San Francisquito Canyon

San Francisquito Canyon is home to low-lying shrubs, dry grasses, and towering Yucca that bloom during the spring.

San Francisquito Canyon is a canyon created through erosion of the Sierra Pelona Mountains by the San Francisquito Creek, in Los Angeles County, Southern California.

Geography

The canyon cuts through the Sierra Pelona Mountains, which are central part of the Transverse Ranges system of California. At the San Francisquito Canyon head is the San Francisquito Pass, which the early routes between Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley crossed. The canyon grows wider as it approaches the Santa Clarita Valley.

History

File:Miners operate hydraulic sluice, San Francisquito Canyon, LA 1890-1900.jpg

Miners operating a hydraulic sluice at San Francisquito Canyon (c. 1890-1900).

Mining

San Francisquito Canyon was the site of placer mining for gold by Spanish missionaries from the San Fernando and San Buenaventura Missions, and later by Mexican Californios. Their activity stopped in 1848, when the gold discovery at Sutter's Mill started the California Gold Rush. Placer mining later occurred in the canyon into at least the latter 19th-century.

St. Francis Dam

Throughout the 1920s the canyon was the site of the St. Francis Dam and the subsequent wall of water it released when it failed in March 1928. The ruins of this disaster can still be seen today.

Roads

From 1820 San Francisquito Canyon and San Francisquito Pass was part of the route of the El Camino Viejo. From 1854, the wagon route of the Stockton - Los Angeles Road followed its course as did the Butterfield Overland Mail in California from 1858-1861. This Tejon Pass Route and the Tehachapi or Midway Route (first followed by the Southern Pacific Railroad), remained the major north south wagon and later automobile routes to the San Joaquin Valley until the construction of the more direct Ridge Route in 1915.

Today, a two-lane road named after the canyon itself connects Santa Clarita to the mountain communities of Green Valley and Elizabeth Lake.

See also

• San Francisquito Formation
• Castaic Creek - a neighboring stream
• Dry Canyon Reservoir - a nearby reservoir completed in 1912