There’s no telling what will end up in the Santa Clarita History Center’s records room, and despite their imagined past, some items may turn out to be anything but legendary.
Sometimes, they are better.
In the 1960s, Thomas Dixon was a teenager on an adventure with some friends climbing the steep cliffs of San Francisco Canyon. Tom was at the back of the group, and as they climbed, they found something in the dirt that might have been a piece of history.
Tom was in a valley close to the flood path of the ill-fated St. Francis Dam, and he speculated that the lantern he unearthed was likely a lantern held by construction or recovery workers after the dam failed in March 1928. He carefully cleaned it and kept it for several decades, hoping that children would cherish his find.
Unfortunately, children often don’t want the items their parents have kept for years. But in a community-based family decision, the Dixons decided the lantern needed to be brought back “home” as a memento of the dam disaster, and so they brought it to the History Center.
Frank Locke, an expert on the St. Francis Dam, brought along a floodplain map to discuss the location of the find with Tom, and they discovered that the find was a little out of the flood path but still worth investigating.
After the Dixon family left the park, Leon Warden, vice president of the association, found the lantern in the agency’s office at Saugus Station and asked archivist Eva Gritz about the railroad lantern’s origins. Association volunteer Mike Jarrell, a former Southern Pacific engineer, recognized the lantern as one issued to Southern Pacific workers in the early 1950s. He said he had never seen one in such good condition. He also confirmed that lanterns used in the 1920s and ’30s could not have belonged to dam workers because they had long, thin chimneys, unlike the chunky bulbous shape of the donated lamp.
The lantern may not be a relic from the St. Francis Dam disaster, but it will eventually have a place of honor in the best possible location: the Saugus Station, which is being converted into a museum solely dedicated to Southern Pacific Railroad memorabilia.
For more information about the Santa Clarita History Center, visit www.scvhs.org
