Oct 24, 2009 - SCMA Cemetery Tour

It was looking like a great weekend for a ride, so I got out of bed (a little late) and headed to Santa Paula for the 2009 SCMA Cemetery Tour.  The start was at Logsdon Cafe at the Santa Paula Airport.  I arrived at 9:45, after getting gas at the east end of Santa Paula.  As I was getting near the airport, I saw a group of riders heading out on their run.  I checked in, got my materials, and sat down for some biscuits & gravy, using the meal coupon that came with the entry fee.

I started my ride at 10:15.  It was the usual route for the area - South Mountain, Balcom Canyon, and the other roads to get to Moorpark, avoiding the 2 lane CA-118 highway.  This is a pleasant romp through orange and avocado orchards, with little or no traffic.  At Moorpark, it was some freeway riding on CA-118 until the east end of Simi Valley.  Then the route took Santa Susana Pass and Box Canyon roads to approach Chatsworth from the south.

The first stop was Oakwood Memorial Park.  Many Hollywood celebrities are buried here.  It is a beautiful setting at the foot of the Santa Susana Mountains.  An old historic church from the early days of Chatsworth is also here.  The cemetery relaxed its "no motorcycle" rules for today and allowed us to tour through.  We had to answer a question about the old pioneer church.  I caught up to the last group of riders at the church.  Several other riders were congregated around Ginger Rogers' grave.  You can find out more about the celebrities at the cemetery here:  http://www.seeing-stars.com/Buried2/Oakwood.shtml.

Next it was back to the 118 freeway, then Balboa to Sierra Highway and the Eternal Valley Cemetery in Newhall (part of Santa Clarita).  At the entrance there is the last horse drawn hearse used in LA County.  This cemetery also has both some pioneer history and Hollywood ties.  You can read more here:  http://www.the-signal.com/news/archive/11560/.

The tour avoided the freeway and continued on Sierra Highway (old US-6), eventually getting onto Bouquet Canyon Road for a trip past the Bouquet Reservoir.  Heading back towards Santa Clarita on San Francisquito Canyon Road, I got to the checkpoint and third stop.  This was at the northern point where San Francisquito Canyon Road was rerouted because of a washout in 2005.  From the checkpoint, it is a short walk on the old road to the site of the St Francis dam.  As part of the Owens Valley aqueduct project, this dam and reservoir was built to hold water for the City of Los Angeles.  The dam was completed 1926.  Not long after it was completely filled in 1928, at minutes before midnight on March 12, the dam collapsed - sending a wall of water down San Francisquito Canyon and then down the Santa Clara River Valley to the ocean near Oxnard.  Since many migrant farm worker camps were destroyed, it is hard to get and accurate count of the toll in human lives.  Most estimates are around 450 lives lost as the flood made its way down the Santa Clara River Valley, moving at 12 mph on its 54 mile journey to the ocean.

I walked down to the dam site.  One picture is of the dam base area looking east from the old road.  The other photo is of a chunk of dam material that had fallen onto the road.  Nature is slowly reclaiming the road.  From the checkpoint, you can see the ruins of the west wing dike which was added during construction so the water height could be raised 11% from initial design.  It is quite possibly this change - the main dam and its base was not thickened - that contributed to the failure.  You can read more here: http://www.sespe.com/damdisaster, and on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Francis_Dam.  Bouquet Canyon Reservoir was built to replace this. 

The tour continued down the canyon, eventually getting to CA-126 and the town of Piru.  At the west end of Center Street is the Piru Cemetery.  A number of victims from the St Francis Dam disaster are buried here, along with other pioneer Piru families.  After the cemetery, the route avoided CA-126 to again go past fields and orange orchards to get to Santa Paula, following the path of destruction from the flood.  A reminder of current hazards was along Guiberson road, were a 17,500 acre fire burned the hillside between Fillmore and Moorpark a month ago.

The last stop was in Santa Paula near the old train station.  Here there is a monument to a pair of motor officers who warned the residents of the coming flood in the wee hours of the morning.  They saved many lives.

Finally it was back to the Logsdon Cafe for the end of the ride.  I arrived a bit before 3:00.  The tour's path is shown on the map.

On the way home, I retraced some of my earlier path back to Simi Valley for a burger at the Habit along Tapo Canyon Road.