Signal 100th Anniversary - Revised by Signal

100 Years The

Signal

Story

January 26, 2019

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California Institute of the Arts congratulates

The Signal on its 100th anniversary. Thank you for serving the Santa Clarita community.

calarts.edu

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“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

A Centennial of Service

Thank you for dedicating yourself to the work that matters most in journalism – informing, engaging, and entertaining your community.

College of the Canyons congratulates The Signal on 100 years of service to the Santa Clarita Valley.

For complete College of the Canyons information visit: www.canyons.edu or call (661) 259-7800 #COCGoingPlaces

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As The Signal Approaches Its 100th Anniversary I’d like to thank all the past owners, publishers, editors and employees that have made this paper great. Through fires, floods, blizzards and heat waves, shootouts, train derailments and the birth of a city, The Signal has chronicled it all. From a paper with a circulation of 250 a century ago to a Sunday paper now of 70,000, The Signal has grown with the community and has always maintained a communityorientated flavor, with news coverage that focuses on the issues, events, people and places that matter to Santa Clarita. We are proud to be your local newspaper and we are proud to be the No. 1 news source in Santa Clarita. We thank you for your trust in us and we promise to continue covering the news of the Santa Clarita Valley with heart, passion and a strong sense of community. As Scott Newhall said, “A fine community must support its newspaper. And a fine newspaper must support its community.” We look forward to serving you for the next 100 years.

Richard Budman Publisher/Owner

Richard Budman Publisher, Owner rbudman@signalscv.com • 661-287-5501

Perry Smith Managing Editor psmith@signalscv.com

Chris Budman Vice President Operations cbudman@signalscv.com • 661-287-5545

Haley Sawyer Sports Editor hsawyer@signalscv.com • 661-287-5530

Tim Whyte Editor twhyte@signalscv.com • 661-287-5591

Austin Dave Chief Multimedia Journalist & Director of Digital Operations adave@signalscv.com • 661-287-5550

Brad Lanfranco Advertising Director blanfranco@signalscv.com • 661-287-5557

Doña Uhrig Production Manager duhrig@signalscv.com • 661-287-5593

• 661-287-5599

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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE

SIGNAL

YEARS ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

ADVANCED AUDIOLOGY IS A STRONG BELIEVER IN COMMUNITY EDUCATION AND SUPPORTING OUR NON-PROFITS.

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1/18/19 10:34 AM

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On Bleeding Signal Red, for 100 Years By Tim Whyte Signal Editor They used to say, if you were incredibly loyal to this particular community newspaper, that you would “bleed Signal red.” It’s a basic red, 100 percent magenta and 100 yellow, in the parlance of four-color printing. You see, it wasn’t long ago that red was the only color you would see on the front page of The Mighty Signal. We ran that red bar every day at the top of the front page, right below the signature clip art of an American eagle with the motto, “Vigilance Forever.” Today, we’ve brought back that motto — and a more modern version of the eagle — and the red remains, but it doesn’t stick out so much because, well, we’ve evolved. There’s color everywhere. A lot has changed in our first hundred years. Geez. What would the founders of The Signal, Ed and Blanche Brown, think about Facebook? I shudder. One thing has not changed: The Signal’s commitment to this community. I’m most proud of that. A hundred. The Signal turns 100 this Feb. 7. I’m proud to say I’ve been part of this exercise in community journalism for nearly 20 percent of that hundred years. My first run with The Signal included a few years as a reporter, a couple years as city editor, a decade as editor and three years as general manager. After that 18-year run I went to the “dark side” and started a PR consultancy. Last June, when Richard and Chris Budman bought The Signal and

returned it to local family ownership, I was proud to come back. Included in this special edition are important nods to some of the reasons why. First and foremost, it’s about the privilege of covering the news in this special place, the Santa Clarita Valley, where I have been lucky to grow up and to raise my own family. I treasure the indulgence of feeling like I’m somehow connected to this community’s heartbeat. It’s about following in some pretty giant footsteps, like those of Signal legends Scott, Ruth and Tony Newhall, and the Truebloods, and others who came before me. It’s about the memories of special co-workers, like Randy Wicks, the one-of-a-kind editorial cartoonist who was taken from us all too soon when he died of a heart attack in 1996. I can only imagine the greatness we missed. It’s about the joys and headaches of editing columns written by my friend John Boston. Pound for pound he’s one of the best writers in America, even if he does inflate the number of awards he has won. It’s about the friendships and bonds I’ve made with so many Sjgnalites over the years. Too many names to mention — this is print, and I’m running out of inches right now — but they’ve all been part of this journey, the first 100 years of journalism, Signal-style. And on some level, they all bleed Signal red. Tim Whyte is editor of The Signal.

Valencia Acura congratulates

The Signal on 100 Years of Vigilance

ValenciaAcura.com | 661.255.3000 23955 Creekside Road, Valencia

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Congratulations to the Mighty Signal on 100 years of GREAT Community Journalism.

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The Signal Story: 100 Years of Rich History 1919 ... An era begins “With this issue we unfurl the sails of The Newhall Signal upon the sea of journalism, and we hope that our efforts will be of service and benefit to the Newhall and Saugus valley area. In order to do our best, we must have the unbiased support and cooperation of the good citizens of these communities, and we are looking forward with perfect faith that this assistance will be extended to us. “The columns of this paper will be open for the discussion of any subject that will be of interest or benefit to the people of the Newhall and Saugus sections, but we reserve When Edward H. Brown published the first issue of The Signal in 1919, Newhall was a relatively sleepy town of “500 souls.” PHOTO COURTESY SCV the privilege of eliminating anything that HISTORICAL SOCIETY smacks of malice. “We should continually bear in mind that what tends to the true interest of one, helps others, and subscription cost $2. There were no screaming headlines, we must all work in harmony to promote the ongoing of and one could find unlabeled opinion in almost every our home section. news story. “In conclusion, will say that we hope for the loyalty Among the tidbits in the first issue of The Signal: and help that is necessary to make this paper a credit to “There have been several cases of the ‘flu’ here, but they the town.” are all up and around now.” “Mr. Buttler of the Buttler So wrote The Signal’s first editor, in the newspaper’s Grocery was in Los Angeles the first of the week buyvery first issue, on Friday, Feb. 7, 1919, launching a 100ing goods.” “Mr. Bricker, of the Bricker Grocery, was in year tradition of vigilance and community journalism. San Fernando on Monday. He is kept quite busy with his Edward H. Brown’s fledgling publication had a hometruck business.” “The Sterling Borax Mine, near Lang, town feel from the start, carrying front-page items about is working full time, three sets of miners working eight parties, trips to the beach and residents’ shopping excurhours each, consequently the mine never stops working.” sions to Los Angeles and other points south. The Signal’s first big story was that of the destruction But even then, when Newhall was a sleepy rural town of the Swall hotel, a landmark structure and one of the where talk at the corner store focused on a big crop or newspaper’s regular advertisers. On Friday, March 21, the proper way to breed chickens, there was a hint of the 1919, the headline screamed: “AN OLD LAND MARK growth that would occur in the latter half of the century. BURNS DOWN TUESDAY.” When The Newhall Signal made its debut, a one-year The Signal in its first year still had a post-war feel, carrying the occasional letter from one of “our boys” still stationed in Europe after serving in World War I. Brown scribed sarcastically in the Feb. 28 issue, “The Germans still cherish hopes that America will stand their friend at the peace table. The sinking of the Lusitania and the bombing of American Red Cross hospitals are, of course, strong and convincing reasons why we should feel kindly toward them.” Far from the thriving region it has become, the valley in 1919 was an agricultural community where everyone knew everyone else by name. A wedding announcement would refer to the bride as “one of our most outstanding The first cartoon and editorial cartoon to appear in The Siggirls.” nal’s first year. (This appeared in The Signal’s 75th Anniversary commemorative edition. SIGNAL FILE PHOTO.

