Canyon Name Origins – Goss Canyon

Goss Canyon has some very interesting history attached to it. Goss Canyon is at the very top of Rosemont, fenced off from public access by a CV Water District fence as they have storage tanks there. Its name honors one of the early successful manufacturers in Los Angeles, and the canyon itself has been the site of several historic events. First the name.

Thomas Goss was born in England, immigrating to the U.S. as a youngster. He came west as a ’49er, and was one of the few to strike it rich. He established a brick manufacturing company in San Diego in the 1870s, but soon moved his business to the faster growing Los Angeles. Downtown Los Angeles was a great place to make bricks, there being a ready supply of clay on Bunker Hill. As a matter of fact, a street that disappeared when Bunker Hill was redeveloped in the 1970s was Clay Street, so named for the seam of clay on the hillside between Hill Street and Olive Street. Goss, who was the largest brick manufacturer in LA, had the clay for his bricks, but he needed wood to fire his brick-making kilns. That’s where Goss Canyon came in.

Thomas Goss and other brick factories in Los Angeles contracted with woodcutters to go and get wood from the San Gabriel Mountains for their operations. Goss Canyon, a deep canyon with a spring, undoubtedly had good stands of large bigcone Douglas fir trees. Teams of woodcutters, often Chinese laborers, cut four-foot lengths to be hauled to LA. The canyon was never owned by Thomas Goss, but it can be assumed that the woodcutters named the canyon after the man who was paying them for their labor.

Goss Canyon was next occupied by the Bathey family. Charles Bathey had a dairy in Los Angeles, but apparently wanted a more remote existence. In 1884, he came to the Crescenta Valley and camped in Goss Canyon. It was federal land, available for purchase for $2.50 an acre if he agreed to make improvements on the land. While still maintaining his dairy in LA, Charles built a house in Goss Canyon, planted gardens and orchards, and kept bees. By 1890, he had bought over 150 acres, and was living there with his wife and four kids. The Bathey kids lived in that house in the canyon for many decades; the two sisters, Winnie and Ally Bathey, all the way until the 1960s. It was sold to another owner, and apparently a caretaker for the property still lives in the original Bathey house, built in the late 1880s.

Goss Canyon was unfenced during the growth years of CV, the ’50s and ’60s, and many kids lived out their mountain man fantasies climbing up the deep shaded canyon. The Bathey family had dug a couple of deep-water mines in the canyon, and kids happily explored these treacherous old tunnels. That innocent joy turned to horrifying tragedy a couple of decades ago. Two adults who had explored the mines as kids returned as adults to explore farther into the deep mine, past a section submerged under water. One of the young men died deep in the mine after using scuba gear to explore past the water filled portion.

The lower portion of the canyon, about 15 acres, near the top of Rosemont has come up for sale several times. Development ideas have been proposed, including a private school, probably inadvisable in a canyon that floods in heavy rain. In response to this, the community banded together to preserve that land as permanent open space. Using donated funds, the Altadena-based Arroyos and Foothills Conservancy purchased the land. The land, now called the Rosemont Preserve, is open at scheduled times for docent-led hikes, work days when invasive plants are pulled and trees are planted, and school field trips. Check out its website at www.arroyosfoothills.org.

I don’t think Thomas Goss would have been on board with the idea of preservation. But for the community, it has been a great alternative to another development in fire and flood prone Goss Canyon.

  mike lawler