Home Remodeling in Santa Clarita, California

Santa Clarita, according to the United States Census Bureau, covers an Place of 70.82 square miles (183.4 km), of which 70.75 square miles (183.2 km) is house and 0.07 square miles (0.18 km) (0.10%) is water. Nearly half of the city’s land area has been acquired via annexations; the city’s Place at the grow old of engagement was just 39.09 square miles (101.2 km). The Newhall Pass is located at the southern decline of the city, south of Newhall and north of the San Fernando Valley communities of Granada Hills and Sylmar.

Santa Clarita lies within the Santa Clarita Valley, bounded by the San Gabriel Mountains to the east, the Santa Susana Mountains to the south and west, and the Sierra Pelona Mountains to the north, all allowance of the Transverse Ranges.

The expansive Santa Clara River passes through the city from east to west. Though usually dry, the river exhibits significant surface flow during seasonal episodes of stuffy rainfall. The river’s numerous tributaries incise the hilly terrain of the valley to form steep canyons after which many of the city’s major streets are named. The largest of these canyons are Bouquet Canyon, San Francisquito Canyon, Sand Canyon, and Soledad Canyon.

Currently, the city is bounded by Interstate 5 to the west, extending east to add together almost whatever developed areas of the Santa Clarita Valley east of the freeway. Part of the city’s eastern boundary follows California State Route 14, although the city limits extend more than Route 14 to count the communities of Aliento, Fair Oaks Ranch, Vista Canyon, and Sand Canyon; the Plaza at Golden Valley shopping center; and the Whitney Canyon, Elsmere Canyon, Golden Valley Ranch, Walker Ranch, and East Walker Ranch door spaces. Santa Clarita extends as in the distance east as the eastern subside of Shenandoah Lane, east of Shadow Pines Boulevard in Canyon Country. The city limits also adjoin a small exclave west of Interstate 5 in Towsley Canyon Park. The Angeles National Forest forms allowance of the city’s northern and eastern boundaries, although parts of northern Saugus (north of Copper Hill Drive and Haskell Canyon Road) and Canyon Country (south of Placerita and Sand Canyon Roads) extend into the national forest.

The endorsed elevation of the city is 1,207 feet (368 m), the height of the historic Newhall Airport which was northwest of Via Princessa and Railroad Avenue from the 1930s through the 1950s. Elevation varies substantially throughout the city. The lowest lessening in Santa Clarita is near the junction of CA-126 and I-5 (34°26′32″N 118°36′10″W / 34.4422°N 118.6029°W / 34.4422; -118.6029), at an height above sea level of 1,024 feet (312 m). The highest reduction is in the San Gabriel Mountains south of Placerita and Sand Canyon Roads (34°21′36″N 118°24′22″W / 34.3599°N 118.4062°W / 34.3599; -118.4062) at an height of 3,048 feet (929 m). Most populated areas in the city are 1,100–1,700 feet (340–520 m) above sea level. The highest residential areas of Canyon Country, north of Skyline Ranch Road and east of Shadow Pines Boulevard, exceed 2,000 feet (610 m).

Santa Clarita is near the San Fernando malfunction zone and has been affected by the 1971 San Fernando earthquake and 1994 Northridge earthquake (see above), both of which had epicenters in the San Fernando Valley.

The Santa Clarita Valley has been approved for millennia back European arrival. The oldest archaeological site in the area dates incite to all but 3000 BC. About AD 450, the Tataviam arrived, displacing the Chumash people who back inhabited the area. The Tataviam lived in nearly 20 villages in the valley and surrounding areas including Piru, Agua Dulce, Elizabeth Lake, and Tochonanga.

In the 18th century, Spanish colonists arrived in southern California including Santa Clarita, founding mission settlements. The Mission San Fernando was founded in 1797 in present-day Mission Hills, just 9.5 miles (15.3 km) south of downtown Newhall. In 1822, Alta California, which included most of the present-day southwestern United States including anything of California, became a territory of the newly independent country of Mexico.

The 48,612-acre (196.73 km) Rancho San Francisco land take over was issued by Juan Bautista Alvarado, governor of Alta California, to Mexican army governor Antonio del Valle. It was an agricultural Place serving the within reach Mission San Fernando.

