp of boots and the merry singing of hikers. The mountains were a local frontier for exploration and a challenge to the hardy. For some, hiking was simply a favorite sport; for others, it was almost a religion. Trail resorts sprang up to offer hospitality, food, and lodging to hikers. Such places as Switzer’s, Opid’s, Colby’s, Loomis’s, Sturtevant’s, and Roberts’s were visited by thousands every season.

A strange combination of disasters and “progress” brought the Great Hiking Era to a close. The disasters were a series of fires and consequent floods, the great destructive torrent of March 1938 being the final blow. Overnight, miles of canyon trails were obliterated. “Progress” took the form of the Angeles Crest Highway, begun in 1929. Relentlessly, the great asphalt thoroughfare snaked its way into the heart of the mountains, reaching Red Box in 1934, Charlton Flat in 1937, and Chilao a year later. By 1941 it had inched its way across Cloudburst Summit and reached that most isolated of backcountry haunts, Buckhorn. Places that once required a day or two of strenuous hiking were now accessible in an hour of driving. One by one, the old trail resorts succumbed. As one old-timer sadly reflected, “Only people who hike for the love of hiking use these trails now.” The Angeles Crest Highway, more than anything else, changed the pattern of our use of the San Gabriels.

In recent years, great numbers of people have visited the San Gabriels, the vast majority by automobile, and visitation is increasing. Each year there are an estimated 3.5 million visits to the Angeles National Forest, making the Angeles one of the most heavily used national forests in the United States.

As the use has increased, the wilderness aspect of the mountains has been nearly destroyed. Other than the specially set-aside wilderness areas and a few other small, isolated regions, the San Gabriels have in recent years become not much more than a king-size backyard playground for Los Angeles County. Some say that this is as it should be, but recent ecological studies have tended to show that wilderness undisturbed by humans plays a vital part in nature’s delicate balance among living things. What happens when there is no wilderness left? Southern California appears headed in that direction.

Angeles National Forest today encompasses 694,187 acres. Within this mountain area are 1,030 miles of roads, 697 miles of riding and hiking trails, 66 public campgrounds, 36 picnic areas, 505 summer residences, five wilderness areas, and three winter sports areas.

The future of the San Gabriels—as well as all other mountain ranges—rests with the population that lives nearby. In the words of mountain historian Charles Clark Vernon, “They are truly a gift to the people.” What the people will do with this gift of nature remains to be seen.

The Station Fire

What became the largest fire in the history of the San Gabriels—and the largest in Los Angeles County history—began inauspiciously enough on August 26, 2009, near the Angeles Crest Highway just above La Cañada. With several other large fires burning around the state, it received little notice at first and was nearly extinguished that first evening. However, overnight the fire gained strength, and by the next day it was out of control and began to spread, ultimately consuming more than 160,000 acres, approximately one-fourth of the Angeles National Forest. It was later determined that the fire was started by a still-unknown arsonist. Two Los Angeles County firefighters lost their lives battling the blaze when their truck tumbled off a roadway in the Mount Gleason area.

American Indian petroglyphs near Big Pine

In the aftermath of the fire—finally extinguished in mid-October—a large swath of the forest was officially closed to all entry. It has slowly reopened in stages, but as of this writing—spring 2013—portions of the Arroyo Seco and upper Big Tujunga areas are still classified as off-limits to hikers. The recently opened areas will still take years to recover fully. And the pine-and-fir forests that once clothed the higher mountaintops and flats—such as Mount Gleason, Charlton Flats, and Barley Flats—may never regain their former beauty.

Watch out for poodle-dog bush!

The authors have done their best to hike the trails in the burn area and note any changes; however, it is advisable to check ahead with the US Forest Service to verify current conditions before venturing into any recently opened areas.

Turricula, also known as poodle-dog bush, is a fire-following plant that has become widespread in Station Fire burn areas. It is a woody shrub with stems branching out from the base up to 6 feet in length, and it sports purple flowers that bloom during summer. Hikers should give this toxic plant a wide berth, as any contact can result in serious skin irritation much worse than that resulting from poison oak.

Strawberry Peak (Hike 38)