Canyon Name Origins – Big Tujunga, Zachau

The magnificent San Gabriel Mountains above Tujunga, La Crescenta and La Cañada have a multitude of canyons that snake down into our valley. Those canyons each have a name, some from indigenous language, some Spanish, but most American. The names themselves have individual histories. For the most part, the names are of original landowners, and those names are easy to track to tell their stories. A few of them are named for woodcutters who came up from Los Angeles to cut firewood for the growing city. Those names are harder to pin down and, in some cases, we still don’t know the story behind those canyon names. Let’s take a look at the name origins of the canyons to our north, starting in Tujunga and moving east to the Arroyo Seco. For the canyons above Tujunga, I rely on historian Marlene Hitt and her book “Sunland and Tujunga: From Village to City.”

Big Tujunga Canyon forms the western edge of Sunland-Tujunga today. It’s a major canyon of the San Gabriels, with a year-round water flow. Its name is of Native-American origin, the village of “Tuhungna,” which reportedly lay on a plateau above the flood plain on the northern side of the stream near the confluence of the stream from Little Tujunga Canyon. The name meant “the place of the old woman” and it’s thought that perhaps the name referred to a rock formation that resembled the form of an old woman further up in the canyon. The villagers, members of the larger Tongva tribe, lived here peacefully for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years until they were gathered up by the San Gabriel Mission in the late 1700s.

The Spanish reused many Tongva village names, giving them a slightly more Spanish sound. Topanga, Cahuenga, Azusa, Pacoima and Cucamonga all have roots in Tongva village names. The place name Tuhungna was reused in Anglicized (or Spanish-ized) form for Rancho “Tujunga” granted to the Lopez brothers in 1840. The Rancho encompassed Little Tujunga and Big Tujunga Canyons, and what is now the town of Tujunga.

Big Tujunga Canyon has a “wild west” history. It produced gold from the Spanish period right up through the American years. Big Tujunga Canyon was the focus of a gold rush in the 1880s and gold mining was a continuing enterprise in the canyon until the 1930s. In the late 1800s, Big Tujunga was a refuge for cattle and horse thieves, who often drove their stolen stock up through the Crescenta Valley along “Horse Thief Trail,” today’s Tujunga Canyon Road, and thence into their canyon hideouts.

The next canyon to the east is Zachau Canyon, fairly well obscured today by the Seven Hills development. The canyon and the land below were acquired by Harry Zachau in 1910. Springs in the canyon watered the idyllic little ranch’s orchards and vegetable gardens as well as several acres of alfalfa and a grove of eucalyptus trees. The Zachau family had a general store and were community leaders. In 1932, the Zachaus backed the anti-annexation forces in a very ugly annexation bid by the City of Los Angeles. When the City won the battle, the Zachaus lost their water and some of their land in a punitive move by LA, which even went so far as to strip the Zachau name off the street they lived on. The developers of Seven Hills apparently restored the family’s name to a street, Zachau Place, when they laid out their tract. The Zachau name is also attached to a debris basin at the base of Zachau Canyon.

We’ll continue heading east next week, but I wanted to mention that this Sunday the community has a chance to meet and support the local heroes I’ve been writing about lately, the Montrose Search and Rescue team. This Sunday, Sept. 24, team members will be at a MSR fundraiser from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Newcomb’s Ranch up on the Angeles Crest. Come out Sunday for a beautiful mountain drive. Buy a lunch at Newcomb’s, and a portion of the proceeds will benefit the team. I hope to see you there!