See The Signal Story, page 14

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THE SIGNAL STORY

continued from page 11 The 1920s

Historian A.B. Perkins described the 1920s as the decade when nothing much happened outside of the St. Francis Dam disaster and the Buffalo Tom Vernon train robbery. The Signal was still in its infancy, getting used to its wings and townspeople. Spaces between stories were often filled with large ads reading, “Boost Newhall.” Editorials referred to people who didn’t get involved in their community as “flat tires.” Mastheads carried slogans like, “The Newspaper With A Backbone,” and “For Each Other, Not Against Each Other.” They sold all kinds of things at The Signal office, such as Brunswick records, fuse plugs, note pads, school pads, cards and “No Shooting or Hunting” signs. The Signal office was the place where people registered to vote. It was the area’s printing shop and was pretty proud of its work, according to an ad from September, 1924: “WANTED Your Printing Business. If We Can’t Please You, DON’T COME AGAIN!” There were three different editorial regimes in the 1920s, starting with Edward Brown, founder of The Signal. Upon his death in 1920, his widow Blanche Brown took the reins and brought in Thornton Doelle as her assistant. “How dear to my heart is the subscriber, Who pays in advance without skipping a year; Who sends in his $2 and offers it gladly, And casts ‘round the office a halo of cheer. Who never says ‘Stop it, I cannot afford it!’ Or ‘Getting more papers each day than I read’; But always says, ‘Send it, the whole outfit like it – In fact, we regard it a fraternal need!’ How welcome is he when he steps in the sanctum; How he makes our heart throb, how he makes our eyes dance! We outwardly thank him — we inwardly bless him — The steady subscriber who pays in advance.”

— “An Editorial Song” The Signal, Feb. 12, 1925 This Signal “Editorial Song” which appeared in 1925, paid tribute to the “steady subscriber who pays in advance.” (Note the entire yearly subscription was $2 at the time.) SIGNAL FILE PHOTO.

Was it a sign of things to come? Even in 1929, there was an occasional traffic jam in Saugus for events such as the annual rodeo. Here, motorists crowd the streets lined by Saugus Cafe and the Saugus Train Station (left). SIGNAL FILE PHOTO.

Doelle had published a few issues of a little paper called the “Saugus Enterprise.” No copies are known to exist today. When The Signal bought him out, this paper’s full name became “The Newhall Signal and Saugus Enterprise.” Blanche Brown’s newspaper was full of news; the society column ran on the front page, and Thornton, whose “real” job was with the Forest Service, wrote several columns and poems. In addition, they occasionally ran a column called “Peanut Pietro,” written totally in Mexican slang. In January, 1925, while Blanche still owned the paper, Doelle took over as lessee and editor. He filled the pages with graphics, poetry and fanciful commentary. He was a colorful editorialist. The newspaper was sold in June, 1925 to A.B. “Dad” Thatcher, who changed its whole look. Doelle’s plethora of poems disappeared. In their place, O. Lawrence Hawthorne appeared under the masthead, complete with artwork. Page one carried news, society items, obituaries and, sometimes, sports. Local news jumped to the back page. Inside pages were filled with wire reports, items on cooking, housekeeping, agricultural or historic features and serialized stories. The pattern continued into the 1930s. The Signal was published weekly, on Fridays at first, changing to Thursdays in 1924. The paper strongly favored the creation of a chamber of commerce, proposing in 1919 and again in 1922 that one be formed. An estimated that 2,200 cars tooled through town every day. Comics first appeared in The Signal on Nov. 18, 1926. A.B. Perkins and his wife actively campaigned to build a community high school and managed to get a bond measure on the ballot. They personally lobbied the Los Angeles County Board of Education to form a district to See The Signal Story, page 34

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S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y Î&#x2021; 15 All of us here at Kellar-Davis Real Estate would like to

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The Signal Uncovers Century’s Biggest Stories By John Boston Signal Staff Writer

he Signal has written about cannibal murderers (2) and the famous St. Francis Dam Disaster of 1928. We’ve reported on epic fires, floods, a rare tornado, blizzards, local Bigfoot sightings and a need for local government going back to the 1920s. None of these are the biggest story this newspaper has ever covered. We’ve filed stories on train derailment robberies, the heartbreaking CHP shootout of 1970 and a trial for the estate of William S. Hart that lasted a decade. There’s growth, alleged progress, the birth of Valencia and young Cal Nixon nearly pulling off the practical joke of the ages — nearly winning the Miss USC Pageant as a freshman in 1944. A boy freshman. Nope. Not the biggest story. Without the slightest hesitation, the absolute second most significant news story in The Signal’s 100-year history is World War II. Period. End of discussion.

WORLD WAR II

For a decade, before, during, nearly every aspect of SCV life was touched by the war. We were called The Soledad Township then, a 1,000-square-mile area of 5,638 souls. When Japan attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, there was no round-the-clock multimedia war coverage complete with theme music, graphics and instant Facebook punditry. In barbershops, garages and distant ranches, people huddled around their radios to hear reports that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. And they waited for Thursday’s Signal. We were a small weekly then. The Santa Clarita met the sweeping changes with a quiet heroism. Twenty years earlier, a Chinese hunchback military genius and author, Homer Lea, created a list of the top 10 military targets on Earth. It included the SCV. We were this hub of the wheel for electrical, water, petroleum, natural gas, rail, highway and telephone/telegraph lines. Knock out the Little Santa Clara River Valley, you effectively bisected California. Within literally hours of the Hawaiian attack, military convoys poured into the SCV. The 115th Combat Engineers took over Newhall Elementary, setting up machine gun towers surrounded by barbed wire. Can you imagine? Today? At your child’s school — machine gun nests? On Dec. 8, 1941, local boys, two just 16, dropped out of

World War II brought one of the most instantaneous social changes in this nation’s and the valley’s history. Overnight, women entered the workplace, taking jobs once predominantly blue-collar male. Instantly, Bermite, a small fireworks factory on Soledad, became one of the country’s biggest suppliers of ordnance. About 2,000 workers, 70 percent women, worked around the clock. The Signal noted how each woman had to endure an underwear search by a small squadron of female body inspectors to make sure they weren’t wearing silk. Rub silk together and you can make a spark. Not good in a gunpowder factory.

high school to enlist in the army. Some never came back. Every issue of The Signal was dedicated on some level to covering the war. We covered it with passion, grace, pathos, angst and humor. Signal Editor Fred Trueblood ran an editorial, reminding locals not to go nuts. Seems a famous landscape painter was arrested for his water color of Placerita Canyon in winter. I’ve seen the painting. It’s not that bad. Another woman reported her neighbor’s laundry. She claimed the woman was a German spy, hanging her washing out in a secret code. We had a small population of Japanese farmers, including one known only as Asparagus Joe. He was Southern California’s largest grower of that particular veggie. Except for William S. Hart’s butler, every person

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of Japanese descent (eight) in the SCV would be soon be rounded up by the local Civil Defense Auxiliary Mounted Police and sent to the internment camp at Manzanar in the Owens Valley. Their property was confiscated and never returned. I think Trueblood’s front-page column summed it up: “Driving past a group of khaki clad figures squatting behind an Army truck at a corner of the school yard, one of the figures chanced to look up. It was a Japanese face. Kids going into classes Monday morning say the Nesei students looked at them hard and doubtfully. What would be the reaction? Was the war going to be carried into school relations? Then smiles broke out. It was all right. It’s always all

Nov. 10 marks the 90th anniversary of our most spectacular crime in history: Tom Vernon (inset) and the derailment robbery of the West Coast Limited in 1929. The local smalltime crook and cattle rustler loosened rails behind where Del Taco is today at the Bouquet-Valencia junction. He then watched the train pass, flip and crash. Vernon robbed the stunned passengers, then headed out of state. Local authorities had no problem finding out his identity. While hiding in the bushes, he dropped from his pants a letter that detailed his travel plans. Vernon was sentenced to life in prison, but paroled in 1964 as an old man. He confessed he pulled the caper to pay for an abortion for a prostitute.