In 1842, Francisco Lopez discovered gold in Placerita Canyon—the first documented discovery of gold in California. The discovery is commemorated in an 1842 mining claim issued by Governor Alvarado. The Oak of the Golden Dream, which marks the site of the discovery, remains an sympathy for tourists. Several places throughout Santa Clarita carry the “Golden Oak” name, including Golden Oak Road in Saugus; Golden Oak Lane, Golden Oak Ranch, and Golden Oak Adult School in Newhall; and Golden Oak Community School in Canyon Country.

The United States acquired California in 1848, after winning the Mexican–American War. The community of Newhall is named after Henry Newhall, an American businessman who made his fortune during the California Gold Rush. He founded the H.M. Newhall & Company, a rich auction home in San Francisco. Newhall had plus invested in rail companies that would link up San Francisco to further cities and became president of the San Francisco and San Jose Railroad. In 1870, he and his partners sold the company to Southern Pacific Railroad, and he served upon Southern Pacific’s board of directors.

From 1858 to 1861, the Santa Clarita Valley was used as a transportation corridor for the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach support as part of its first division, stretching from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Two Butterfield Overland Mail stations were located in the area: Lyons Station in Newhall, and King’s Station in San Francisquito Canyon. Beale’s Cut was build up in 1859 through what is now known as the Newhall Pass.

After railroads, Newhall turned to real estate and ranching. He purchased a number of the former Spanish and Mexican estate grants in the state, amassing a sum of 143,000 acres (58,000 ha) between Monterey and Los Angeles counties. The most significant part was the Rancho San Francisco, which he purchased for $2/acre. It became known as Newhall Ranch after Newhall’s death. Within this territory, Newhall established a right-of-way to Southern Pacific through what is now Newhall Pass. He after that sold the railroad share of the land, upon which the company built the town of Newhall, founded just north of the present-day intersection of Magic Mountain Parkway and Railroad Avenue. He moved the town south in 1879, and the native townsite was named Saugus, after Henry Newhall’s hometown of Saugus, Massachusetts.

After his death, Newhall’s heirs incorporated the Newhall Land and Farming Company in 1883. Since its founding, it has overseen the move ahead of the communities that comprise present-day Santa Clarita, including the master-planned community of Valencia (in which it is headquartered), Canyon Country, Newhall, and Saugus. The company afterward manages farm estate elsewhere in the state.

On September 5, 1876, Charles Crocker, president of the Southern Pacific Company, hammered a ceremonial spike into a railroad tie at Lang Southern Pacific Station in what is now far eastern Canyon Country, marking the capability of the San Joaquin Valley extraction of the Southern Pacific Railroad, connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco and the rest of the nation for the first time.

In the 1850s and 1860s, businessmen and political leaders such as Andrés Pico, Sanford Lyon, Henry Clay Wiley, Darius Towsley, and Christopher Leaming came to the Santa Clarita Valley for its oil reserves. On September 26, 1876, the town of Mentryville was founded by French immigrant Charles Alexander Mentry close present-day Stevenson Ranch. Mentryville’s Pico Number 4 oil skillfully was the first commercially affluent oil skillfully in the western United States. Oil from Mentryville was refined at Pioneer Oil Refinery in Newhall, the first reachable oil refinery in the state. (Pioneer Oil Refinery is currently the unaccompanied site on the National Register of Historic Places within the city limits of Santa Clarita.) By the ahead of time 1900s, most of Pico Canyon’s richest oil reserves had been depleted, although Pico Number 4 continued to produce a result until 1990. Many of the abovementioned oil pioneers have lent their names to streets in the valley, such as Pico Canyon Road, Lyons Avenue, Wiley Canyon Road, and Towsley Canyon Road. Drilling continues to occur in Santa Clarita at the Honor Rancho Oil Field.

The Saugus Cafe was conventional in 1886 near the present-day intersection of Railroad Avenue and Magic Mountain Parkway. It is the oldest continuously keen restaurant in Los Angeles County.

