OC H I S TORY BLACK STAR CANYON
by Chris Jepsen
PHOTO COURTESY OF OC ARCHIVES
Black Star Canyon, looking north toward Hidden Ranch, circa 1980s PHOTO COURTESY OF SANTA ANA PUBLIC LIBRARY
Hidden Ranch headquarters, 1966 (Photo courtesy Santa Ana Public Library)
Between grassy hills and rocky cliffs, in an obscure corner of the sycamore and oak-dotted Santa Ana Mountains lies a place variously called Escondido (Hidden), El Cañon de los Indios (Indian Canyon) and Black Star Canyon. For an area so off-thebeaten-path it’s home to a great deal of local history and lore. Its story begins with an ancient native village site (California Historical Landmark #217) far back into the canyon and up on a hill, just over six miles from the junction of Silverado Canyon and Santiago Canyon Roads. The Tongva or Acjachemen people began living there at least a thousand years ago returning to make camp each Fall during the acorn harvest. The area’s abundant acorns explain the scores of bedrock mortars – low tech food processors often used to make acorn meal – throughout the site. A spring at the foot of the hill and the fact that bears did not favor this canyon also made this a prime spot to set up camp. In places, campfire sites with dark, greasy soil, can still be identified. By the early 1860s, wild cattle roamed the canyon which local vaqueros shot in order to preserve the grass for more valuable 22
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horse herds. Up through the 1880s, Black Star Canyon changed ownership multiple times, with one owner, Juan Cañedo, naming his ranch near the village site Rancho Escondido, or “Hidden Ranch.” Historian Don Meadows wrote that “over the years [Hidden Ranch] has been a cattle ranch, a sheep range, a chicken farm, a Shetland Pony paddock, an apiary and a mountain home.” A key piece of Orange County lore supposedly took place in Black Star Canyon in 1831, when it’s said a group of trappers led by pioneer William Wolfskill tracked a group of Paiute horse thieves to the Hidden Ranch area. The thieves were caught in the middle of eating some of the horses they’d stolen. Wolfskill and his group ambushed and killed most of thieves, returned the horses to their owners, and thereby ingratiated themselves to the local Spanish and Mexican population. It was apparently at this point that the canyon took on a new name: Cañon de los Indios (Canyon of the Indians.) But the truth of this tale is debated. J.E. Pleasants heard it from Wolfskill and then passed it on (at the age of 91) to historian and Santa Ana Register editor Terry Stephenson almost a century after the event took place. Although all three men were excellent sources, there are no other contemporary accounts, artifacts, or other evidence to further support the tale. There’s nothing to say the story is untrue, but it must – for now --- still be considered a folktale. In the early 1870s, Pleasants’ brother-in-law Francisco de Paula Pablo Carpenter built an adobe and stone home on his 160-acre homestead in the canyon. The Carpenters continued to live there until at least 1893. From 1904 until at least 1936, the adobe was owned by and resided in by Robert L. “Bob” Shaw, the well-known local fire warden. As recently as 2005, ruins of the adobe could be seen near the junction of Black Star Canyon and Spring Canyon, but have since been bulldozed. Interest in mining coal in the canyon began as early as the mid-1850s but didn’t get off to a decent start until 1877, when Dr. August Witte of Anaheim bought 168 acres from James Irvine