Easily the most horrific day for local law enforcement was the 1970 slaying of four CHP officers. It started as a routine call when two highway patrolmen investigated the driver and passenger of a car on the Ridge Route. It turned into a shootout and bloodbath at the old Tip’s restaurant (at the corner of Magic Mountain Parkway and The Old Road today). Four of the patrolmen were shot dead. One of the murderers, a career criminal, broke into a house later and committed suicide. The other’s (inset; we shall not give him the dignity of printing his name) death sentence was overturned and he served life in prison, later killing himself in his cell in 2009.

right when simple human beings get together regardless of race or creed. It’s the lousy leadership that does the dirt.” The day The Signal came out, some visiting rodeo cowboys beat the tar out of the male protesters. In next week’s paper, Trueblood wrote: “While few townspeople participated in the beatings, most approved.” We ran a story in 1946. Every time I read it, I cry. A Newhall Army sergeant, recipient of numerous medals including the Purple Heart, married his high school sweetheart on leave in 1943. They had one young child. He had been wounded in the Pacific and was involved in jungle hand-to-hand combat. He was adapting nicely to civilian life and was driving home from hunting in Pico Canyon. A carload of high school kids veered over the center and hit him head-on. He died en route to the hospital.

MURDER AND MAYHEM

We humans are fascinated by the macabre. There was a period in the 1970s and 1980s where we had more than our fair share of chilling homicides. Unusual in that this coincided with the growth of Valencia, a rather vanilla family community. Sometimes the ungodly headlines do See Top Stories, page 26

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The History Eclectic of The Mighty Signal By John Boston Signal Staff Writer

“Reading someone else’s newspaper is like sleeping with someone else’s wife. Nothing seems to be precisely in the right place, and when you find what you are looking for, it is not clear then how to respond to it.” — Malcolm Bradley I remember a sign on the wall at the old Signal backshop, when it was at 6th and Main. It read: The Strongest Human Emotion Is Neither Love nor Hate, Sex nor Fear. It is the Desire to Edit Another Person’s Copy And there you have it. The essence of both humanity and journalism, lumped into one bumper sticker. Edward Brown founded The Mighty Signal a century ago. I often wonder what on earth got into him. Journalism is like acting for ugly people. You get to strut, pontificate, lecture, bare your soul, wag your finger, empty a 50-pound sack of shoulds/shouldn’ts onto the heads of the unsuspecting. It’s an opportunity to ask sometimes very smart people really stupid questions. Do you remember the original “King Kong” movie? There’s a scene where Kong is chained to a platform on a New York stage. Kong’s got to weigh 20 tons. One reporter wants a little help with his story and asks Kong’s captor: “Hey! What’s the angle here?” Hmm. 24-foot-tall gorilla. Captured on island of dinosaurs. I don’t know. Maybe that’s the lead? Journalism attracts all kinds, from the vanilla to the flamboyant. The Mighty Signal seems to attract both. It’s the only profession mentioned and protected by the Constitution and a lot of good souls have taken their own oath to honor it as a foundation of democracy.

‘Peanuts’ & the Forest Ranger

Poor Ed Brown. He had a vision. This newspaper’s original motto was “Build Up. Don’t Tear Down.” Like all good journalists, like so many at TMS who followed, Brown was a cheerleader. He loved this Santa Clarita Valley. It showed in his writing. Like a note to Santa, in the very first issue, he penned a wish list. It included: “Bank, moving picture, general merchandise store, general machine implements, chalk and feed mill, pool hall, millinery store, steam laundry, cobbler shop, harness shop,

Rescuers found the lower torso of the body of St. Francis Damkeeper Tony Harnishfeger (center) the day after the great St. Francis Dam burst March 14, 1928. Nearly 13 billion gallons of water formed a wave 185 feet high at the break. With nearly 500 dead, the flood was the second-worst disaster in California history, after the San Francisco fire and earthquake of 1906. Two years later, they found the second half of Harnishfeger’s body.

furniture store, cheese factory, skinning station and sugar factory.” A century later, we’ve The Cheesecake Factory. I’m still waiting for the skinning station. Brown was in declining health from nerve gas attacks in the French trenches of World War I. The paper was barely a year old when its offices, housed in the Swall Hotel (at Main and Market today), burned to the ground in 1921. Albert Swall rebuilt and The Signal moved to the same spot, but into a brand new brick building in December 1923. Poor Ed and his lungs. First mustard gas, then smoke. He died a few years after founding the paper. His wife, Blanche, must have been an inexhaustible creature. She took care of her dying husband. She was the editor of a paper with 250 subscriptions in a valley of 500. She was the town librarian, which wasn’t a herculean task seeing the library only had 500 books, 200 of them magazines. Still. That’s a lot of work. The kids called her “Peanuts” behind her back because she was an early vegan. Ed still helped, writing editorials. I’m guessing from his November 1923 editorial, Mr. Brown was conservative. He suggested we do away with the parole system. “Once a criminal, always a criminal.” He also bemoaned the money spent guarding prisoners. “Better chloroform them and forget it.” I’m guessing Ed meant the prisoners, not the guards. Quietly, Mrs. Brown sold part of the paper to William T. Stonecypher, the local postal carrier.

J A N UA RY 26, 2019 The Signal is famous for its alleged swashbuckling and farraginous staff over the decades. Management hired its first character in 1921, the local forest ranger and the SCV’s first cowboy poet, Thornton Doelle. With burro, pick and shovel, Doelle carved some of the valley’s first mountain hiking trails. He wrote beautiful stanzas, describing a long-ago and pristine Santa Clarita. His first column, “With The Men Who Guard These Mountains,” appeared July 8, 1921. He later became editor and wrote a column comparing corporate presidents with South Sea headhunters, who profited using children in despicable working conditions and demanded profit sharing with workers. I’m guessing Thornton was a progressive. How-ev-verrrrr… One of my favorite all-time Signal stories was about a big bank robbery in Palmdale. After a shootout, a gang of eight thugs made off with bags of cash and were headed toward Saugus. The Palmdale sheriff called Newhall and organized a pincer movement. A local posse was quickly formed and Thornton rode out with the lawmen. Like a Western of its day, the bad guys holed up at a Canyon Country ranch. After a big shootout, two robbers were killed and a couple more wounded. Thornton carted the crooks back to the Newhall jail, wrote a whiz-bang front-page story on the afternoon’s events and an editorial about how handguns were too easily obtained. Just a few days later, the defense attorney for the bandits is in opening arguments. Flustered, he stops, points to the jury box where Thornton Doelle is sitting and complains: “Your honor! What is that man doing on the jury!? He shot two of my clients!!” The good judge (A.B. Perkins, future Signal writer and SCV historian) responded: “Well. Thornton happened to be there. I can think of no better person to render an honest verdict.” Doelle and the other jury members immediately found the boys guilty. Doelle wrote a Signal story about the trial, along with an editorial about the need for swift justice for evil-doers. Veritable Geraldo.

