Olden and Golden Years

This weekend in the Santa Monica Mountains high above Calabasas, you can join the celebration of the California sesquicentennial at two programs highlighting the birth of the state 150 years ago.

In Malibu Creek State Park, family-friendly events will be hosted Saturday and Sunday by State Park Ranger Jim Holt. The first will be a morning walking tour of the Sepulveda Adobe near the park’s entrance at Las Virgenes Road and Mulholland Highway, along the Santa Monica Mountains’ crest. Sunday’s event, in the afternoon, will be an introduction to panning for gold.

The adobe tour on Saturday will take in the oldest structure in the Las Virgenes Valley and one of the few remaining original adobes in Southern California, Holt said. It was built in 1863. “It was lived in until 1980,” Holt said, “ever since it was built on the site soon after the first house there washed away in the floods of 1859.”

The original two-room structure--for a while home to Pedro and Soledad Sepulveda, members of one of California’s pioneer families, and their 14 children--had many rooms added to it in the century that followed. Found in 1925 to be fashionably picturesque by a crew for a silent movie, it was used as scenery for a melodrama titled “Amateur Daddy.” By then it had been “improved” with wall coverings inside and out, trapping moisture that almost destroyed the adobe mud walls, which otherwise would have survived in California’s dry climate, Holt said.

Holt has a collection of photos of the house’s furnishings, including an iron kettle reportedly abandoned near the site by Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza a century before the Sepulveda family arrived.

Whether it is de Anza’s pot or not, Native Americans and explorers in California were already having outdoor barbecues in Calabasas before the United States was founded in 1776.

It is unsafe to go inside the Sepulveda adobe because it was severely damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. But the quake exposed several portions of the 2-foot-thick walls, allowing visitors to catch a glimpse of how adobes were built.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation will hold its annual conference in October in Los Angeles, co-sponsored by the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Members will study sites, such as the Sepulveda Adobe and the quake-damaged Los Encinos Adobe in Encino, to learn about techniques for restoring these historic buildings. Funding for such repairs will be included in a state parks bond issue that will appear on the March ballot. Participants in the Sunday event at 2 p.m. will gather near the kiosk at the Tapia Unit entrance of Malibu State Park and be escorted to a campsite on Malibu Creek, where they can try their hands at panning for gold.

To make the experience seem more realistic and to give children something to look for, Holt plans to sprinkle gravel that looks like gold in the creek.

“I considered using real gold flakes, the size of what the ‘49ers usually found, but they would be too small for [unpracticed] people to locate,” Holt said.

He also devised a “gold rush game” that families can play in the afternoon, similar to an outdoor version of Monopoly. Participants are the pieces that move around staking gold claims, taking over saloons and other businesses and even going to jail.

At dusk, visitors who have brought along the fixings for an outdoor barbecue can gather around a campfire by the creek for a cookout and an 1850s-style sing-along. For complete information on sesquicentennial events at California state parks, including two informative books, “California in Time” and “California 150 Sesquicentennial Passport,” call (914) 653-4000.

BE THERE

California sesquicentennial events:

“Historic Adobe Walk,” Saturday, 9-10:30 a.m., Malibu Creek State Park main entrance, 1925 Las Virgenes Road, immediately south of Mulholland Highway, Calabasas. Meet ranger at lower lot after paying $5 parking fee; “California Celebration,” Sunday, 2-5 p.m., Malibu Creek State Park, Tapia Unit entrance, one mile south of Mulholland Highway. Meet ranger inside Tapia entrance after paying $5 parking fee. For more information, call (818) 880-0363.