Tag Archives: Tejon Pass

Going Over the Tehachapi Line, Through The Grapevine

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An old-fashioned holiday View: the ravishing scenery of Tejon Pass covered in snow, as I travel over the Tehachapi Mountains in a Greyhound Bus, from North Hollywood into the Great Central Valley.

Just last week, on Christmas, snow had closed the 5 Freeway; more snows were predicted this morning. But half an hour before my trip, the dark clouds vanished, and across the Valley, skies suddenly turned blue. Our route is along the “Old Los Angeles – Stockton Road”, also known as “El Camino Viejo.” Stockton or Bust!

  • A gingko full of autumn gold redeems the NoHo bus station.
  • The snowy San Gabriels redeem sprawling San Fernando.
  • Dramatic clouds redeem the Los Angeles Aqueduct, Mulholland’s masterpiece.

“Southern California is the land ‘South of Tehachapi’ — south, that is, of the transverse Tehachapi Range which knifes across to the ocean just north of Santa Barbara… In the vast and sprawling state of California, most state-wide religious, political, social, fraternal, and commercial organizations are divided into northern and southern sections at the Tehachapi line. When sales territories are parceled out, when political campaigns are organized, when offices are allocated, the same line always prevails.”

— Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island On The Land, 1942
  • The steep ascent is a notorious break-down spot during 100-degree summers.

These lands, the lush hills and canyons between San Fernando and Grapevine, were the core territory of the Tataviam, the “People of the Southern Slopes.” This territory was between the Chumash peoples’ hills toward the Ventura coast, and the Kitanemuk peoples’ hills clustered around mighty Mt. Tehachapi itself. The Tataviam range was small but it was incredibly strategic; then, as now, the Pass was an economic corridor. Naturally, the big Tataviam rancheria in the pass, Castac, was, like Achoicomenga to the south, a prosperous mixed-language settlement and trading center. Unlike Achoicomenga, which was obliterated by Mission San Fernando being built on top of it, Tataviam speakers somehow survived around Castac, even after the U.S. Army built Fort Tejon at the top of the Pass (1850). There were even Tataviam speakers working at Tejon Ranch in the 1920’s when anthropologist J.P. Harrington found them and worked with them to preserve Tataviam language and culture. One of these last Tataviam was the chief stockman and overseer of the whole massive ranch.

  • Pyramid Lake , really a reservoir holding the Aqueduct’s water.
  • Fort Tejon State Park is somewhere under all that snow.
  • The Chandlers’ fabled Tejon Ranch
  • At Grapevine Canyon begins “The Grapevine,” an icy treacherous slide downhill. For once, not driving, I get to enjoy the cloud-shadowed hills.

And just like that, you’re “through The Grapevine,” out of the Pass and into the awesome Central Valley. All this range-land is, or has been, part of Tejon Ranch. The huge estate became the private farm of the Chandler family, who used to publish the LA Times. The descendants are always threatening to develop the hell out of it. So far, most parts of the storied spread seem scarcely to have changed since the 1950s.