David Purington Reminiscences of Sleepy Hollow, Part Two

When Sleepy Hollow was established in 1923 by Cleve Purington and fellow investors, the main infrastructure issue to deal with was a reliable water supply.  Sources from the immediate neighborhood were tapped first, then other locations within the canyon were located.  Eventually, outside water had to be imported, especially as the community became largely one of full-time, rather than part-time/vacation, residences.

In recent decades, we've taken it for granted that there was enough water to supply local needs and wants, but that is going to have to change given current conditions of sustained drought.  That's why reading the recollections of Purington's son David about the water history of Sleepy Hollow has interest and relevance.

These documents, provided by long-time residents of the neighborhood, were scanned, but the originals had some fading and there are a couple of areas that are difficult or impossible to make out.  Still, they provide us a rare look into the history of the community.

To see them in separate windows in an enlarged view simply click on any of the images and you can review them all and get more detail.  Enjoy!

Note:  The original water wells were drilled along Carbon [Canyon] Creek between what was most recently Party House Liquor #2 on the west and the Purington home, which still stands, next to the former community church and across from the intersection of Carbon Canyon Road and Rosemary Lane on the east.  The later well, mentioned on page four, was on land leased from the Oasis Country Club.  This club, which opened in the mid-to-late 1920s and appears to have lasted for a few decades, is where the Western Hills Oaks subdivision is situated, south of Carbon Canyon Road and across from the Western Hills golf course.  Lookout Ridge is the steeper area of the hills at the north side of Sleepy Hollow.  A water tank is still standing at the highest point of the ridge.

The Gaines and Brown Families of Carbon Canyon, Part 7: Christmas Greetings from the Flying Cow Ranch

As we head into the Christmas holiday and approach the New Year, it seems like a good time for a new post featuring photographs, provided by Joyce Harrington, of her ancestors in the Gaines family, owners of the Flying Cow Ranch where Olinda Village is today.

One nice item is a Christmas real photo postcard sent by the family--real photo postcards were very popular in the 1910s and this one shows the family posed in front of their Craftsman-style ranch house, which stood where the Hollydale Mobile Home Estates is located on south side of Carbon Canyon Road at the junction of Carbon and Soquel canyons.

There are so many great photos of the Flying Cow Ranch, so let's include a few, showing just how rural the place was decades ago when traffic on Carbon Canyon Road during a day would number probably double digits or maybe low triple digits and you were more likely to hear cattle lowing than a car audio system blowing.

First, the holidays are, of course, a time to celebrate with family and friends, so, while the second photo shown here, probably from about he 1920s judging from the car, clothing and hair styles, was not likely during the Christmas season, though it could have been, it is easy to imagine the Gaines' inviting folks to come out to the ranch to emjoy some rural yuletide cheer with hikes, horse rides and other outdoor activities.

Then, a major part of celebrating Christmas or any major holiday is to have a feast, there is a cool image here on a barbeque held on the ranch.  There are certainly times when Christmas day is sunny and seasonable, so having a holiday barbeque (check out that set up for cooking) outdoors would have been a possibility, though it is unlikely the photo was taken in December!

Finally, the Gaines family home probably hosted plenty of fun indoor gatherings with carols sung, meals eaten, and presents opened by a Christmas tree near a roaring fire (though, again, this is just general guesswork.)  The last photo shows the family hosting the Thompsons and the group gathered on the front porch with the neat rustic stone porch posts and the ca. 1910s car in the background as some fun details.

Meantime, enjoy your Christmas holiday and check back in a few days for more Carbon Canyon history through the reminiscences of David Purington, whose family founded Sleepy Hollow in the 1920s.

Building on the Wildland-Urban Interface (like Carbon Canyon)

Yesterday marked the first day of winter and, while temperatures last night dropped to freezing here in Sleepy Hollow, December has been more like June.  The first half of the month had temperatures routinely in the 80s while humidity was in single digits and Santa Ana winds have been a regular feature.  Precipitation for the season starting the first of October stands at 12/100th of an inch.  The reduction in daytime temperatures will give way yet again in the next few days to more high pressure parks over the region and Sunday will be 5-10 degrees above what has been called "normal."

