Neenach ( ) is an agricultural
settlement
Settlement may refer to:
*Human settlement, a community where people live
*Settlement (structural), the distortion or disruption of parts of a building
* Closing (real estate), the final step in executing a real estate transaction
*Settlement (fin ...
in northwestern
Los Angeles County, California, with a population of about 800.
[The U.S. Census does not break out a separate figure for Neenach. The county registrar said in 1991 that the voting district for Neenach, which included the nearby Three Points area and Holiday Valley, had 378 voters. The 800 figure is from the Scott Gold story, below.] It is facing a massive change with the proposed construction of a 23,000-home
planned community
A planned community, planned city, planned town, or planned settlement is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed on previously undeveloped land. This contrasts with settlements that evolve ...
to its north called
Centennial
{{other uses, Centennial (disambiguation), Centenary (disambiguation)
A centennial, or centenary in British English, is a 100th anniversary or otherwise relates to a century, a period of 100 years.
Notable events
Notable centennial events at ...
.
Geography and climate
Neenach is northwest of
Lancaster in the
Antelope Valley
The Antelope Valley is located in northern Los Angeles County, California, and the southeast portion of Kern County, California, and constitutes the western tip of the Mojave Desert. It is situated between the Tehachapi, Sierra Pelona, and t ...
portion of
Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...
. It is southeast of
Gorman and north of the
Sierra Pelona Mountains
The Sierra Pelona, also known as the Sierra Pelona Ridge or the Sierra Pelona Mountains, is a mountain ridge in the Transverse Ranges in Southern California. Located in northwest Los Angeles County, the ridge is bordered on the north by the San An ...
, and from the
county seat
A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or civil parish. The term is in use in Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, Taiwan, and the United States. The equivalent term shire town is used in the US st ...
in
Downtown Los Angeles
Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) contains the central business district of Los Angeles. In addition, it contains a diverse residential area of some 85,000 people, and covers . A 2013 study found that the district is home to over 500,000 jobs. It is ...
. This region experiences hot and dry summers.
History
Early names
The original name for present day Neenach is ''puyutsiwamǝŋ''. This is in the
Kitanemuk language
The Kitanemuk are an indigenous people of California. They traditionally lived in the Tehachapi Mountains and the Antelope Valley area of the western Mojave Desert of southern California, United States. Today some Kitanemuk people are enrolled in ...
. The Spanish referred to it as Ojo de la Vaca.
[
]
Cow Springs and French John's Station
A 19th century name for the area was Cow Springs (), about a mile southwest of today's Neenach School.[Bonnie Ketterl Kane, ''A View From the Ridge Route, Volume III, The Ranchos,'' Frazier Park: Bonnie's Books, 2005 ]
El Camino Viejo
El Camino Viejo a Los Ángeles ( en, the Old Road to Los Angeles), also known as El Camino Viejo and the Old Los Angeles Trail, was the oldest north-south trail in the interior of Spanish colonial Las Californias (1769–1822) and Mexican Alta Cal ...
, the Old Road to Los Angeles, passed from Laguna Chico Lopez north via Willow Springs Canyon, then west to the water at Aquaje Lodoso, then to Cow Springs and on to Tejon Pass
The Tejon Pass , previously known as ''Portezuelo de Cortes'', ''Portezuela de Castac'', and Fort Tejon Pass is a mountain pass between the southwest end of the Tehachapi Mountains and northeastern San Emigdio Mountains, linking Southern Califor ...
.[Frank F. Latta, "EL CAMINO VIEJO a LOS ANGELES" - The Oldest Road of the San Joaquin Valley; Bear State Books, Exeter, 2006; p.21. Reprint of the 1936 work by Frank F. Latta.] Later a shorter route was followed by the Stockton - Los Angeles Road Stockton may refer to:
Places Australia
* Stockton, New South Wales
* Stockton, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region
New Zealand
*Stockton, New Zealand
United Kingdom
* Stockton, Cheshire
*Stockton, Norfolk
* Stockton, Chi ...
and the Butterfield Overland Mail
Butterfield Overland Mail (officially the Overland Mail Company)Waterman L. Ormsby, edited by Lyle H. Wright and Josephine M. Bynum, "The Butterfield Overland Mail", The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, 1991. was a stagecoach service i ...
between Elizabeth Lake and Gorman. Instead of going north-south, travelers went east-west via the San Andreas Rift
The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizontal). ...
and Oakgrove Canyon, and north-south via Pine Canyon
Pine Canyon is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Monterey County, California, Monterey County, California, just south of King City, California, King City. Pine Canyon sits at an elevation of . As of the 2020 United St ...