Dad & The Jin Jer Jar

One of the more complicated Signal editors was Almon B. Thatcher, nickname of Dad. He came on board as an associate editor in 1924, writing the first of a long-standing tradition: The Signal’s front-page column and editorial. It was called the Jin Jer Jar. Ed died. Stonecypher’s postal route changed. Stonecypher and Blanche sold The Signal to Thatcher in 1925. That’s when The Signal switched from a Thursday to a Friday weekly paper. The original $2-a-year subscription stayed until the 1940s. An individual copy cost just a nickel. Thatcher never once mentioned the stock market

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 21

Fred Trueblood was editor/publisher of The Mighty Signal from 1938 to 1960. He cut a dashing figure and was part of a gang of Newhall practical jokers. Once, a “friend” went to the local dentist for a root canal. While the friend was out in the chair, Trueblood, historian A.B. Perkins and the dentist took off his shoes and socks and painted his feet red with iodine. When their pal woke, he thought he had died and gone to Hades.

crash of 1929. A.B. had been in the state legislature of Nebraska. He married his childhood sweetheart, Anna, in 1881. On a visit here, she fell in love with the valley and talked Thatcher into relocating. They started a chicken ranch in Happy Valley and A.B. bought the Newhall Feed Store before running The Signal. Guess it was handy, having something with which to line the chicken coops. The love of his life died in January of 1932. Thatcher would become the oldest working newspaper columnist west of the Mississippi, writing his Signal Jin Jer Jar column for 25 years until he was 88 when he died in 1949. Most of us are complicated. One cannot judge a man of the 1930s by an ethic of the 21st century. A.B. Thatcher was editor of this paper from 1925 to 1938. He did a lot of wonderful things for the community. He could also be an insensitive and unfunny dunderhead. With the horror See Signal History, page 46

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

The SCV Citizen By Leon Worden Signal Contributing Writer

t’s important to remember just how difficult the Carter years were for anyone trying to make it in business. Or get a job. Or take out a home loan. Or fill up a gas tank. Inflation soared from 6.5 percent in January 1978 to 9 percent in December and would top 13 percent one year later. By the time the second oil crisis was over, the “misery index” — inflation plus unemployment — topped 20 percent for the first time. In the Santa Clarita Valley, business openings had tapered off, and new construction was at a virtual standstill. It was against this backdrop that Scott and Ruth Newhall brought an investor into The Signal in 1978. They needed capital to weather the storm. Besides, they had done what they set out to do. Scott had run the editorial side of a newspaper owned by someone else — the San Francisco Chronicle. He wanted to be his own boss, and he found a way to do it in 1963 when an opportunity presented itself to buy a small, rural newspaper that just happened to be headquartered on his great-grandfather’s ranch in north Los Angeles County. Now, 15 years later, with the economy in the toilet, the stars seemed to be aligning in the direction of retirement. What a difference a decade makes. By 1988, the economy was running on all six cylinders, second and third mortgage loans came with toasters again, and in Santa Clarita, new shopping centers were sprouting up on every corner. The locals had just formed their very own city — the timing of which was Ruth’s idea — and the freshness was palpable. Besides. Outsiders from “down below” hadn’t stopped trying to dump on us, and our own cows and emperors continued to roam the Valencia hills unclothed. There were too many above-themasthead editorials left to write. Mikhail Gorbachev had taken the bait and Ronald and Nancy Reagan were still months away from vacating the White House when Scott and Ruth decided they wanted to buy their newspaper back. Charles Morris, head of a little chain of small-town newspapers and shoppers and TV stations out of Savannah, Georgia, would have none of it. He liked The Signal very much and wanted to keep his controlling interest, thank you. The Signal was his flagship in California, after all, and a source of venture-capitalist pride. Vexed, Scott and Ruth stormed out of The Signal, marched right down the street and hung their shingle on an office suite next to the Do-It Center, aka Lumber City, at 23240 Valencia Boulevard. The Signal could keep its “Vigilance Forever.” Scott’s new motto was “Illegitimi

Citizen eagle & motto

Non Carborundum.” Roughly translated: “Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down.” The invective had broad application, but there was little doubt as to the real target. Several loyal newshounds and office staffers left with Scott and Ruth. Several loyal newshounds and office staffers stayed behind. Several had difficulty deciding where their loyalties lay — and all of them tussled with the implications of ditching a guaranteed paycheck. Off to the “Santa Clarita Valley Citizen” went pageone writers Emory Holmes II, Gary Johanson and Kaine Thompson, Johnny-on-the-spot news photographer Gary Thornhill, fastidious editor Jeanne Feeney, the effervescent Judie “JP” Pieper in advertising, Pat Hunnicutt in accounting, the versatile Barbara Morris who cobbled the paper together — and not a lot more. It was a passionate and talented little pirate troupe. Back at 24000 Creekside, cartoonist Randy Wicks was devoted to Scott and Ruth, but he had created his own legacy over the past decade, and The Signal provided stability that the risky upstart did not. Nobody expected Randy to jump, and nobody gave his decision to stay a second thought. He was soon joined by a cub reporter named Tim Whyte who, with the big-hearted “Mr. SCV” himself, John Boston, would create a whole new legacy for The Mighty Signal. Twice. (Tim is back as of 2018 after a decade-long vacation. JB is back in his umpteenth iteration. Randy will always be with us.) See The SCV Citizen, page 59

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 23

Owners • Publishers • Editors 1919 - present OWNERS

Edward Brown (1919-1920) Blanche Brown (1920-1925) Thornton Doelle (lessee/ editor, 1925) A.B. “Dad” Thatcher (19251938) Fred Trueblood I (19381960) Fred Trueblood II (19601963) Ray Brooks (1963) Scott Newhall (1963-1978) Charles Morris (1978-2016) Charles Champion, Gary Sproule and Russ Briley (2016-2018) Richard Budman (2018-present)

PUBLISHERS

Edward Brown (1919-1920) Blanche Brown (1920-1925) Thornton Doelle (lessee, 1925) A.B. “Dad” Thatcher (19251938) Fred Trueblood I (19381960) Fred Trueblood II (19601963) Ray Brooks (1963) Scott Newhall (1963-1977) Tony Newhall (1977-1988) Darell Phillips (1988-1993) Will Fleet (1993-2001) Ethel Nakutin (2001-2004) Richard Budman (20042007) Jay Harn (2007-2009) Ian Lamont (2009-2011) Morris Thomas (2011-2012) Randy Morton (2012-2014) Russ Briley (2014-2016) Charles Champion (20162018)

Richard Budman (2018-present)

EDITORS

Edward Brown (1919-1920) Blanche Brown (19201925) Thornton Doelle (1925) A.B. “Dad” Thatcher (1925-1938) Fred Trueblood I (19381942) Ann and Mark Trueblood (1942-1944) Fred Trueblood I (19441960) Fred Trueblood II (19601963) Ray Brooks (1963) Betty Kirkendall (1963-1967) Peter Stack (1967-1968) Jon Newhall (1968-1970) Ruth Newhall (1970-1971) Tom Brown (1971-1973) Ruth Newhall (1973-1976) Jerry Gruno (1976) Susan Starbird (1976-1979) Paul Dworin (1979-1982) Russell Minick (1982-1985) Jeanne Feeney (1985-1986) Ruth Newhall (1986-1988) Chuck Cook (1988-1989) Joe Franco (1989-1991) John Green (1992-1993) Andrew Voros (1993-1994) Tim Whyte (1994-2004) John Boston (2004-2004) Richard Budman (20042007) Lila Littlejohn (2007-2011) Jason Schaff (2011-2018) Tim Whyte (2018-present)

