On Nov. 2, 1976, the creation of Canyon Country County was denied, despite local support. In November of 1976, residents of the Santa Clarita Valley voted to create a new county called Canyon County, separating from Los Angeles County. The movement, known locally as the “Yes on Proposition F” campaign, was driven by self-governance and frustration with neglect residents felt ...

On November 1, 1963, the community of Canyon Country was established and started the “Frontier Days” celebrations. Before Santa Clarita’s existence, the area was home to tribes such as the Tongva, Kitanemuk, and Serrano people and most notably the Tataviam people for over five hundred years. Once the Spanish settled in the valley, around 1790 it became lands of the ...

On October 31, 1991, a fatal accident in Japan brought a tragic close to “The Umbrellas Japan–USA,” a massive bicontinental art installation partially in the Tejon Pass. Designed by Bulgarian-born artist Christo and his wife, Jeanne-Claude, the ambitious project featured 3,100 giant umbrellas, blue in Japan and golden poppy-colored in California, celebrating the shared landscapes and contrasts between the two ...

On October 30, 1907, ornithologist Florence Augusta Merriam Bailey wrote notes of her travels through the Santa Clarita Valley while on a trip through California. One of the sisters of renowned naturalist Clinton Hart Merriam and the wife of Chief Field Naturalist for the Bureau of Biological Survey Vernon Bailey, Bailey passed through Saugus and Soledad Canyon on a research ...

On Oct. 29, 2017, longtime Santa Clarita powerhouse Jo Anne Darcy, the only person to serve two consecutive terms as mayor, died at her home. Born Jo Anne Hall on May 2, 1931, in San Angelo, Texas, she moved to California with her mother as a young girl. After meeting her husband, Curtis, the couple settled in Culver City, but ...

Robert E. Callahan, the man behind the former Callahan’s Old West attraction along Sierra Highway in Mint Canyon, was born on Oct. 27, 1892, in Virginia.  Over the course of his life, Callahan built a reputation as an author, businessman and collector of Native American and Western artifacts, eventually bringing his vision of the Old West to the Santa Clarita ...

On Oct. 26, 1927, an air mail flight over the mountains ended in drama when the pilot was forced to parachute through heavy fog near Castaic, surviving a 9,000-foot leap to safety. Pilot Charles R. “Dick” Bowman, part of the Pacific Air Transport line running from Seattle to Los Angeles, took off in plane #2072 from the Newhall Airport at ...

Henry Clay Wiley, an early pioneer of Los Angeles and the Santa Clarita Valley, died at his home in Los Angeles on Oct. 25, 1898, at age 69. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1829, Wiley spent much of his life shaping Southern California communities through public service, civic involvement, and entrepreneurial ventures. Wiley’s early life took him from Pennsylvania to ...

On Oct. 24, 1992, the young City of Santa Clarita celebrated a transportation milestone by dedicating its first Metrolink station on Soledad Canyon Road. The station stood immediately east of the then-Saugus Speedway on a 6.6-acre site the city leased from Whittaker Corp. The city had spent $5.2 million to lease the property and construct the station and parking lot. ...

On this day in 1898, Maria “Mary” S. Ruiz was born in San Francisquito Canyon to a pioneering ranch family whose roots in the Santa Clarita Valley reach back to the mid-1800s. She was the daughter of Enrique (Henry) Rayales Ruiz and Rosaria (Perea) Ruiz, early settlers whose family ranch lay along the canyon’s lower reaches, not far from present-day ...