, Antelope Valley
The Antelope Valley is located in northern Los Angeles County, California, and the southeast portion of Kern County, California, and constitutes the western tip of the Mojave Desert. It is situated between the Tehachapi, Sierra Pelona, and t ...
and Cow Springs. French Johns Station, 14 miles east of Gorman near Cow Springs, provided a way station for the stage line, teamsters and other travelers.
In 1888, Cow Springs was described as "a pleasant camping-place with willow trees, casting an inviting shade to the weary traveler" with a "pure, cold, limpid stream which came bubbling up from its earthen reservoir and went gaily dancing down to the thirsty soil that encompassed it about."
Establishment
Neenach itself was founded in the 1870s by Danish settlers from Neenah, Wisconsin
Neenah () is a city in Winnebago County, Wisconsin, in the north central United States. It is situated on the banks of Lake Winnebago, Little Lake Butte des Morts, and the Fox River, approximately forty miles (60 km) southwest of Green ...
. In 1888, a post office was established, with John A. Coovert as the first postmaster.[Bonnie Ketterl Kane, ''A Brief Overview of the History of Neenach.'']
Although Kane states that the post office was originally known as Neenah and it became known later as Neenach, she cites no source. The first mention of Neenach in the ''Los Angeles Times'' was on September 4, 1890, reporting a marriage license
A marriage license (or marriage licence in Commonwealth spelling) is a document issued, either by a religious organization or state authority, authorizing a couple to marry. The procedure for obtaining a license varies between jurisdictio ...
issued to Uriah W. Pratt, 32, and Estelle Hereford, 24, both "of Neenach." There were no references in the ''Times'' data base
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...
under any other spelling. In September 1905 Christian Clausen was named postmaster.
James Anderson filed a homestead claim for 160 acres (647,000 m²) at present-day State Route 138 and 300th Street West in 1887. He had a county contract to maintain and improve roads in the Antelope Valley as far as Three Points.[
Construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct between 1905 and 1913, which brought water from the distant ]Owens Valley
Owens Valley ( Numic: ''Payahǖǖnadǖ'', meaning "place of flowing water") is an arid valley of the Owens River in eastern California in the United States. It is located to the east of the Sierra Nevada, west of the White Mountains and Iny ...
to the San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, California. Located to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it contains a large portion of the City of Los Angeles, as well as unincorporated ar ...
, was important to the area.
On July 13, 1917, Chief Water Engineer William Mulholland
William Mulholland (September 11, 1855 – July 22, 1935) was an Irish American self-taught civil engineer who was responsible for building the infrastructure to provide a water supply that allowed Los Angeles to grow into the largest city in Ca ...
of the city of Los Angeles, the builder of the aqueduct, received word that the line had been broken. He went to Neenach and found a 60-foot rupture. He ordered additional surveillance, which saw the arrest of one man, an employee of the rival Los Angeles Gas and Electric Company. The suspect was later released.
James Anderson became a line rider or patrolman on the aqueduct: He had to shut down the tunnel periodically to check its condition. He also checked the surface to verify that none of the aqueduct's opponents had damaged it. Harry Womersley, from England by way of Illinois, was another resident who worked on the aqueduct—the 12 miles from Fairmont to Neenach.[
Gold was discovered in the hills south of the community in the early 1930s. The "Oh Suzanna" mine produced some $7 million over the few years of its operation.][
In the 1970s, Neenach was lively, one resident told a reporter. There were community-wide potluck dinners and almost 80 members in the local 4-H Club. Since then, he said, many of the kids moved away as soon as they were able.][
]
Proposed development
A portion of nearby Tejon Ranch
Tejon Ranch Company (), based in Lebec, California, is one of the largest private landowners in California. The company was incorporated in 1936 to organize the ownership of a large tract of land that was consolidated from four Mexican land gr ...
called Centennial
{{other uses, Centennial (disambiguation), Centenary (disambiguation)
A centennial, or centenary in British English, is a 100th anniversary or otherwise relates to a century, a period of 100 years.
Notable events
Notable centennial events at ...
is proposed to be a 23,000-home master-planned community adjacent to Neenach. Civic squares, parks, shops, three fire stations, and other services are proposed. Children would be encouraged to walk to one of the eight elementary schools planned. The promoters have pledged to create 30,000 local jobs. On average, a new house would be erected every eight hours, seven days a week, for 20 years.[
The Tucson, Arizona,-based ]Center for Biological Diversity
The Center for Biological Diversity is a nonprofit membership organization known for its work protecting endangered species through legal action, scientific petitions, creative media and grassroots activism. It was founded in 1989 by Kieran Suckl ...
