Photos of Carbon Canyon Landscapes

As we remain under stay at home orders during this COVID-19 pandemic, it is important, when we can and safely, to get out of the house. 

One important way is to talk walks while maintaining social distancing and, fortunately, with decent rainfall this season and spring underway, Carbon Canyon has plenty of green in its landscape.

This post highlights a quintet of photos taken on two recent rambles among the hills in the canyon, the first pair taken on the 2nd on the Chino Hills side and the other two taken yesterday on the Brea portion.

The views show the beauty of the canyon's rolling hills, small side canyons, and open spaces, even with a growing number of houses built in recent years.

Yesterday's images are particularly noteworthy, including a relative rare occurrence of a full rainbow and a pretty spectacular sunset, especially with the lingering gray storm clouds.

Using the panorama setting on the camera enables the capturing of both the arc of the rainbow, but also the broad view of the sunset and rolling hills, to nice effect.  Click on any photo to see them enlarged in a separate window.

Carbon Canyon Historical Artifact #58: A Rare Photo Attributed to Carbon Canyon, ca. 1910s

This is a great and very rare cabinet card photograph that looks to be taken in the early part of the 20th century and is simply labeled "Carbon Cañon."  It is interesting that the Spanish form of "cañon" with the tilde over the first "n" is used, which almost seems like a Latino or at least someone well-versed in the language wrote the inscription.  Otherwise, there is no information about the scene, the people, or why the photo was taken.

It shows a large hay wagon parked on a dirt road with a gent at the top pulling a bale to the fourth layer with the previous ones laid in a cross-hatch pattern.  Three other workers stand or sit next to the wagon and one of the workers, holding his face in his right hand, sits on a sack of an unknown product, of which there are stacks, largely covered in canvas.

These sacks rest against a plain wood fence and in the distance to the left below some hills is a large structure, probably a barn.  Behind the wagon are harnessed horses unhitched, probably, from the vehicle and other horses are further in the distance.  In front of the wagon at the lower right are two buckets.  Note the number 37 placed under the wagon on the negative.

Click on the image to see it enlarged in a separate window.

Most intriguing, potentially, is on the right.  It appears that the road has been cut partially into the low hillsides and this cut is buttressed with horizontal boards kept in place by vertical posts.  Behind the worker at the right, who leans against a front corner of the wagon, are stacks of what might be wooden forms. 

Could this be Carbon Canyon Road in construction and maybe the ranch workers were loading hay and grains to take either to Chino or towards Orange County?  The road was built through from Chino to Brea in 1914-15, so the timing appears to be reasonable given that cabinet cards were common from the 1880s to the 1920s or so. 

Unfortunately, we're not likely to get any answers to these questions, but, if this is Carbon Canyon, it is a very unusual document of the area a century or more ago.

Sleepy Hollow Photographs, 1930s/1940s

First off—Happy New Year to everyone and hope you have a great 2018.

The same generous neighbors who loaned the David Purington reminiscences that have appeared in two installments here to date followed up with some other great material relating to Sleepy Hollow history. 

These include copies of community newsletters from the mid-1960s and late 1970s, community calendars from the early 1970s and some photographs dating as far back as th 1930s.  A few of the latter are being shared in this post.

One is a great view taken from northwest part of Sleepy Hollow and looking to the south and east.  There are a smattering of houses on the steep slopes off Hay Drive as it winds up in switchback fashion from Rosemary Lane down towards the lower part of the photo and with Carbon Canyon Road at the very bottom.

There is a large light-colored home at the center and to the right of that, below and above Hay Drive, are two structures that are still standing.  The one above the road with a set of windows at the left and a single one at the right of the facing elevation was built in 1929, according to its current owner.  The one below, a Craftsman style dwelling, with a small second story tower, is the other.  The homes flanking the Craftsman may still be there, as well.

At the bottom towards the lower right corner is a Pueblo-style  unit with a garage accessed off Carbon Canyon Road.  At the top, above the 1929 house, is another 1920s-era house on Grandview Lane that is likely still there.  Otherwise, there was still plenty of space left for later buildings in subsequent decades.

The other two photographs are taken from near the same vantage point and it looks to this observer like the view is from the southeast corner of Sleepy Hollow from about Francis Drive and its intersection with Hay Drive, which would be the dirt road moving off from the center and lower left of the respective photos.

If this assumption is correct, the photos look back to about where the first image was taken, with Lion's Canyon being just beyond the community and to the right of the bare patch at the bottom of the sloping hillside at the west side of that canyon, which is the entrance to today's St. Joseph's Hill of Hope campus.  In the more horizontal of the two views, Carbon Canyon Road would move from the center of the right margin up towards that bare patch.

These rare early views of Sleepy Hollow not only show the community within probably 20 years of its 1923 founding, but also indicate just how rural and remote the neighborhood was 70-80 or more years ago.  Looking at the chapparal and other vegetation and thinking about the primitive state of firefighting generally, much less in an isolated area like Sleepy Hollow, it's remarkable that there wasn't more destruction from the wildfires that have occasionally burst forth in Carbon Canyon.

The situation has changed considerably, but the rural quality of the community, even as suburbanization has crept closer over the years, is what has been both a great attraction for its residents and a risk, as well.