Beale's Cut Stagecoach Pass | |
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Location | Sierra Hwy and Clampitt Rd Santa Clarita, CA 91321 |
Coordinates | 34°20′41″N118°30′30″W / 34.3448°N 118.5084°W |
Built | 1862 |
Designated | May 11, 1992 |
Reference no. | 1006 |
Beale's Cut Stagecoach Pass (also known as the Fremont Pass, San Fernando Pass, and the Newhall Cut) is a stagecoach pass built in 1859 in what is now Santa Clarita, California. The Pass was designated a California Historical Landmark (No. 1006) on May 11, 1992. The cut provided a route in the pass between the San Gabriel Mountains and the Santa Susana Mountains ranges. It is located near the current interchange of the Interstate 5 and California State Route 14. [1]
The steep pass was made easier to cross with a deep slot-like road cut by Charles H. Brindley, Andrés Pico, and James R. Vineyard, to whom the State of California awarded a twenty-year contract to maintain the turnpike and collect tolls. [2] [3] Thus, the "San Fernando Mountain," the most daunting obstacle along the Fort Tejon Road, the main inland route from Los Angeles to the north, was cut through. Butterfield Overland Mail, a stagecoach that operated mail between St. Louis, Missouri, and San Francisco, began using it directly.
In 1861 a landowner and surveyor named Edward Beale was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as the federal Surveyor General of California and Nevada. Beale challenged General Pico's loyalty to the new president and in 1863, Beale was awarded the right to collect the toll in the pass. Beale maintained rights to the cut for the next twenty years and so it became known as "Beale's Cut." Beale used Chinese immigrants to do most of the work on the cut. Work was completed in 1863, but the LA Board of Supervisors accepted it as complete on March 5, 1864. [4]
The cut had major damage in the winter of 1861–62 and wagons could not get through the pass. In March 1862 soldiers under the command of Major Theodore Coult of the Fifth California Volunteer Infantry, repaired the cut and road. The Fifth California Volunteer Infantry headquarters were Camp Latham, California. The soldiers repaired the cut as ammunition wagons could not get to Fort Yuma, California. [5] [6]
Beale's Cut was eventually deepened to 90 feet (27.4 m). It lasted as a transportation passage near present-day Newhall Pass until the Newhall Tunnel opened in 1910. [7]
Beale's Cut appeared in many silent western movies. The location became a favorite of movie producers like John Ford and D. W. Griffith. In Ford's 1923 film Three Jumps Ahead , American cowboy star Tom Mix is filmed jumping over the pass, although it has been widely debated among film historians whether Mix himself made the jump, with any of a number of stuntmen claiming credit for it while some experts believe the jump was achieved purely through special effects. [8] John Ford used the location in at least four films over a twenty-year period beginning as early as 1917.
Still in existence today, it is no longer passable by automobiles. It suffered a partial collapse during the Northridge Earthquake, on January 17, 1994, and now is about 30 feet (9.1 m) deep. It is visible from the Sierra Highway about one mile north from the intersection of The Old Road and Sierra Highway, just after the first bridge under SR 14. It lies between Sierra Highway and the new freeway, about a quarter-mile to the northeast of a stone marker. Beale's Cut is difficult to find today because it is fenced off and not close enough to the Sierra Highway to be easily seen.
The pass originally discovered in August 1769 by Catalan explorer Gaspar de Portolà, the pass today is named for Henry Newhall, a businessman in the area during the 19th century.
In 1910 the 435 ft (133 m) Newhall Auto Tunnel was built a quarter-mile northwest of Beale's Cut. The tunnel was 17.5 ft (5.3 m) wide and two-way traffic through it was slow.
The California Division of Highways decided to replace the tunnel; in July 1938 work started to remove the rock above the tunnel to create a four-lane highway. The road was first known as US Highway 6, then state Highway 14, and finally the present-day Sierra Highway. The cut for the tunnel is west of today's Highway 14. [9]
The Santa Susana Mountains are a transverse range of mountains in Southern California, north of the city of Los Angeles, in the United States. The range runs east-west, separating the San Fernando and Simi valleys on its south from the Santa Clara River Valley to the north and the Santa Clarita Valley to the northeast. The Oxnard Plain is to the west of the Santa Susana Mountains.
Newhall Pass is a low mountain pass in Los Angeles County, California. Historically called Fremont Pass and San Fernando Pass, with Beale's Cut, it separates the Santa Susana Mountains from the San Gabriel Mountains. Although the pass was visited in August 1769 by Catalan explorer Gaspar de Portolá, it eventually was named for Henry Newhall, a significant businessman in the area during the 19th century.
The Ridge Route, officially the Castaic–Tejon Route, was a two-lane highway between Los Angeles County and Kern County, California. Opened in 1915 and paved with concrete between 1917 and 1921, the road was the first paved highway directly linking the Los Angeles Basin with the San Joaquin Valley over the Tejon Pass and the rugged Sierra Pelona Mountains ridge south of Gorman. Much of the old road runs through the Angeles National Forest, and passes many historical landmarks, including the National Forest Inn, Reservoir Summit, Kelly's Half Way Inn, Tumble Inn, and Sandberg's Summit Hotel. North of the forest, the Ridge Route passed through Deadman's Curve before ending at Grapevine.
Edward Fitzgerald "Ned" Beale was a national figure in the 19th-century United States. He was a naval officer, military general, explorer, frontiersman, Indian affairs superintendent, California rancher, diplomat, and friend of Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill Cody and Ulysses S. Grant. He fought in the United States-Mexican War, emerging as a hero of the Battle of San Pasqual in 1846. He achieved national fame in 1848 in carrying to the east the first gold samples from California, contributing to the gold rush.
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Andrés Pico was a Californio who became a successful rancher, fought in the contested Battle of San Pascual during the Mexican–American War, and negotiated promises of post-war protections for Californios in the 1847 Treaty of Cahuenga. After California became one of the United States, Pico was elected to the state Assembly and Senate. He was appointed as the commanding brigadier general of the state militia during the U.S. Civil War.
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Sierra Highway or El Camino Sierra is a road in Southern California, United States. El Camino Sierra refers to the full length of a trail formed in the 19th century, rebuilt as highways in the early 20th century, that ran from Los Angeles to Lake Tahoe following parts of modern State Route 14, U.S. Route 395 and State Route 89. Two portions of this road are currently signed as Sierra Highway. The first is an old alignment of SR 14/U.S. Route 6 from Los Angeles to Mojave. This road is also signed with the unusual designation of State Route 14U through the city of Santa Clarita. The second part signed as Sierra Highway is a portion of US 395 in Bishop.
Santa Clarita is a city in northwestern Los Angeles County in the U.S. state of California. With a 2020 census population of 228,673, it is the third-most populous city in Los Angeles County, the 17th-most populous in California, and the 103rd-most populous city in the United States. It is located about 30 miles (48 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, and occupies 70.75 square miles (183.2 km2) of land in the Santa Clarita Valley, along the Santa Clara River. It is a classic example of a U.S. edge city, satellite city, or boomburb.
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James Russell Vineyard was an American Democratic politician and pioneer. He served in the California State Senate and Assembly, and earlier was a member of the Wisconsin State Assembly, the legislature of the Wisconsin Territory and the 7th Michigan Territorial Council. He was infamous for shooting and killing fellow Wisconsin territorial legislator Charles C. P. Arndt on the floor of the legislature.
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