In the mid-20th century, the mountain hosted facilities related to Project Nike as part of the Los Angeles Nike Missile Ring. The Nike station was later reused as a rocket fuel laboratory by the Marquardt Corporation as part of the Apollo program.
The area around Magic Mountain is part of the ancestral territory of the Tataviam people, who made several footpaths in the region south of the peak and used them for hunting and gathering.[2]
Magic Mountain was originally known as Iron Mountain on United States Geological Survey topographic maps; this name first appeared in the year 1900.[3] The name Magic Mountain first appeared on these maps in 1939.[4][5]Six Flags Magic Mountain, an amusement park in nearby Valencia, is named after the mountain.[6]
Nike missile site (1955–1963)
In 1955, Magic Mountain was selected by Project Nike to be an Integrated Fire Control site for Nike Ajax missiles as part of the Los Angeles Defense Area. Construction included the improvement of the access road to the peak from Bear Divide,[7] installation of water infrastructure, and construction of a transmission line. These projects, along with the IFC technology itself, were completed by the end of 1956 and the base was given the designation LA-98-C.[8] The missile launch site itself was constructed in Lang, just east of Canyon Country.[9]
Army housing for the families of soldiers stationed at Magic Mountain (as well as nearby Los Pinetos) was completed in Sand Canyon in early 1959.[10] The site atop Magic Mountain was operational from 1957 until 1961, when the missile launch site at Lang was upgraded to use Nike Hercules missiles but control was transferred to another nearby IFC site.[8] Both sites were considered for addition to the National Register of Historic Places, but the degradation of the sites led to them being passed over.[8]
Marquardt Corporation laboratory (1964–1970)
The former IFC site was transferred back to the US Forest Service after 1962, before being leased out to the Marquardt Corporation, who constructed their Rocket Test Laboratory on the peak. They chose this site to test "highly reactive or toxic propellants" at a safe distance from the populated areas their existing test sites were located in, such as Saugus and Van Nuys.[11] The lab was dedicated on October 30, 1964.[12] While in operation, various tests were conducted at the site as part of the Apollo program.[13]
In December 1967, three residents of the San Fernando Valley died in a plane crash on the mountainside.[14]
Recent history (1970–present)
In the 1980s, Phil Gillibrand of the P.W. Gillibrand Company made plans to strip mineilmenite and magnetite at multiple sites in what would later become the Magic Mountain Wilderness between the peak and Soledad Canyon.[15] These plans were approved in 1991 but never materialized.[16]
Following the closure of the Marquardt lab, management of the peak was once again returned to the Forest Service. The Magic Mountain Wilderness area and the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument were established in 2009 and 2014, respectively.[17][18]
Magic Mountain is one of the windiest areas in Los Angeles County. In 2023, the National Weather Service reported wind gusts of over 100 miles per hour at the Magic Mountain Truck Trail wind monitoring station located on the peak on two occasions, both during Santa Ana wind events.[21][22] In 2025, the same NWS station reported wind gusts of 86 miles per hour leading up to the January 2025 Southern California wildfires.[23]
12,282 acres of undisturbed land on the north slopes of the mountain were designated as the Magic Mountain Wilderness by the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009.[24] Representative Buck McKeon of California's 25th congressional district, who led a last-minute effort to add the mountain to the bill,[25] described the land around Magic Mountain as "some of the most magnificent in California and the country."[17] The declaration of a wilderness area on Magic Mountain was championed by Dianne Erskine-Hellrigel, the leader of a local Santa Clarita hiking club,[26] as well as the Sierra Club. Erskine-Hellrigel, who wrote an environmental report on the region prior to its designation as a national wilderness,[27] described the region as "one of the most beautiful natural areas around Santa Clarita."[28]
The Magic Mountain Wilderness The peak itself is excluded from the wilderness area due to the improvements made by Project Nike and Marquardt.[29]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