The Thomas fire, which broke out north of Santa Paula in Ventura County nearly three weeks ago, raced west and north and has burned nearly 275,000 acres, making it the second [correction, as of later today, the Thomas fire has become the largest, surpassing 2003's Cedar fire in San Diego County] largest wildfire in modern California history, and other fires wreaked havoc.  This fall, including the disastrous conflagrations in Santa Rosa and Sonoma and nearby areas and the fires near Corona in this region, has been an historic one for wildfires.

Wednesday's main editorial in the Los Angeles Times asked a perfectly reasonable question in its headline: Where can we still build?  Routinely, it is brought up that there is "a debilitating housing shortage" in California that sends housing prices, including rent, skyrocketing.  Estimates are that some 3.5 million housing units are needed in the next seven years to meet demand.  As the paper notes:

This fall's devastating wildfires have reopened the debate over whether it's possible to build (or rebuild) safely in high-risk areas . . . Researchers warn that this may be a taste of what's to come as global warming fuels larger and more frequent wildfires, and as new development creeps further into the wildland-urban interfaces where homes and offices abut foothills, forests or other open land.

There is talk about having state, county and municipal government, developers and the residents of new developments absorb the costs of the destruction wrought by fires in places where new housing projects "impinge upon wildlands."

The editorial rightly observes, however, that there are other areas of growing risk.  Melting polar ice is calculated to raise sea levels some ten feet by the latter part of this century.  Intense droughts will be punctuated by periods of heavy rain, bringing immediate flooding, and voluminous snowpacks, delaying deluges until the melting takes place.  Recall that the aging and deteriorating Oroville Dam very nearly collapsed earlier this year after a winter of significant rain and snow.

Then, there is the risk in urban areas, such as neary traffic-clogged freeways where cars with gasoline-powered internal combustion engines sit idling and sending toxic fumes into nearby areas or (and this was not mentioned in the editorial) near places like the ports at Wilmington/San Pedro and Long Beach or near industrial areas, where health risks are acute.

What the Times counsels is that

California will increasingly have to develop and redevelop in cities and in established residential neighborhoods.  Cities have to grow inward—with more development on vacant or underused lots amid buildings, greater density and more housing closer to workplaces and transit hubs.

The editorial acknowledges that "that's rarely easy" with high land costs and prevailing attitudes from the public and elected officials to accept the idea of change.  But, as it concludes

Simply staying the course, however, is not an option.   The status quo leaves too many pople in too much risk.

What this means for places like Carbon Canyon is what's been talked about on this blog and many other places at some length.  Existing paradigms about regional development which in some respects date back many decades are outdated and outmoded.  Residents and local staff and elected officials have to look at that status quo and make a risk assessment.

For the Canyon, this means asking: is it worth adding housing in the urban-wildland interface, particularly with hill and ridge top locations, when the risks of more frequent wildfires of greater intensity, which have been predicted and are now occurring generally as forecast, increase?  As water supply faces greater uncertainty?  As more severe droughts, interspersed with occasional heavy rainfall, raise the threat of wildfire and flooding?  As the resources used to respond to natural and man-made disasters are further stretched?

Conditions are clearly changing, but the paradigm shift is slower in response.  The status quo is not only not working, it is engendering greater risk.  Those of us who chose to live here have to deal with those consequences of our actions now, but if the risk is greater, why literally play with fire?

Big Rig Sparking Trouble on Carbon Canyon Road

Today, at a little after 5 p.m. and as it was getting dark, a big rig came down the middle set of S-curves below and to the east the summit eastbound on Carbon Canyon Road and was taking a curve as I was coming up westbound.

Because he couldn't swing the truck into my lane, he hit the inside shoulder asphalt berm, scraping the bottom of his vehicle against it and sending a shower of sparks out.  If there had been any wind at all, like the strong Santa Anas we've had for most of this month, that could have been a problem with the extremely dry brush and trees along the road.

Then, he had to swing completely into the westbound lane to make the next curve and, as I looked in my rear view mirror, I could see that, fortunately, no one was immediately behind me.  Otherwise, because the truck was fully in that lane, there could have been another problem.

