On this day in 1941, the Santa Clarita Valley lost one of its most colorful early ranchers: Remi Nadeau, grandson of the famed Los Angeles 20-Mule team freighter and hotel builder.

Nadeau’s death at 73 marked the passing of a figure whose life, according to contemporaries, was “eventful and packed with adventure.”

Born May 3, 1867, in Grove Lake, Minnesota, Nadeau was the son of Joseph Frye Nadeau and Mary Ann Williams. Although the family home stood on Alameda Street on a portion of the old Nadeau rancho, Mary Ann traveled to stay with her parents for each birth. Of her five children, only her daughter Laura was born in Los Angeles.

After Mary Ann died in 1886, the eldest son, George, and his young wife, Rosa Lee Douglass, stepped in to raise the siblings, forming a lifelong bond between “Rosie” and Remi.

Nadeau was named for his grandfather, a 20-mule team freighter, who built Los Angeles’ first four-story building, the Nadeau Hotel at First and Spring streets.

The younger Remi’s early life echoed his family’s entrepreneurial spirit. He reportedly began his business career hauling eucalyptus wood from an early plantation co-owned by his father and Phineas Banning. He later co-owned a Los Angeles furniture store and oversaw the subdivision and development of several Nadeau properties.

His life changed in 1908 after his father’s death. That year, he purchased ranch land north of Soledad Canyon Road at Whites Canyon, now the heart of Canyon Country, and made it his permanent home.

Almost immediately, he partnered with neighbor John W. Mitchell, and together they acquired the old Cuneo range in upper Placerita Canyon. For decades, the annual Nadeau–Mitchell cattle round-ups were significant events in the Little Santa Clara Valley.

True to reputation as an “innovator and experimenter,” Nadeau pursued numerous ventures, including an early trial of Luther Burbank’s “spineless cactus” and a foray into Arabian horse breeding.

But his most famous enterprise was his 1927 “deer farm,” a hybrid wildlife park and controversial canned-hunting operation on his Soledad Canyon ranch. The Los Angeles Times reported that he spent $40,000 developing the attraction, importing mule deer from the Kaibab Forest, elk from Yellowstone, and buffalo from a zoo in Mesa, Arizona.

An unidentified woman holds a fawn at Remi Nadeau’s deer park in Saugus (now called Canyon Country), circa 1929. The deer park opened in 1927 on the north side of Soledad Canyon Road at Whites Canyon Road. (SCV History)

For years, the ranch was one of the best-known sights in northern Los Angeles County and hosted the area’s legendary venison barbecues.

Family memories paint a softer picture. Niece Marilyn Nadeau Chrisman recalled his patience with children and animals, the pocketfuls of treats he fed to semi-tame deer, and the ranch’s loyal dog “Goofus.”

She remembered him rescuing her from a poised rattlesnake as a toddler, and the beloved bay horse Chappo — gentle enough for the children to ride and long-lived at 37. Though small in stature, about 5-foot-7, he was remembered for his kindness, weathered face, soft fedora, and the “twinkle in his eyes.”

At a 1937 family Christmas gathering, he famously climbed onto a table and performed a soft-shoe tap routine, delighting his astonished relatives.

By the late 1930s, age had begun to slow him. His health worsened in 1941, and after a brief stay at the Glendale Emergency Hospital, he died of pneumonia on November 27.

Funeral services were held at the Scovern Chapel in Glendale, with longtime friends, including partner John W. Mitchell, serving as pallbearers. He was buried at Angelus Rosedale Cemetery, on land initially donated by the Nadeau family.

Following his death, his siblings inherited the 1,800-acre ranch. In 1946, Helm and Earle Schmidt purchased the property and opened the 6-S Ranch Airpark to the northwest of the modern-day intersection of Soledad Canyon and Whites Canyon Roads.

After Helm Schmidt’s death in 1960, the airport closed, and developer Jerry Snider began construction of the North Oaks subdivision in 1961, transforming the landscape once known as the Nadeau ranch.

Some mysteries remain, including the exact boundaries of the deer park, the fate of its animals, and whether Nadal Street derives its name from the family.

To read yesterday’s Today in SCV History, click here.

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