Los Angeles studios began filming in Santa Clarita snappishly after the tilt of the 20th century. Actors in these into the future films included William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Harry Carey, and a teen John Wayne. Many movie ranches (see section below) were developed in the Santa Clarita Valley. Hart and Carey made their homes in the valley; today both their former estates are operated as county parks.

One major contributor to the valley’s early spread was the Whittaker-Bermite Corporation. From 1934 to 1987, the corporation manufactured, stored, and tested explosives, including bullets and bottle rockets, on a 996-acre site (403 ha) south of Soledad Canyon Road, east of Railroad Avenue, northeast of the Circle J Ranch community, southwest of Centre Pointe Parkway, and west of Golden Valley Road. The first housing tract in the Place consisted of company homes along Walnut Street in Newhall. In futuristic times, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control has made efforts to tidy the area of perchlorate and further toxic chemicals left at the back by decades of munitions testing. The site is living thing considered for development.

The Santa Clarita Valley was the scene of the second deadliest collision in California’s history, known as the “worst civil engineering failure of the 20th century.” Shortly since midnight on March 12, 1928, the St. Francis Dam collapsed. Water from the St. Francis Reservoir coursed through San Francisquito Canyon and the Santa Clara River in a wave up to 140 feet (43 m) high and 2 miles (3.2 km) wide, destroying buildings in its path. By the epoch the floodwaters reached the Pacific Ocean close Ventura five hours later, 411 people had died. Some buildings in Newhall became makeshift morgues. After the disaster, engineer William Mulholland resigned from his incline as overseer of the Los Angeles Bureau of Water Works and Supply (now the Department of Water and Power).

On December 27, 1936, United Airlines Trip 34 crashed into a hilltop in Rice Canyon which is near Newhall, killing whatever twelve people on board.

In 1945, the Santa Clarita Union High School District was created. The following year it was renamed William S. Hart Union High School District after William S. Hart. The district’s first tall school was William S. Hart High School in Newhall.

The first recognized use of the name “Santa Clarita” in a housing early payment appeared in the Rancho Santa Clarita housing tract in Saugus, built in 1947.

On September 17, 1966, William V. Fowler, Grand Cyclops (leader) of the California Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, organized a reactivation rally in Soledad Canyon, on Capra Road almost 2 miles (3.2 km) east of the present-day Soledad Canyon Road exit upon State Route 14. Fowler sought to reactivate the KKK in California, where it was banned by do something since 1946. Estimates of the rally’s size range from 30 to 100 people, far fewer than the 5,000 to 10,000 Fowler expected. The rally took place on United States Forest Service property and included a performance cross burning. Just one person was arrested at the rally – for assaulting a police officer he mistook for a Klansman.

On April 5, 1970, four CHP officers were shot dead by two heavily armed career criminals at a Standard Gas Station in present-day Valencia. The shootout was the deadliest attack upon law enforcement in California history. As Valencia had barely been developed, it came to be known as the Newhall incident. One of the perpetrators was sentenced to excitement in prison; the other enthusiastic suicide. In the aftermath of the incident, policing was transformed nationwide – police training and weaponry were better and bullet proof vests became widespread.

In the early daylight of July 23, 1982, a helicopter crash occurred at the Indian Dunes amusement park in Valencia during the making of Twilight Zone: The Movie, killing three people.

As beforehand as 1920, there were attempts to incorporate some of the communities of the Santa Clara River Valley. Four years well ahead a chamber of commerce was formed in Newhall, with one of its goals monster city formation.

Starting in 1970s, residents, such as educator Carl Boyer III and retired businessman H. Gil Callowhill, began efforts to determine the feasibility of incorporating Newhall, Saugus and Valencia into a city. In 1974, individuals, such as Signal co-editor Ruth Newhall, suggested that the Santa Clarita Place should secede from Los Angeles County to form their own county. That December a other committee was formed to help the fight to crack Acton, Agua Dulce, Gorman, Castaic, Val Verde, Canyon Country, Saugus, Valencia and Newhall off from Los Angeles County. The other entity was to be called Canyon County. This effort eventually led to the opening of Proposition F on the 1976 November ballot. Under give access law, the inauguration of the other county would have to be official by anything the voters in the existing county. This effort unproductive with sixty-eight to thirty-two percent of the county at large rejecting it. The proposed Canyon County voted fifty-five percent in favor of its creation. On November 7, 1978, the Place of Canyon County tried another time to secede. Proposition K revealed greater retain for the instigation of a new county, in which fifty-nine percent of local voters voted in favor, but, again, most LA county voters rejected it.