The Santa Clarita Auto Dealers Association Celebrates The Signal on Being A Driving Force in the Community

AUTO CENTER CITY OF SANTA CLARITA

PARTICIPATING DEALERS AutoNAtioN Ch e vrolet vAle NCiA AutoNAtioN Ch rysle r DoDg e J e e p r Am vAle NCiA AutoNAtioN ForD vAle NCiA AutoNAtioN hoN DA vAle NCiA FroNtie r toyotA iN FiNiti oF vAle NCiA m e rCe Des B e Nz oF vAle NCiA miNi oF vAle NCiA pArk wAy CADill AC BuiCk g mC pArk wAy hy u N DAi g e N esis vAle NCiA ACu r A vAle NCiA B mw

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

Congratulations to The Signal

Our Hometown Newspaper Reporting & Supporting Our Extraordinary Life for 100 Years of Journalistic Integrity SCV Over 90 Miles in Trails

2007 Open Space District Passed

Over 12,000 Acres of Open Space

Laurene Weste and Jim McCarthy

Veterans Historical Plaza Honoring Our Veterans

Thank you Signal,

Old Town Newhall Light up Main St.

City Councilmember, City Trails & Open Space District Founder Laurene Weste and Park & Trail Planner (retired) James McCarthy

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y Î&#x2021; 25

SCV WATER CONGRATULATES

THE SIGNAL ON

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TOP STORIES

continued from page 17

not do justice to the inhumanity. • Ronald Doyle Wilburn was dubbed “The Vampire Van Killer” for his kidnapping, murder and subsequent dismemberment and eating of a hitchhiker in 1978, near Towsley Canyon. • Richard John Jensen may have been the SCV’s only known serial killer. Upon his sentencing in 1955, the judge called him “…a human wolf, who preyed upon humans since the age of 6.” Jensen confessed. He got “impulses.” For at least a year, he would pick up hitchhikers on the Ridge Route. With a rigged trigger system, he would shoot them with a shotgun hidden in the backseat, rape them while they were dying and dine on the corpses. • In 1972, Robert Grigsby, a Hart sophomore, randomly picked a house near the school, forced his way in and murdered a young housewife and two toddlers. Each had been stabbed about 70 times. • Organized crime put up a brothel training academy in Newhall’s toniest street, Arcadia, in the late 1940s — right next door to the local judge. Around the same time, a deranged man showed up at the Hart mansion, intending to murder William S. Hart. He drove to Honby and killed two other people, instead. • Back in 1924, the shooting of constable Ed Brown (no relation to The Signal’s first owner) was the biggest murder of the next 30 years. Ed’s partner, Jack Pilcher, shot the perp, Gus LeBrun. After running out of bullets, Pilcher went back to the car, got more and emptied his gun into the dead LeBrun again. Pilcher would die about a year later in a freak accident. He and his rookie partner were investigating a break-in up Bouquet. They both bent over at the same time to look under a bed. Pilcher’s gun fell out of his shirt pocket, hit the floor and went off. It sent a bullet clean through, between Pilcher’s eyes. • There was “The Headless Handless Corpse” of the 1970s. There were Patty Hearst sightings in Placerita Canyon, glimpses of Richard Nixon up Sierra Highway and James Dean actually ate his last meal — apple pie and milk — at Tip’s before his fatal 1955 car crash. Throw in KKK rallies (where the press outnumbered the klansmen) and so many bank robberies. My favorite? A trio of inner-city gangbangers tried to hold up Citibank on Sierra Highway in the 1990s. One of the perps donned a mask and attempted to walk in, gun-drawn. Problem? It was 9:45 a.m. The bank didn’t open for another 15 minutes. He stood at the glass door, rattling it and peering in. So, he walked back to the getaway car to wait for Citibank to open. He and his pals were still wearing their

Not a day goes by in the SCV where the name of famed silent film superstar William S. Hart isn’t mentioned — not just in The Mighty Signal, but all over town. It’s been that way with our most famous citizen for nearly a century.

masks when Sheriff ’s deputies arrived. It wasn’t hard to identify the lead man. He was nearly 7-feet-tall. So many crimes. But they weren’t The Signal’s biggest story.

FIRES, FLOODS, BLIZZARDS & HEAT WAVES

Certainly the breaking of the St. Francis Dam on March 14, 1928, was not just one of The Signal’s biggest headlines, but America’s as well. Nearly every major newspaper in the country reported the next day that we were Atlantis, sunk under water. We weren’t. But shortly before midnight, a 180-foot-tall wall of water thundered through the night, washing away multi-ton boulders, livestock, topsoil and killing some 500 souls. In such a small community, virtually all the survivors had some personal relationship with the dead. A small sidebar, covered nowhere else but in TMS: Actor Harry Carey had a huge ranch up San Francisquito Canyon — in the path of the raging wall of water. He employed Navajo Indians on his ranch as workers, See Top Stories, page 28

CONGRATULATIONS TO

THE MASTERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S UNIVERSITY IS RIGHT BEHIND YOU AT 92!

FOR CHRIST & SCRIPTURE SINCE 1927 U N D E R G R A D UAT E | G R A D UAT E | D UA L E N R O L L M E NT | O N C A M P U S | O N L I N E MASTERS.EDU

28 · S I G N A L 1 0 0 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y

TOP STORIES

continued from page 26

hands and artisans. Three days before the dam broke, Carey was in New York City, doing a Broadway play. The tribe’s chief called him and said the medicine man had a dream the night before of a great disaster and they would be moving the entire tribe back to Arizona for a while. That dream saved more than 100 Navajo lives. This darn place of ours burns. Frequently. About 13,000 acres in Placerita erupted in flames in 1962, burning most of Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch to the ground. Elvis Presley happened to be there and helped in the bucket brigade to save the W.C. Fields’ “My Little Chickadee” house. Sometimes fire is brought by the demented, like the 1944 burning of the historic Acton Hotel by the local postmaster. Sometimes it’s almost comic, like the housewife in the 1930s who was cleaning a stain on her husband’s shirt. She was using gasoline. The gasoline was in a metal bucket. The bucket was on the stove. It exploded, blew up the house and sent the woman flying outside. Except for some scratches, she was fine. The strangest start of a fire? On Aug. 16, 1956, the Air Force (ours) lost control of a drone Hellcat prop air-

J A N UA RY 26, 2019 plane. Unable to land the bright red Hellcat, the military scrambled two Air Force F-89D Scorpions from Oxnard. The F-89s were designed to fight squadrons of commie bombers (good band name) and really couldn’t be aimed very well. Over the SCV, the Scorpions fired a combined 104 unguided Mighty Mouse rockets, almost killing several locals and starting three large brushfires while just missing blowing up Bermite, our large munitions plant. The most spectacular fire The Signal covered? It probably was the explosion of the Newhall Refinery in August 1944. A welder was fixing a pipe and his torch set off a series of spectacular explosions. Some 25,000 barrels of petroleum products blew, along with holding tanks and tanker trucks. Flames — flames, not smoke — could be seen hundreds of miles away. The spectacular candlewick burned a half-mile straight up in the evening sky. We had snow in January of 1949. FOR THREE WEEKS STRAIGHT. We had blizzards that shut down the SCV — in 1931, 1950 and 1974. There were the earthquakes of 1971 and 1994 — which interestingly brought us together. We had epic rains that changed the course of the Santa Clara River and stranded some people for days. During the storms of 1969, Signal Editor Scott Newhall heard about a back-canyon kennel where starving dogs couldn’t be reached. He flew in from San Francisco to climb through a window (with one leg) and hand-deliver See Top Stories, page 40

