On Sheep, Lynchings & Bouquet Canyon Traffic Jams
SINCE I WAS A KID, I’VE BEEN DRIVING UP AND DOWN Santa Clarita’s longest-existing typographical error. Bouquet Canyon Road, an hour north of L.A., would unofficially shut down, allowing Basque shepherds to cross with sheep numbering in the hundreds. They’d wait for a lull in the traffic — which didn’t take long back then. A noble and alert sheepdog would nudge the alpha male ram across the narrow country road and, there you go.
That’s that. You’re stopped for a half-hour.
I had the 1959 potty brown Buick with the space age fins back then. It had a small hole in the muffler, which made it sound like a hot rod. It wasn’t. The company’s motto then was, “Buick Is A Beauty, Too…” Eye of the beholder, the big gas guzzler was a dog. I’d turn off my car, set the brake, climb out and sit on the hood, back resting against the windshield. Hands behind my head, I’d feel the sun on my face and count — well. Sheep.
In the 19th century, Bouquet was known as Hangman’s or Dead Man’s Canyon…
I didn’t know then Bouquet was a mistake in translation, dating back to 1850 when the first government cartographers modernized ancient maps. On horseback, they rode up the then-dirt road and came upon the vast ranch of a former French sailor named Francois Chari. He had jumped ship years earlier off Ventura, cowboyed around and eventually carved himself a big chunk of today’s Bouquet Canyon. Years later, the area would also be known as Hangman’s Canyon after one of the participants of the epic Castaic Range War was lynched there. Personally? I like Hangman’s Canyon better than Bouquet. Not as sissy. Looks better on a ranch entrance: HCR — Hangman’s Canyon Ranch.
Anywho. The mapmakers spotted a wooden sign on the property boundary — Rancho del Buque. It was a tribute to Chari’s sailoring days and, translated, it meant, “Ship Ranch.” Technically, it’s, “vessel,” but let’s save the quibbling for social media. Because of hills wild with flowers, the American cartographers thought “Buque” meant “Bouquet,” as in a floral arrangement. And so “Bouquet Canyon” became thus.
Coming down the partly bucolic highway this week, I left in enough time to make an appointment. But, dumb old me, I ended up bumping into six construction snags, from Silver Gate Farms’ horsey ranch (where they teach you to ride with your pinkies out on saddles the size of doilies) down to Newhall Ranch Road. Truth In Advertising Alert? There IS no ranch on Newhall Ranch Road. Ended up being a half-hour late and still ten minutes away. Had to call and cancel.
An old post card of The Big Oaks Lodge, a former great place to get prime rib and dance to live bands. It was a sometimes biker hangout on weekends and a world-famous boxing training camp. Sadly, my old hangout burned down in 1983.
They’re building another eyesore yuppie concentration camp up Bouquet, cramming people into soda cracker boxes posing as houses. Traffic will be congested for they say 11 months, which, in government-speak, means until April 7, 2071, coincidentally, my 121st birthday. On the bright side, at 121, I’ll be able to vote twice.
And I thought people were fleeing California.
I know I can tighten my belt and live through yet another SCV bright and shiny new bland and unimaginative eyesore housing project or flavored yogurt plaza. I sigh heavily, wondering the fate of that which stretches beyond the figure S’s of Bouquet Canyon Road.
Just north of the construction begins ranch country. It was the way Santa Clarita looked when I was a boy. The road is narrow, dotted on both sides by old houses and two-horse ranches, rotting old fence posts, barbed wire, a truck transmission rusting in a ditch, chickens, lazy dogs, tractors, and, most importantly, everyone has a different looking mailbox in various states of neglect.
Me? I love it. It’s my Beautiful America.
I worry that these wretched, unimaginative, bland, vanilla projects will creep up Bouquet, swallowing up horse stables and family pomegranate jelly stands.
After 50 years, one of my best friends just sold his ranch and headed off to Tall Tree Country. He lived right on Bouquet, serenaded by the coyote’s howl and scream of Japanese rice rocket motorcycles racing up and down at insane speeds. That’s another Bouquet Canyon marker. The white wooden crosses, decorated with flowers, memorializing two-wheel speedsters who, for decades, ended their parenthesis on a quiet highway of death. My pal moved out just in time to avoid the epic traffic jams.
Ed Muhl ran Universal Pictures for years and owned a big spread up Bouquet Canyon. He produced hundreds of movies, from the Rock Hudson/Doris Day flicks to ‘Spartacus.’ He liked to hold up traffic by driving down Bouquet all the way into Newhall on his old Ford tractor…
I remember working on the ranch up there. My father-in-law Ed had the world’s largest collection of socket wrenches, each with the same, 5/8th socket missing. Ed spent a half-century, expertly sculpting barrancas to guide storm water into Bouquet Creek. The work was endless, from cleaning chicken coops that no longer held chickens, to harvesting alfalfa. We were bailing one day and one of his sons asked why I always wore sunglasses. The honest answer was that I wore contact lenses and the shades kept the dust out. I looked around, scanning for spies and intruders, then, solemnly confessed the real reason:
“I have many enemies — in the hay business . . .”
Except for the occasional kamikaze road racer, it was so quiet up that canyon. Well. Add Ed’s tractor to that which broke the silence primeval.
Ranch work it seemed, always required socket wrenches and Ed just kept losing them.
He’d grumble and curse, hop not into car or pickup. In pith helmet and tan Jungle Jim work suit, he’d climb aboard that tractor and bounce the 10 miles down to Newhall Hardware to buy yet another socket set. A month later, he’d repeat the Kabuki theater. Behind his back, we called the retired motion picture executive, “Fast Eddie,” because he’d block traffic all the way into town, doing 20 mph in that old, yellow Ford earthmover.
Truth be known?
I don’t think he liked ranch work. I think Ed Muhl liked holding up traffic, inching that carbon monoxide-spewing old tractor down Bouquet Canyon Road, enjoying a beautiful, spring day…
