Mendenhall Ridge is the Valley Village View, at least at the northern limit. Little Tujunga Canyon is the pass that gets you through; like the high pass that leads out of Shangri-la, you can look back down the canyon from the top of Little Tujunga Canyon Road and glimpse below peace and palm trees, swimming pools and sunshine; while just over the Ridge, lies a Howling Nowhere.

The sharp ridge sliced its way up through the Valley sands. The peaks on the ridge-line, and the long lines of fault-scarps in the foothills below them, are the outward and visible sign of the Uplift! by which Southern California arose from the sea. Imagine a watermelon seed gripped between forefinger and thumb; imagine by squeezing, the seed might pop up. Imagine then, the Pacific Plate squeezing against the North American Plate at San Gabriel Fault; and this slab of ancient rock, caught between, is what pops up out of the crack: a huge vertical shard of Precambrian gneiss. At 1.5. billion years old, this is some of the oldest rock around. The dark bands of the rock have a slight gray-blue tinge.

The Ridge seems to have been named in the 20s for Walter C. Mendenhall, the 6th Director of National Geological Survey. Apparently he was an expert on local aquifers, appropriate since the Mendenhall Ridge cradles and gives rise to the Pacoima/Tujunga Watershed, which gives rise to the Los Angeles River, upon which so much depends.

Despite Ira Gershwin’s grumbling about tumbling and crumbling, a mountain is a pretty good investment for love, and I love this one. For more dirt on the geology, here’s a link to an (undergraduate!) thesis with all the gooey details on Mendenhall gneiss.