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 29

Read

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

100 YEARS

SignalSCV. com

Feb 7, 1919 The first edition of The Signal, under Publisher Edward H . Brown. A one-year subscription to the weekly paper is $2

June 1925 A.B. “Dad” Thatcher takes over the paper

1920 Brown dies, and his. widow Blanche takes over with Thornton Doell, as assistant

March 12, 1928 The St. Francis Dam bursts, flooding the valley and killing hundreds. Headline: “Great St Francis Dam Crumbles; Great wall of water sweeps sleeping victims into eternity; Death flood comes in darkness; Bodies recovered all along the valley from the dam to the ocean; Dead may number 400”

Nov. 18, 1926 Comics appear for the first time in the paper

Fall 1938 E.W. Trueblood puchases the paper for $5,000

Feb. 21, 1919 Local front-page news included: “FV Phillsbury, a wealthy hat manufacturer of San Francisco became suddenly insane Sunday night, and after entering the house of Mr. Bresee was taken into custody by JE Browh, the constable, and turned over to his relatives.” “Mr. and Mrs. W. Connoly visited Los Angeles and the beaches Sunday.”

May 26, 1944 “Mrs. Eula Lorraine Sedlak, age 27, attractive appearing wife of a narcotic peddler serving time at the Sheriff Honor farm, fell afoul of the same laws.”

Nov. 1948 Gene Sherman strikes oil in Castaic, launching a severalyear mini oil rush in the valley.

Early 1950s The Signal offices move from 636 Spruce Street to the corner of 6th St. and Railroad Avenue.

1950 A Los Angeles Superior Court judge honors William S. Hart’s wishes to deed his property, including his Newhall mansion, to the county

1957 The Signal reports Newhall Ranch’s plans for massive residential development in the valley

May 2, 1963 Trueblood sells the paper to Ray Brooks, who in turn sells it to Scott Newhall six months later

Jan. 13, 1955 Headline proclaims “Girl lost in snowstorm as series of tempests whitens all mountains,” after up to 30 inches of snow fall on parts of the valley.

Dec. 5, 1965 The first Sunday edition

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 33

1970 College of the Canyons opens its permanent, campus in Valencia

Aug. 3, 1975 Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital opens

1978 Charles Morris of Georgia buys the paper 1986 The Signal relocates to 24000 Creekside Rd.

Feb. 9, 1971 The Sylmar Earthquake rattles the Valley Memorial Day weekend 1971 Magic Mountain opens

1988 The Signal goes daily.

1991 The Newhalls leave the paper. Oct. 26, 1992 Scott Newhall dies.

July 2004 Richard Budman named publisher October 2004 “Best of ” premieres

2012 Randy Morton named publisher 2014 Russ Briley named publisher

Aug. 3, 1996 Beloved editorial cartoonist Randy Wicks dies at 41 of a heart attack. Jan. 17, 1994 The Northridge earthquake devastates the region

2005 Premiere issue of the 51 Most Influential People 2006 The Signal named Best Community Newspaper in America

January 2016 The Signal is sold to Charles Champion, Gary Sproule and Russ Briley 2016 The Signal moves to new location in Centre Pointe

June 1998 The-Signal.com launches

September 2008 Ian Lamont becomes publisher.

September 2007 Jay Harn named publisher

November 2009 The Signal debuts “The E” e-edition

June 7, 2018 The Signal is sold to former publisher Richard Budman and wife, Chris Budman. July 22, 2018 Sunday Signal debuts 70,000 news magazine

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

THE SIGNAL STORY

continued from page 14

serve the 150-plus students who then commuted to San Fernando High School. By far the biggest news was the destruction of the St. Francis Dam on March 12, 1928. At three minutes before midnight the dam collapsed, sending a 180-foot-high wall of water crashing down San Francisquito Canyon through Castaic Junction, past Piru and Fillmore and eventually into the Pacific Ocean near Ventura. The violent floodwaters carved a swath of death through the Little Santa Clara River Valley and left some 470 bodies in its wake. It was the second-worst disaster in California history in terms of lives lost — second only to the great San Francisco fire and earthquake of 1906.

The 1930s

The decade opened with publisher A.B. Thatcher at the helm of The Signal. The front page was peppered with church news, school news, Kiwanis news, births, deaths, women’s club news, lost dogs, weddings and various other social goings-on. There were regular announcements of dances at the “Saugus clubhouse.” Newhall School news was divided into grade level, with students submitting information after grade one. California news and ranch news could be found on the inside pages. The Depression took its toll on the nation, but mentions of “hard times” in The Signal of the early 1930s were scarce. Rather, the paper reported that the times were hopeful and the people resourceful. Most Signal news centered around home, church and

As the Depression took its toll on the nation, mentions of “hard times” in The Signal of the early 1930s were scarce (as seen in this front page). Rather, the paper reported that the times were hopeful and the people resourceful. SIGNAL FILE PHOTO.

family. Taking a peek into a 1930s kitchen window, one would find a wood-burning stove or one of those newfangled gas varieties that were advertised weekly. The wood stove gave “considerable heat, and [was] desirable in the spring or fall when the mornings and evenings are chilly and the middle of the day almost hot.” The Bank of Italy on San Fernando Road was the only bank in town. It became the Bank of America in 1931. “Dad” Thatcher ran an article from American Banker’s Magazine explaining that advertising was the “moral duty” of every businessman. Patriotism ran high. In 1934, community leaders promised that the local Fourth of July celebration would be a “a wham, a Zow, and likewise a Knockout!” By mid-decade, people were streaming into California The St. Francis Dam disaster in 1928. SIGNAL FILE PHOTO.

See The Signal Story, page 44

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 35

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

Law agrees with Patterson

He left Xerox, followed path to become lawyer By DOUGLAS FERBER Signal business writer

VALENCIA - A funny thing happened to Richard A. Patterson on his way to earning a gold watch with an internationally known company. Patterson left the firm, deciding there was more to life than security with Xerox Corp. Now, almost two decades later, Patterson, 45, is a successful Santa Clarita attorney with his hands in everything from land to banking. It is his second-career attitude that is partially responsible for his trip up the escalator of success. He says his early experiences in the business world gave him a broader perspective on life. “If I had to do it all over again, I’d go the same route,” he said. “The business perspective on life really helps me as an attorney.” Patterson was well into the fold of the Xerox Corp., working his way up from Tucson, Ariz., to the company’s Santa Ana offices, where he served as western regional marketing manager. In 1972, Patterson came to a crossroads in his life. He could either continue with Xerox, moving to Rochester, N. Y., or pursue a new career. So he sat down with his wife, Ann, to ponder his entire life. “We decided whether or not we (he and his wife) wanted to be corporate players for the rest of our lives or go to Jaw school,” he said. After bringing his dilemma to his father in-law, a psychologist, Patterson realized the four years would pass regardless of whether he attended law school. So Patterson enrolled at the University of San Fernando Valley College of Law (now called University of La Verne) in 1972. He said the idea of becoming an attorney while at Xerox

Eighteen years ago, Richard A. Patterson left Xerox Corp. to atttend law school. Now, Patterson is a successful attorney in the Santa Clarita Valley.

