The Valley Observed: San Fernando Valley history and sense of place

"Los Angeles is surrounded by valleys, but there's only one Valley..."
Hush Money, by Peter Israel

Joughin Ranch and Browns Canyon

If you want a glimpse of what the Valley terrain looked like 200 years ago, before wheat fields or orange trees, the new Michael D. Antonovich Regional Park is your place. The park opens to public use the rolling foothills of upper Browns Canyon above Chatsworth, on what used to be called the Joughin Ranch. Here's what the official website says:

The park offers stunning vistas, rolling hills, oak and walnut woodland, water sources, and an abundance of wildlife. Throughout the park, majestic views of the San Fernando Valley; the Santa Monica, Totopa, and Santa Susana Mountains; and the Simi Hills abound.

Part of a key watershed area for the Los Angeles River, the Antonovich Park encompasses the Headwaters of Devil, Ybarra, and Browns Canyons. These canyons contain extensive oak and walnut woodland and riparian corridors with year-round surface water.

The rolling topography of the park includes grasslands, chaparral and woodlands of oak, ash, walnut, sycamore and some big-cone Douglas fir. Several threatened plant species, such as the slender mariposa lily and the Santa Susana tarplant, are found in and around the park. The surrounding area provides optimal foraging and nesting habitat for many raptors, including golden eagles, great horned owls, northern harriers and red-tailed, prairie and Copper’s hawks. The wilderness area abuts Rocky Peak Park, a 4,815-acre wilderness park to the west.

True enough, but it's even better than that. These grasslands and slopes of the Santa Susana Mountains are out of the past, with broad unbroken pasturage, oak-shaded canyons, and stands of poppies and lupine. Head up DeSoto Avenue into Browns Canyon, ignoring the "private road" signs in the lower canyon. The park entrance is past the horse stables, four miles above the Simi Valley Freeway. There's a small parking area, but keep going and you soon come to the former launch battery complex of the Oat Mountain Nike missile base, now an L.A. city facility.

I went with my dad, who has explored Browns Canyon for years without reaching the top. This time, the gate across the upper road was open. We climbed past scattered oil wells to the peak of Oat Mountain, highest point in the Santa Susanas, where the Nike command center was located. The peak is now covered in communication transmitters and repeaters. On the far side of the ridge, the grassland turns to rocky semi-desert, and we could peer over into the Santa Clarita Valley and pick out landmarks like Magic Mountain. What amazed us, though, was the San Fernando Valley panorama.

We didn't have a camera, but trust me, at almost three thousand feet above the floor, this is the Best Valley View Ever. The entire basin spreads out silently below, each mountain range and pass crisply delineated. Cars moving on the basin floor look like fleas, the high-rise row along Ventura Boulevard barely discernible. Downtown L.A. pops up beyond the Hollywood Hills. South and west it was too hazy to make out the Pacific, but I assume it was there. If you go, expect to negotiate a narrow, rough, potholed road. Check with the park first though — the upper gate was locked the following day when my brother headed up. Also, once summer comes, I'd be surprised if they don't close off the whole area due to fire danger.

I wish the park website gave some history of Joughin Ranch. I have found newspaper references to oil wells there in the 1920s.

Entry edited after posting

Posted February 2, 2006 04:09 PM


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"Los Angeles is surrounded by valleys, but there's only one Valley..."Hush Money, by Peter Israel

"Los Angeles is surrounded by valleys, but there's only one Valley..."
Hush Money, by Peter Israel