I’d attach a kind estimate that 99% of the dear citizens of Santa Clarita know not a thing about that old, beige building on the northwest corner of Market Street and Railroad Avenue. It’s the old Courthouse Building and for nearly a century, was the navel of the Santa Clarita universe. I had almost completely forgotten I once rented space there in the early 1970s. My Scared o’ Bears Ranch World Corporate Headquarters had deep shag carpets in circus orange and an old-fashioned frosted glass door, sort of a cross between 1940s private eye/Jimi Hendrix’s publicist office.

A friend called last weekend. He said our landmark Courthouse Building had been sold. The new owners were planning on demolishing it, which would be a sin and yet another slap in the face of Santa Clarita’s identity.

Back in 1878, Walter S. Newhall, son of Henry Mayo Newhall (who owned the entire SCV), built a mercantile store on the original spot, a blink after the town of Newhall was founded. Walter Newhall owned and operated it until 1896.

Saloon owner James Gully then bought it and operated it until the 1920s when he sold it to William Mayhue. Lloyd Houghton built the original Hap-a-Lan Dance Hall somewhere between 1920 and 1923. Houghton had served in World War I, came back to Newhall, then married William’s daughter Opal. That’s when he opened the dance hall in her father’s former store.

“A little liquor was served,” Houghton once remarked, “during those Prohibition years, but not out in public.” The men folk would sometimes sneak out by the........

© Santa Clarita Valley Signal