became more attractive as he saw how attorneys function. “The attorney was always paid for his thoughts,” he said. “That was kind of neat. I had a great deal of respect for the attorneys I worked with.” During his tenure in law school, Patterson played househusband at home during the days, watching the kids while his wife taught school. At night, it was off to school for Patterson. Patterson said attending night school allowed him to learn from some of the best attorneys in the business. “It was real life. All my professors were working attorneys,” he said. Toward the end of his schooling, Patterson took a position as a law clerk for a Newhall attorney. He said the SCV had only a handful of attorneys at that time. Patterson said he received plaudits from his boss and co-workers for his competitiveness. However, before his bar exam results came back, he was told he would not be made a partner. So Patterson decided to team

up with Jim Neavitt, a classmate he called a scrapper because of his street fighter tenacity. The two opened an office in Newhall. “He is a very diligent litigator,” Patterson said of Neavitt. Neavitt and Patterson moved their offices a few times before finally purchasing two acres in Valencia from The Newhall Land and Farming Co. in 1985. There, Patterson and some partners built what is now the Valencia Oaks Building, a structure that now houses Patterson’s law offices, along with partners Neavitt and Mark Berry. At about the same time, Patterson, Tony Matthes (a local builder) and Chuck Albrecht laid out the groundwork for Valencia National Bank. “It was a fascinating process,” Patterson said. The original board for the bank had 12 hand-picked members, he said. “All these people, successful in their own right, came together and it just blended,” he said. Patterson was also instrumental in putting together a

deal that brought the Lyons Car Wash to Newhall. In addition to his work, Patterson has a busy home life. He has seven children: Ricky, 17; Cody, 14; Rebecca, 11; Natalie, 9; Dylan, 7; Brittany, 5; and Emily, 2. Lately, Patterson is particularly proud of two eldest sons. “Just recently, as I see my boys making the correct choices in life, there is joy in seeing them happy with those choices,” Patterson said. “It’s an extra reward that I had not anticipated.” Patterson said his lifetime. involvement in the Mormon Church has also served to enhance his life. His law practice has not limited rewards, either. Patterson, who handles business-related law, personal injury and real estate, is also the legal counsel for the Santa Clarita Association of Realtors. He loves the diversity. “There is no ticket to more rides than that of being an attorney,” he. said. “Being a lawyer gives me the chance to ride down more career paths thanmost any other profession.”

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 39

“Thanks to The Mighty Signal for enabling businesses to thrive and neighbors to communicate over the past 100 years!”

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

TOP STORIES

continued from page 28

hundreds of pounds of dog chow to the soaking hounds. I suppose my favorite weather story came from A.B. Thatcher in 1932. It was summer. He wrote: “A local cowboy came into the office to report it was so hot, he saw a coyote chasing a rabbit. They were both walking.”

THE PEOPLE

Not many people today know who William S. Hart was. He was one of the most influential Americans in history. With his Shakespearean background, he created the original cowboy persona. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Gary Cooper, hundreds of famous Western superstars

Tony Alamo was a street evangelist who hoodwinked the SCV for years in the 1970s and 1980s. He and his wife ran the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation up Mint Canyon. They paraded around the SCV in a stretch limo and Mrs. A liked to wear the mink coats. For a while, they were community stalwarts until it was discovered they were behind all sorts of charges, from kidnapping to human trafficking to tax evasion. They used street children to beg for donations throughout Southern California. After decades of charges and arrests, born Tony Lazar Hoffman, Alamo (inset, lower right) died in a Kentucky prison in 2017. He was serving time for child sex charges. He was 82.

This front page from 1944 depicts a “before and after.” Calvin Nixon was a freshman at USC and pulled an epic prank (we hope). With the services of a Hollywood beautician, Calvin turned himself into the rather fetching Sylvia Jones. At the time, the pageant consisted of would-be Miss Trojans hanging their photos around campus and people voting for their favorite beauty. Reportedly, Nixon/Jones was ahead in the voting when a friend ratted him out. Insult to injury, Cal’s dad was principal of Castaic School at the time.

credit Hart for giving America this heroic symbol. (Many of them filmed movies and TV shows here.) For 30 years, The Signal hardly had an issue that didn’t mention the movie legend. It started when he built his castle in the 1920s and ran to a decade after his death in 1946. Then, one of America’s most famous trials went on for A DECADE to decide who would get his estate. The Signal mentions Hart’s name probably daily in covering the local high school district that has immortalized his name. Hart lived in town the same time as Hoot Gibson, Tom Mix, Harry Carey, Buck Jones, Yakima Canutt, Gene Autry and several world-famous cowboys and actors. When they had passed away, the identity of the SCV began to change. We went from being The West to becoming suburbia. There were so many people we’ve covered. Gladys Laney was a dear friend. She died in 2014 — at 104. More than 90 of her years were spent in community service here. In the 1980s, Richard Shindler “The Swindler” bilked more than 1,000 locals out of millions. In the 1920s, Henry Clay Needham, prohibitionist, was our valley’s only true presidential candidate. Today, they’re building an industrial park out of his old ranch. Bobby Batugo, literally, the world’s best bartender, lived and worked here at Tip’s. Elizabeth Evans was shot by Robert Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan. Hart’s Dee Dee Myers was Bill Clinton’s press secretary. Oscar-winner Ben Johnson competed in the local rodeo. The inventor of the Halloween mask lived here, as did W.C. Fields, See Top Stories, page 67

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S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 43

Congratulations to The Signal! Thank you for 100 years of serving the Santa Clarita Valley. You have documented countless heartwarming stories, you have been there to report when tragedy has struck, you have chronicled how our community has flourished, and through it all, you have

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been tireless and vigilant. As we celebrate our 10th anniversary of innovation in education, we are proud to salute The Signal for its passionate dedication to quality journalism and community service. Warmly, SCVi & iLEAD Schools

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

THE SIGNAL STORY

continued from page 34

in record numbers and The Signal’s world-consciousness was expanding. Local news still ran on the front page, but the interior pages often carried wire stories and photos of Japan, China, Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. Ranch news disappeared altogether. In Fall, 1938, The Signal took on a decidedly different look. The rather abrupt change was the result of a change in publishers, with F. W. Trueblood taking the helm. Church news moved to the back pages, as did Thatcher’s “Jin Jer Jar” column, quietly signaling the end of an era. Local attention turned to the plight of the valley’s high school students and the lengths they had to go to for an education. The exciting news was that a new high school was on the horizon, with the 7th and 8th grades taking on the status of a junior high. Overall, The Signal was a reflection of an optimistic community of good-hearted townsfolk.

The 1940s

The Santa Clarita Valley awoke to fog on New Year’s Day, 1940. The future bustling areas of Newhall, Saugus and Canyon Country were still merely hamlets of homes tucked together, collectively called Soledad Township, with gas and electric lights cutting through the fog that had blanketed the valley for the past week. People looked forward to the end of the Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, tires cost $3 to $7 each, and you could buy only American cars. A war was waged in newspaper advertisements over the benefits of electric stoves versus gas appliances. Talk centered around the need for a local high school. At the time, teen-agers were still being bused or otherwise driven “over the hill” to San Fernando High. Signal editorials supported the creation of a new school and district. A drastic change took place between the covers of The Signal — not in the reporting, but in the advertising. Suddenly, gas, electric and telephone companies asked people to curtail the use of their services. Previously, utilities begged people to use more gas and electricity and to make more phone calls. World War II dominated most people’s thoughts in the early ‘40s. In June, Fred Trueblood temporarily resigned as publisher to join the U.S. Navy civilian staff. His wife, Anne, and Mark Trueblood ran the paper in his absence. By the time Fred returned in 1944, peace was in sight. Ads encouraged women to “dream of that brand new kitchen you can have after the war.” The first major oil discovery was made in November,

The Signal’s first issue after the Pearl Harbor bombing offered an optimistic message during a difficult time. SIGNAL FILE PHOTO.