, however, opposes the project—claiming that Centennial would be built on rare ecosystems, including the largest native grassland left in California.[
]
Education
Schools
The present Neenach School building was opened in 1993 to replace an older building that had stood for decades on a neighboring lot.[ The school was closed in 2001 because of dwindling population and high heating costs; lack of a natural-gas source meant the school was all-electric. Sixty-six pupils were enrolled the previous year.
Neenach is part of the ]Westside Union School District
The Westside Union School District in Southern California serves the western parts of Palmdale and Lancaster and their immediate suburbs, including Quartz Hill, Del Sur, Leona Valley, Antelope Acres, and Neenach.
It enrolls transitional k ...
of West Lancaster, which also operates Del Sur, Joe Walker, Hill View, Cottonwood, Rancho Vista, Sundown, Valley View, Leona Valley, and Quartz Hill schools, through the eighth grade
The community is within the Antelope Valley Union High School District
The Antelope Valley Union High School District (A.V.U.H.S.D.) is located in the Antelope Valley area of California, in northern Los Angeles County.
The union high school district includes eight public high schools, one trade school, and two co ...
and the Antelope Valley Community College District
Antelope Valley College (AVC) is a public community college in Lancaster, California. It is part of the California Community College system. It is operated by the Antelope Valley Community College District, with a primary service area of cov ...
.
Natural phenomena
Volcanic formations
The Neenach Volcanic Formations, about 23.5 million years old, are a series of igneous intrusion
In geology, an igneous intrusion (or intrusive body or simply intrusion) is a body of intrusive igneous rock that forms by crystallization of magma slowly cooling below the surface of the Earth. Intrusions have a wide variety of forms and com ...
s next to Old Post Road paralleling Interstate 5
Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main north–south Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific coast of the contiguous U.S. from Mexico to Canada. It travels through the states of Californi ...
near Gorman, California
Gorman is an unincorporated community in northwestern Los Angeles County. It is located in Peace Valley south of the Tejon Pass, which links Southern California with the San Joaquin Valley and Northern California. Due to this location, the ar ...
. Plate movement along the San Andreas Fault
The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizonta ...
split the formations and moved half of them about two hundred miles north into what is now Pinnacles National Park
Pinnacles National Park is an American national park protecting a mountainous area located east of the Salinas Valley in Central California, about east of Soledad and southeast of San Jose. The park's namesakes are the eroded leftovers of t ...
.Robin Soslow, ''Washington Post,'' syndicated in "Your Spirit Can Soar Like Condors," ''Sunday News,'' Lancaster, Pennsylvania, March 2, 2014, image 61
/ref>
Meteorite
The Neenach Meteorite is a 30-pound mass of stony, ordinary chondrite
A chondrite is a stony (non-metallic) meteorite that has not been modified, by either melting or differentiation of the parent body. They are formed when various types of dust and small grains in the early Solar System accreted to form primi ...
discovered in April 1948 by Elden Snyder of Neenach when he unearthed it with his plow, in the process breaking it into four pieces. In 1952 it was brought to the attention of Robert Wallace Webb of the University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduate ...
. Later it was donated to the collection of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
.
Communication
The ZIP Code is 93536, served by the Lancaster post office, and the telephone system is part of area code 661
Area code 661 is a California telephone area code that covers the majority of Kern County, as well as part of Los Angeles County, Santa Barbara County, and Tulare County. It was split from area code 805 on February 13, 1999.
Principal cities i ...
.
Gallery
See also
*Mountain Communities of the Tejon Pass
The Mountain Communities of the Tejon Pass, or the Frazier Mountain Communities, in the San Emigdio Mountains is a region of California that includes Lebec, Frazier Park, Lake of the Woods, Pinon Pines, and Pine Mountain Club, in Kern Count ...
References
Additional reading
"Distance From San Francisco to St. Louis: From Station to Station," ''The Semi-Weekly Southern News,'' February 6, 1861, page 4
Settlement of Cow Springs listed south of Tejon Canyon and north of Hart's Ranch in Santa Clarita
Santa Clarita (; Spanish for "Little St. Clare") 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-largest city by population in Los Angeles County, the 17t ...
"On His Own Domain," ''San Francisco Examiner,'' July 28, 1888, page 1
Posse on the trail of bandit chief Frank Fray stops to rest in Cow Springs, "on the eastern border of the Liebre ranch."
External links
''Antelope Valley Press'' newspaper
''The Mountain Enterprise'' newspaper
{{authority control
Unincorporated communities in Los Angeles County, California
Antelope Valley
Populated places in the Mojave Desert
El Camino Viejo
Butterfield Overland Mail in California
Stagecoach stops in the United States
Unincorporated communities in California