This is the third time I've personally had a big rig come into my lane just before or after I was approaching--the last time was reported here several months ago.

But, this is the first time I've seen a rig strike the road with such force that it caused sparks like this one did.

Someone eventually is going to get hit by one of these trucks that can't negotiate curves on a road that wasn't designed for them.  It almost happened to me twice before and could have today.  How many other people have experienced the same thing?

Wildfires, Development Planning and Carbon Canyon's Future

As wildfires have been raging through the greater Los Angeles area in recent days, there is renewed discussion about the continuing problem of building homes in and very near wildland areas.

An editorial in yesterday's edition of the Los Angeles Times by Richard Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute takes on the issue of planning for development in the face of the increasing threat of fire.

This follows two recent articles in the same paper about the role of wind in wildfires and on new research concerning Arctic ice melt and increasing high pressure systems that will send rain emanating from systems in the Pacific north and away from our area causing more drought.

Halsey began his piece by noting that, while major wildfires are a natural element of California history and life, "the destruction of our communities is not."  The result is that

Many of the political leaders we elect and planning agencies we depend upon to create safe communities have failed us.  They have allowed developers to build in harm's way, and left firefighters holding the bag.

He continued noting that tough questions need to be asked "about the true cost of expanding the local tax base with new residences in high fire hazard zones."  He lamented "the same conversation over and over again . . . laced with non-sequiturs and focused on outdated, ineffective solutions."

Halsey pointed out that there are many cited reasons for the recent explosion of huge wildfires in forest and wildland areas:  too many dead trees (there are many killed from pest infestations exacerbated by drought); climate change (it does play a major role, but there are fires that can't be blamed on this); and fire policies of suppression that allow for more chaparral to grow, though he noted that's the only way these tough plants grow naturally.

He observed that clearing habitat, such as brush and trees, are a standard planning tool, costing huge sums, but houses still burn anyway.  This policy inspired a recent bill in the House of Representatives calling for more logging in the western United States—a cynical view is that this is an excuse to reintroduce logging as a political ploy rather than represent an attempt to deal with wildfires!

Halsey wrote:

While vegetation management such as fuel breaks and prescribed burns can help during non-extreme fire events, they do little to suppress extreme events . . . we need to protect communities from fires that actually do the damage.

He continued that what this means is to look at fire policies as social, not natural, because building homes in wildland areas introduces the former into the latter and changes the conditions that lead to conflagrations.

Halsey cautioned that:

Planning agencies need to push back against pro-development forces in government, whose willingness to build in known fire corridors borders on criminal neglect.

Then, more locally, stricter fire codes for new developments calling for elements like external sprinklers for eaves and roofs (as is done in Australia, another area hit by frequent wildfires) and retrofitting older structures and more "proper defensible space regulations" are called for.  He wrote that "such policies would cost significantly less than the $9.4 billion [in] wildfire-related claims submitted statewide as of Friday."

Halsey pointed to CalFire, the statewide fire agency, and its policy of addressing vegetation management, rather than looking at protecting property and life.  He noted that the local mountain communities of Big Bear City and Idyllwild have adopted the use of better roofing and venting systems with grants from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA).  Notably, FEMA grants were used for vegetation clearance around neighborhoods in Carbon Canyon, but Halsey would certainly recommend foregoing that for the retrofitting done in those cities.

He concluded by observing that "trees, shrubs, grasses, or homes will all provide the necessary fuel for a wildfire.  It's part of California's story."  He linked wildfires with other natural disasters, suggesting:

As we do with earthquakes and floods, our goals should be to reduce the damage when wildfires arrive, not pretend we can prevent them from happening at all.  That mindset starts at the planning department, not the fire station.

 What this trilogy of pieces in the Times demonstrates is that the risk of wildfire in our region and, specifically in Carbon Canyon, will only increase.  Those of us already living here have to be contend with the consequences and which will only worsen as climactic conditions change and as more housing is built in the area.

As the Hidden Oaks development, proposing 107 houses south of Carbon Canyon Road and across from the 76-unit Hillcrest now being built, and more projects are forthcoming, it is apparent that, while fire supppression and and fighting policies and procedures have been improved in many areas, the intensity and frequency of wildfires have also increased.  Planners need to take this into account and elected officials need to be more educated when confronting the immense lobbying power of groups like the Building Industry Association.

