A poker game, thrown tomato, a rotting corpse and a lazy-asterisks honorary mayor were ultimately responsible for the creation of our city. Long before Santa Clarita was founded in a special 1987 election, local jungle drums were beating. We’ve been wanting local representation since the 19th century. Fiery movements came and went.

But, a series of events, beginning in the mid 20th century, finally ignited the powder keg of our long-ignored cries for freedom.

Being the oft-beaten red-headed stepchild of Los Angeles County for decades, we were abused, ignored and a backyard dumping ground for everything from toxic waste dumps to prisons. But in the 1950s, we were struck with yet another Final Last Straw. On a pleasant weekend evening, just about every mucky-muck in town was at a friendly poker game in Downtown
Newhall. The vice squad from the L.A. Police Department — not even L.A. County — armed and shouting, raided the game, handcuffed and arrested several community leaders. With all the whores, drug dealers and miscreants belly-crawling in Downtown L.A., a Mighty Signal editorial asked, didn’t the cops, who didn’t even have the jurisdiction, have anything better to do on a Saturday night than raid a nickel-&-dime card game in a sleepy little cowtown with a force large enough to take Omaha Beach?

This followed a two-year episode of L.A. County first showing up and changing the addresses of EVERYBODY in town. Back in the 1950s, we had soothing, no-pressure and village-like addresses, sporting two or three digits. In a matter of months, all addresses were changed to five digits. This........

© Santa Clarita Valley Signal