City Acts to Protect Rocky Terrain of Santa Susana Area

If the rocky outcroppings around Stoney Point could speak, they’d spin plenty of tales about mountain lions, the Lone Ranger, even Charles Manson.

History and nature abound in these rugged peaks, from the trail that retraces a stagecoach route to the Indian grinding stones baking in the sun, hundreds of years after they were last used. Bobcats, hawks and a rare plant can be found in the hills, and hikers and climbers are drawn to the hidden canyons and nearby Stoney Point.

But with each passing year, this rare pocket of the Old West feels modern urban growth creeping closer. In an attempt to preserve the rocky sandstone vistas, city officials last week proposed additional requirements on developers. The full Los Angeles City Council needs to approve the proposals, which would require developers to apply to the city before disrupting the rocks.

It’s a start, area residents say, but several also think parkland designation is the only way to permanently preserve the scenic mountains that line the Ventura County-Los Angeles County border.

“For me, this is the Old West. This is where they filmed all those old movies,” said Diana Dixon-Davis, a board member of the Santa Susana Mountain Park Assn. “It accesses a part of history we are quickly losing.”

The rocky peaks, familiar to many as the backdrop for such movies as “Wee Willie Winkie” with child star Shirley Temple, and westerns such as “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine” with Henry Fonda and Fred MacMurray, were not specifically cited in the area’s community plan guidelines that regulate development. City Councilman Hal Bernson said that oversight needed to be corrected to prevent developers from moving or destroying the rocks.

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Bernson said the additional wording proposed last week for the community plan would require a developer to apply to the city if a project would mean moving or disrupting rocks. The city’s building and safety department would inspect the project.

The proposed restrictions apply to rocky outcroppings to the north and west of Stoney Point, south of the Ronald Reagan Freeway, and to the east and west of Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

But Dixon-Davis said the best protection for the fragile area is to purchase land so that precious wildlife corridors are preserved. More parkland, such as the new Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park just west of Chatsworth Park, is the only way to protect the land, she said.

Just over the border in Ventura County, developers are grading the same kind of landscape, irrevocably altering dramatic mountain scapes, said Paul Edelman of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. The dramatic sandstone outcroppings, known as the Chico or Chatsworth formations, are 80 million years old and unique to the area, he said.

The area’s canyons and rocky peaks hold many surprises for those who take the time to explore, said Judy Garris, a Canoga Park resident and president of the Santa Susana Mountain Park Assn.

An avid outdoorswoman, Garris leads hikes to view the resident horned owl, red-tailed and Coopers hawks, Humboldt lilies and, in some lucky instances, the Santa Susana tar plant, a state-listed rare plant. The pungent shrub with lime-green leaves sprouts yellow flowers in late spring.

For many years, the area’s isolation also drew the more offbeat fringe of society to live among the boulders.

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An ascetic group that followed Krishna Venta, a self-styled Christlike figure, lived in the hills in the 1940s. Wearing brown and blue robes, they lived in a monastery in nearby Box Canyon.

Perhaps the most infamous residents were Manson and his followers, who lived on the Spahn Movie Ranch, just off Santa Susana Pass Road across from Stoney Point.

Many people have probably seen the rocky outcroppings but not realized these were the locations so often used as popular backdrops in movies and TV shows.

It’s hard to forget the heroic voice of the masked man who thunders his white steed around a towering rock, commanding, “Hi-yo, Silver, away!”

For many, the landmark Lone Ranger rock is an enduring symbol of the black and white westerns shot here. The area’s Iverson Ranch, blessed with mammoth-size boulders, was home to that show and hundreds of other productions.

“People say, ‘I’ve lived here 20 years and never seen the formations,’ ” Garris said. “Once you get to know these areas, there are fantastic canyons and springs. It’s an experience you can’t have anywhere else in L.A.”