Despite the leaving behind of “home rule” through the initiation of Canyon County, attention turned incite to creating a new city. In the mid-1980s, Louis Garasi, president of the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce, chaired the city formation committee, with Connie Worden, a veteran of the Canyon County effort, as vice chair. As noted by Jerry Reynolds, “With mighty support from the Santa Clarita Valley and Canyon Country chambers of commerce, the committee held lively, well-attended public meetings that revealed a growing amalgamation in house rule and mounting dissatisfaction bearing in mind inadequate roads.” A petition excite and the filing of the recognized cityhood application in imitation of the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) requested a ninety square-mile Place for the proposed City of Santa Clarita. The LAFCO shrunk the proposed city to just more than thirty-nine square miles, carving out most of the areas where move forward was pending.

The city boundaries qualified by LAFCO included most of the populated areas of Newhall, Saugus, Canyon Country and Valencia. Left out were Castaic, Agua Dulce, everything west of Interstate 5, and most of the home south of State Route 14 except for Sand Canyon, whose assimilation was championed by three cityhood leaders who lived there – Lou Garasi, Jan Heidt and Howard P. “Buck” McKeon.

After multiple fruitless attempts to form a city and at least two failed attempts to form a remove county, residents of the Santa Clarita Valley finally incorporated the City of Santa Clarita upon December 15, 1987. The proposal passed by a margin of two to one in that year’s general election. Other proposed names for the city were “City of the Canyons” and “La Mancha” (“blemish” in Spanish); “Santa Clarita” narrowly defeated “City of the Canyons.” The city’s first mayor was later Congressman Buck McKeon.

In 1990, the federal organization awarded Cemex a bargain to mine millions of tons of sand and gravel in Soledad Canyon, just east of the city. The proposed mine caused controversy due to its potential for expose pollution, traffic congestion, and environmental damage to the Angeles National Forest and Santa Clara River. The city of Santa Clarita fought for decades to prevent mining in the canyon. In 2019, the Interior Board of Land Appeals (part of the United States Department of the Interior) upheld a 2015 decision by the Bureau of Land Management, permanently preventing Cemex from mining in Soledad Canyon. Cemex had never mined any sand or gravel in the canyon.

Santa Clarita was devastated by the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Newhall Pass alternating of I-5 and CA-14 collapsed, and Sierra Highway became the lonely route in and out of the valley; Sierra Highway was soon closed as well. Several surface streets throughout the city were closed due to structural damage. The Four Corners oil spill led to contamination of the Santa Clara River. Electricity was temporarily shut off for every ration of valley, and schools were closed. Shelters opened in Newhall, Saugus, and Canyon Country. The National Guard was sent to the area, and City Hall was temporarily relocated. Water distribution points were set going on as residents lost permission to government water. The city suffered an estimated $76.8 million in damages.

Santa Clarita was ranked in 2006 by Money magazine as 18th of the 100 best places to alive in the United States.

On November 14, 2019, a buildup shooting occurred at Saugus High School. That morning, Nathaniel Berhow, a 16-year-old junior at the school, used a semi-automatic pistol to shoot five new students, killing two of them, before turning his gun on himself. The shooting lasted 16 seconds. Survivors were reunited as soon as their parents at welcoming Central Park, and injured students were sent to Henry Mayo Hospital in Valencia and Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills. The shooter succumbed to his self-inflicted injuries the behind day in the hospital. A vigil respect the victims was held at Central Park the next day.

In the 21st century, the city’s developed Place has expanded significantly as Lennar, Tri Pointe Homes, and KB Home have constructed housing developments in the area, including the neighborhoods of West Creek, West Hills, Aliento, River Village, Skyline Ranch, Vista Canyon, and Five Knolls. Just uncovered the city limits, a large expand by the FivePoint company is in construction.