A Canyon as Cultural Landmark?

The muck of Los Angeles City Hall’s land development politics seemed far away from the hot Santa Monica Mountains hillside. But politics as much as a desire for a hike had brought me to the mountains last Saturday.

Leading our group up the hill was a tall, gaunt man of 78--geologist Tom Dibblee Jr., who knows the Santa Monica Mountains rock by rock. He’s walked more than 40,000 square miles of California, mapping mountains, valleys, canyons and faults. Gesturing with one hand, holding a bullhorn in the other, Dibblee pointed out surrounding canyons and formations created when the earth was thrust upward more than 20 million years ago.

I’d joined the hike--a fund-raiser to finance publication of Dibblee’s maps--to learn something about the history of the mountains. Mountain history had become mixed up with politics in City Hall that week in an unusual development controversy.

In another part of the Santa Monicas, several miles to the east, developers Fred Sahadi and his wife, Helen, have proposed building 26 homes in Fryman Canyon, 63 acres of unspoiled hiking paths, oaks and a small stream between Mulholland Drive and Studio City in the San Fernando Valley.

The project has been approved by the City Council and grading permits have been issued by the Department of Building and Safety. But in a last desperate attempt to stop the project, canyon supporters last month asked the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission to declare Fryman Canyon a historical and cultural monument.

Nobody has ever proposed saving a canyon on grounds that it is a historical and cultural landmark. That designation usually goes to old theaters, Art Deco buildings or homes by Frank Lloyd Wright. But the maneuver worked, at least temporarily. The commission issued an order stopping Sahadi from construction until it decides whether to include the canyon on the city’s historical-cultural preservation list. Commissioners are expected to announce this month whether the canyon should be preserved.

With understandable unhappiness, Sahadi’s attorney, Benjamin M. Reznik, filed an objection. He accused the canyon supporters of trying to force Sahadi to sell the canyon for parkland at below fair market value.

“There is no evidence that the environmental attributes of the subject property (if any) have any unique or special relationship to the people of the city of Los Angeles. . . . In fact this site has no more cultural significance than any other undeveloped land in the Santa Monica Mountains,” he told the commission. “Unless the commission is prepared to designate every undeveloped property in the Santa Monica Mountains area, it should disapprove the proposed designation.”

That put the question clearly. Is undeveloped land of historical significance? Can a canyon without buildings be of historical importance? Are the Santa Monica Mountains’ steep, rocky weed patches available for development, or are they part of our heritage?

I thought of the answer when I talked to Tom Dibblee.

Dibblee looks like the late John Huston. He has a long, thin face, weathered by the sun. He speaks in a slow cadence, hard to understand at first, a man who’s spent much of his life alone in the mountains, uncomfortable with conversation.

Anyone walked over more of California than you? I asked. “I’ve walked over more of it and driven over more of it,” he said. “You have to go all over to map, up every canyon, every road cut, every ridge. It takes a lot of walking.”

In his mapping expeditions, Dibblee has recorded many millions of years of California history. Saturday, he led the group through 25 million years, including the remains of the great volcanic eruptions and the earth movements along the faults.

We hiked into Malibu Creek State Park from Mulholland Highway until the park rangers stopped us. The intense heat had multiplied fire danger, and the park was closed. With Dibblee leading, we returned to the highway. He walked along the shoulder, examining the formations, oblivious to the Beverly Hills bikers, on their fancy Harleys, speeding by.

The formations, twisted and pushed into their present shapes, are part of Southern California’s history and heritage. They go with the manzanita, the chaparral, the wildlife and the rest of the Santa Monica Mountains’ ambience. These works of nature represent as much of our past as a Frank Lloyd Wright house or Mann’s Chinese Theater.

We don’t have to declare Tom Dibblee a cultural and historical monument. He’s already done that with his life’s work. But we can preserve the mountains, so there’s more left of them than Tom Dibblee’s maps.