Happy Hump Day, dear saddlepals. It’s Wednesday and that means another Time Ranger romp through the Santa Clarita’s rich history. C’mon. Let’s mosey. We’ve a treasure-trove of vistas to inspect and all the time in the world to explore…

(Photo Caption) Some old-timers call the SCV: “The Navel of the Universe.” It was the hub of ancient, vast Indian trade routes. Chinese general Homer Lea, in the early 20th century, named the SCV one of the top 10 military targets on earth because of key intersection of roads and rails. This “Marker Tree” is still in Stevenson Ranch (surrounded by Coco’s Restaurant) and was bent by Indians as a road sign. (Courtesy SCV Historical Society.)

WAY, WAY BACK WHEN —

• Back in 1900, Newhall’s John E. Frazer, aka, Sheepskin John, got the job of transporting a 100-percent scale model of an elephant made only from walnuts. It was a publicity stunt for the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. Sheepskin, an employee of the Pioneer Trucking Company, had the Laurel and Hardy task of moving and unloading the elephant. Well. Bottom line, he dropped it. It fell to pieces, Frazer had to pay for it and he recalled that his family ate walnuts for dinner for two full years after that.
• The Mitchell and Lang families, on Sept. 16, 1872, started the second oldest school district in Los Angeles County. The families would just split up the year, holding classes in each other’s kitchens.
• While the record books officially state that Newhall Elementary was founded on Sept. 17, 1879, it may not be the case. Some oldtimers 60 years ago claim that the school first officially opened on the old Lyon Ranch in a bunkhouse a year earlier. It’s hard to say. Adai Lyon, one of the school’s first pupils, said that the school was at his ranch in the fall of 1878, but that he had moved back east to Maine for a year. The question arises: Why would they build a school house near what today is Stevenson Ranch when Mentryville, just a couple of miles down the road, had their own, thriving school? Any of you oldtimers who knew oldtimers have any insight, give the Time Ranger an internet jingle.

SEPTEMBER 17, 1919 —

• Long before there was a Dr. Howard Stowitts — well. Maybe not THAT long before — Dr. Gus A. Dansiger became the area’s first official dentist. He opened up his office on the second floor of the new Swall hotel in downtown Newhall. Dansiger was in town twice a week, and, apparently from his sign, he was fluent in four languages: “El Dentista habla Espanol — Le Dentiste parle Francais — Der Zahnarzt spricht Deutsch.” Wonder how you say, “Get your big fat fish-smelling mitts out of my mouth” in Swahili?
• On this date, M.M. Culver bought the old Saugus Garage (right next to the Saugus Cafe) from J.E. Brown. 

SEPTEMBER 17, 1929 —

• I’ve heard of bronc riders breaking necks and bull riders getting all their vitals squished, but this was a first. World famous trick roper and Newhall cowgirl Fay Adams died on this date in Nogales, Arizona in a freak roping accident.
• William S. Hart’s autobiography, “My Life, East and West,” hit the bookshelves to rave reviews. Even the eastern critics liked it.
• Bill Hart went to the movies with a pal on this date. Will Rogers had his world premiere of his first talking picture, “They Had To See Paris,” at the Carthay Circle Theatre.
• \The state was just one shift away from finishing the Weldon Canyon cut (today, the Old Road and old Highway 99). Good thing they didn’t. A massive slide of hundreds of thousands of tons of rock and dirt collapsed, nearly killing several workers. It put off finishing of the road for months. It wasn’t the end of the sliding, either. For years, the road would be closed due to landslides.
• E.S. White was the valley’s only car insurance salesman in 1929. Old E.S. had both kinds of insurance: “$6 per year premiums on Ford-type cars; $9 per year on Buick-type cars.” Bet if they had those prices in 1999, ol’ Tim Kelley at Magic Ford would throw in a lifetime of insurance with every new car. It wouldn’t hurt to ask him…

SEPTEMBER 17, 1939 —

• A freak lightning storm struck downtown Newhall on this date, partially splitting a groove down a huge oak tree on Newhall Community Hospital’s (the Tan Medical Center on 6th and San Fernando today) front lawn. It was 103 downtown and up the road, on the Ridge Route, torrential rains washed cars away. Mary Cuneod and her daughter were washed away in a flash flood up Castaic way. Fortunately, they were just badly bruised from their wild water ride.
• While we were boiling here in the Little Santa Clarita River Valley, Winchell “Bugs” Wilkinson, editor of the Ridge Route Rambler newspaper, recalled some colder times. A friend of his, north of Castaic, recalled the winter of 1898 in Montana, when four locomotives were burrowing tunnels through the snow with a plow. The rotating blades hit several head of cattle, frozen standing on the tracks. For you knew it, you had cows in the Cuisinart. Joe Sellars, another local cowboy, recalled a winter in Alaska in 1899 when “… it got so cold, the flames on candles froze and you had to blow them out by hitting them with a hammer.” It gets better. Joe said it was so cold, they had to dig a hole in their cabin floor so the mercury in their thermometer would have a place to go.
• Here’s some cocktail party trivia for you. The first wedding ever in Bouquet Canyon was the uniting of Ruth Hathcock and Harold Glines. It was at Campground No. 2. If they’re still together, this week would be their 70th anniversary, which, I believe, is oatmeal.
• Newhall Elementary was calling for bidders for a “new concrete building at 11th and Walnut Streets.” Highest paid workers were plasterers and lathers at $1.50 an hour. Lowest paid workers were general laborers at 62-cents an hour. That’s about a penny a minute.
• Was it karma? Billy Rose’s prize brood mare was mistaken for a deer by hunters and shot, leaving an orphan colt to be fed. The ranchers in Castaic were often at war with deer hunters, who frequently shot at livestock. Bill Rose, by the way, as a young man was the fellow who shot W.W. Jenkins on a lonely dirt road to end the famous Castaic Range War.

SEPTEMBER 17, 1949 —

• Ben Kazarian, grandfather of Ken Kazarian of Elsmere Canyon dump fame, applied to the county to create an 8,500-acre hog farm in Haskell Canyon. That one ranch would have held most of the garbage-eating hogs in L.A. County. It also would have meant every garbage truck in Los Angeles would have motored through Newhall and Saugus with their stinky cargo.

SEPTEMBER 17, 1959 —

• Chinese elm beetles started nibbling on our wonderful shade trees. Tom Frew lost one big shade tree to the nibbler. Word was he woke up one morning and the tree was “deader than salt mackerel.”

SEPTEMBER 17, 1969 —

• COC is celebrating their 40th year. The college didn’t have a campus yet and the board of trustees searching for a location. Two other sites than the current one were seriously considered. One spot was across the street from Henry “Hold The” Mayo Hospital and the other was in Pico Canyon.

SEPTEMBER 17, 1979 —

• The little agency with the big name was at it again. The directors of the West Los Angeles County Resource Conversation District got into a heated fight at a meeting. Director Jack Hutchinson showed up at the meeting with an open can of Colt .45 malt liquor sticking out of his back pocket. His first act was to move that district president Glenn Bailey be removed. Bailey, 24, objected, stating: “I don’t like being tried, convicted and hanged by a kangaroo court by one director under the influence of alcohol and another on leave from a mental institution.” Director Marcus Frishman was currently self-committed to the acute psychiatric wing of the Wooview-Calabasas Hospital. Ah, the people we elect to office here …

John Boston is the valley historian. Look for his book, “Images of America, The Santa Clarita Valley,” published by Arcadia, at bookstores and retail outlets throughout the valley. Don’t only look for it, buy a few copies.