25 November 2017

A Different Kind of Tagging in Carbon Canyon

Usually, mention of tagging on this blog has had to do with occurrences of graffiti sprayed on signs, guardrails and, especially, the gradually crumbling original water tank of the La Vida Mineral Springs resort (which, since Thanksgiving was just two days ago, has, thankfully, remained free of such embellishment in recent months.)



The tagging referred to here in this post, though, has to do with an interesting little discovery made a couple of months ago by a neighbor of mine here in Sleepy Hollow.  While working on the steep hillside on his property, he unearthed a metal ring with six tags on it.

Though the ring and tags were dirty, rusted and pitted, the tags have on one of the faces the stamped wording: "B.O.U.H.S. / 55 / WOOD / SHOP."  It seems pretty obvious that the tags were used by the woodshop classes at Brea-Olinda Unified High School in 1955, probably for tagging trees (almost certainly the oaks that abundantly grow in the canyon) that were desired for wood for the class.



Whether the woodshop teacher or a student lived in the house next to which the tags were found or whether there were trees on the property that were identified for tagging isn't known.  The house had an initial part that goes back to the early days of Sleepy Hollow in the 1920s with a 1950s addition.

Anyway, my neighbor thought it was a cool little find, so he passed it on and this post does the same, even if it's just a little element of our canyon's history.

2 comments:

M. Mutz said...

Perhaps those tags were used when tools/equipment was drawn out of the tool crib. The tags are numbers “55”, typically a set of numbered tags were issued to each person.

prs said...

Thanks M. Mutz for the information about this. It's much appreciated!