With valleys and plains just about fully developed, the only open areas left to developers are foothill, canyon and mountain areas that are the areas that burn most often and hardest.  Current Canyon residents confront mounting challenges of traffic congestion and fire risk and the need for planners and officials to adequately address these issues is greater as the canyon faces greater risk.

Future Droughts and Effects on Carbon Canyon

A Los Angeles Times front-page article from today by Evan Halper has the headline: "State's droughts may get a whole lot worse."

Advanced modeling research by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in northern California suggest that:

California could be hit with significantly more dangerous and more frequent droughts in the near future as changes in weather patterns triggered by global warming block rainfall from reaching the state.

This is postulated due to increasing melting sea ice in the Arctic leading to stronger high-pressure systems in the Pacific Ocean causing wet air to move to the north rather than to California.

Estimates are that, within 20 to 30 years, as much as 15% less rainfall could be experienced and, with the last drought wreaking havoc to our agricultural economy and causing major problems in other way, even California, "the state most proactively confronting global warming is not prepared for its fallout."

A study published in Nature Communications observes that the Arctic is going to be ice-free in the summer and the resulting changes in precipiration patterns means that, though the average drop in rainfall would be up to 15%, some years would be considerably less and other more.

Lead scientist Ivana Cvijanovic commented, "the similarities between what will happen and the most recent drought are really striking."  The work of Cvijanovic and her colleagues was federally funded and, as Halper observed,

The findings contrast starkly with Trump administration policy on warming, which ignores the mainstream scientific consensus that human activity is driving it.  The administration has been working aggressively to unravel Obama-era action on climate change, withdrawing from the Paris agreement which seeks to limit its impact, dismantling restrictons on power plant emissions, and signaling it will relax vehicle mileage rules that are a crucial component to addressing global warming.

Other climate scientists note that the latest study is one of several "that have signaled a connection between the ice melt in the Arctic and the building of atmospheric ridges affecting California.  Michael Mann of the Earth Science Center at Pennsylvania State University stated, "the impacts of climate change may exceed our adaptive capacity.  The leaves only mitigation—doing something about climate change—as a viable strategy moving forward."

Stanford's Noah Diffenbaugh noted "the change is dramatic, and it is taking place faster than had been projected by climate models."  He went on to observe that making a concrete connection between ice melt and effects on rain and snow fall in California is a significant milestone.

In fact, Cvijanovich suggested that, if there hadn't been so much melting in recent years, our recent mega-drought might have been avoided, though the model she worked on only addresses future impacts. [Note:  because of a comment raised below, here is the text of the article from which the previous sentence was based: But the atmospheric patterns leading to that drought had all the characteristics of those that can be triggered by Arctic sea ice melt, Cvijanovic said, raising the prospect that California might have dodged the latest drought — or at least not have been hit as hard — if not for the large amount of ice that has already vanished.]

She concluded:

There is lots of research to be done. Hopefully we do it in time to allow people to plan for whatever may be coming.

As for Carbon Canyon, what will be comng, provided the modeling proves prescient, is both longer and drier drought conditions providing more fuels for wildfires, like the latest ones in the last couple of days including the massive Thomas fire in Ventura County that is raging out of control, and flooding and mudslides, worsened by burned slopes, during heavier rainfall years.

Coupled with the recent Times piece on the role of wind in the rapid spread of wildfires, this article is another stark warning for local officials whose responsibility is for jurisdictions like Carbon Canyon and for state and federal leaders more broadly.

The more knowledge we (or, at least, some of us) obtain about climate change, the more pressing the need for mitigation becomes.  This week's high winds and the much higher than average temperatures continue to be an issue with respect to the fire risk in the Canyon, but a Fire Watch staff member was seated this morning in a chair outside his vehicle on eastbound Carbon Canyon Road west of Olinda Village.  This program, funded by The Irvine Company, provided an observer a couple of months ago during the recent firestorms in the Anaheim Hills/Corona area, so it's good, at least, to know someone is literally watching.