1948, at the Sherman well. In the coming months, new wells would pop up all over Newhall, tapping into a large oil pool. Business was good. New buildings were being built. New stores were opening regularly. The baby boom was getting under way. The paper was growing, too. The weekly picture of a scantily clad starlet had been replaced with photos taken by Signal photographers of local people and local events. The front page carried news of oil discoveries and hog ranch debates. Electric lights illuminated many homes as the 10,000 residents of the Little Santa Clara River Valley counted down to midnight on December 31, 1949.

The 1950s

Newhall had a national rodeo roping champion, high school sports teams called the Injuns, a Fourth of July parade at “Slippery Gulch” (aka Monogram Movie Ranch in Placerita Canyon), a two-headed calf and a champion chinchilla named Mike. The decade would bring tail fins, sonic booms and an inkling of the growth to come, as The Newhall Land and Farming Company unveiled its ambitious plans for a new community to be called Valencia. The Signal of the early 1950s had already established See The Signal Story, page 56

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y Î&#x2021; 45

n o s a t rs! r ng yea o C 10 0

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We are the Voice of Real Estate in SCV!

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SIGNAL HISTORY

continued from page 21

going on in the pre-World War II days, Thatcher noted of Italy’s attack on a small and defenseless African nation. His words in 1935: “Mussolini is preparing to attack the darkeys of Abyssinia by putting chemicals on the ground that will burn their feet. According to reports of the toughness of American colored folks feet, that will not help him much.”

Fred the Father, Fred the Son

May 2, 1963, is a particularly melancholy date for me. It’s the day that the Trueblood brothers, Fred and Richard, sold The Mighty Signal to Ray Brooks. For 25 years, every Thursday morning, on the left-hand side of the front page, there was the signature “Signal Tower.” Through the Depression, World War II, the Cold War and hundreds of crises world, national to local, Fred Sr., then his son, Fred Jr., would rally the community, share dark nights of the soul and root for the Santa Clarita. The Trueblood family covered the births of hundreds of children, watched them grow, printed their weddings and too frequently, obituaries. Both father and son ended their column with the same close:

J A N UA RY 26, 2019 “Trying to work in the print shop with two candles brought a thought to mind. Tiny tongues of flame — they cast huge wavering shadows on the walls and ceiling, gigantic, distorted, terrifying. All the familiar furniture and even the famous old 65-year-old press looked queer and spooky. Almost instinctively everyone spoke in whispers. It must have been like that in Cro-Magnon caves, before the beginning of recorded history — when our hirsute progenitors huddled before a fluttering oil wick in a gloomy cave and spoke in undertones of giants and devils roaming the world outside the magic circle of tiny light. We’ve just about come full circle, haven’t we?” He died in 1960, leaving TMS to his sons, Fred II and Gus. They sold it to Ray Brooks just three years later, who sold it to Scott Newhall a few months after that in October of 1963. One last Trueblood story. His son, Gus, told me this one over coffee years ago. In 1939, Newhall Elementary burned down for the third time. Gus was spotted by an See Signal History, page 50

That’sallthereisthereisn’tanymore. Except on May 2, 1963, it was true. There are three Fred Truebloods. The grandson, Fred III, (or, as I call him, “Fred i-i-i”) is still with us and is an avid hunter and smartest of the bunch in that he didn’t get involved with journalism. Fred I was a dashing, theatrical figure with a background in newspapers. With his brothers Mark and H.D., he bought The Signal and took over as owner/editor/publisher with his first issue on Aug. 4. 1938. In his patented conversational style, Fred brought personality to The Signal. One day, a reader called to complain that page 4 of her Signal was completely blank. Fred swung around in his wooden chair, tossed his feet on his desk and read her the complete page, over the phone. Each week, it was a loving family album, featuring the best and worst of the community, but, mostly, the best. We’ve had a lot of great writing in this paper these many decades. None is so revealing, humbling, frightening and terribly sad as a short column written by Fred Trueblood. It was published in large type, in the early days of World War II, when the entire United States was under martial law and people had to completely go dark at night so as not to give a target to Axis bombers. Wrote Trueblood:

No statistics can capture the essence of Gary Thornhill. He was a Signal photographer for nearly 30 years, from the 1970s to the 1990s. Thornhill went to sleep with six police scanners by his bedside. Nicknamed “Thorny” but sometimes going by the pen name of Victor Valencia, he shamed younger staff with his exuberance, energy, creativity and can-do attitude. He often kindly whispered tips for rookie reporters of the questions they might want to ask. Thorny covered disasters, the birth of the city, accidents and the cheesiest and most boring of community events, which he managed to masterfully interpret through his lens. He died in December 2012.

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 47 VA L L E Y I N D U S T R Y A S S O C I AT I O N

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

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SIGNAL HISTORY

continued from page 46

L.A. Times photographer and coaxed into posing for a picture: happily dancing in front of the charred remains. It made the front page next day of the downtown paper. Gus got thrown over Fred’s knee and was given a light spanking. “I’m punishing you not for dancing in front of the burned-down school,” said Fred, “but for appearing on the front page of the competition.”

The Newhall Family Era

It would probably be best if I wrote nothing here. A few hundred words to describe Scott and Ruth Newhall? The most interesting people I’ve ever met? The most interesting couple I’ve ever even read about? Impossible. Nonsense. Scott was the great grandson of Henry Mayo Newhall, the great capitalist who once owned the entire SCV. Scott was a World War II correspondent, drag racer, ran for mayor of San Francisco and was editor of The Chronicle up in Baghdad by the Bay. He was The Most Splendiferous Rascal. He ran off with his 20-something maid when he was 14 — for several months. His words to me, delivered with a wicked smile: “We preferred to vacation in warmer climes…” He was thrown out of three prestigious boys schools,

Scott and Ruth Newhall dance at a San Francisco ball. The couple were two of the most influential people in SCV history. Along with their son, Tony, they ran The Signal for 25 years, from 1963 to 1988, turning it from a charming community weekly to one of the best community dailies in America. Scott was a legend in journalism with his trademark Take No Prisoners front-page editorials.

The Signal was blessed with an all-star team for many years. One of THE great political cartoonists worked here, churning out award-winning cartoons six times a week. A CalArts graduate, Wicks earned so many national awards for his delightful, insightful work. He has the invisible award for Largest Body Of Work To Appear On SCV Refrigerators. Sadly, Wicks died young in 1996 of a heart attack. He was 41. And an angelic genius.

twice for bootlegging poorly (blown up building; poisoned customers) and once for staging a prize fight. He had to fly his mom with him because he wasn’t old enough to elope with Ruth. He lost his leg on their honeymoon in a Mayan architectural dig in the Yucatan. Married, broke, living in a boarded-up mansion, Scott answered an ad in The San Francisco Chronicle for a photographer. Movie star handsome, he got the job. Scott, who had never taken a picture in his life, immediately bought a book called, “How To Take Pictures,” and started a stellar career. He ended up being editor of one of America’s most powerful papers. He bought The Signal in 1963 and, for a while, ran both the Chronicle and TMS. The first thing Scott did was add the powerful Signal American eagle to the masthead, along with the motto, “Vigilance Forever.” It became a warrior’s cry for journalists who worked for the Newhalls through their 25 years at the helm. The Signal was an See Signal History, page 57

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 51

We Salute The Signal on its Glorious Centennial!

ety editor,

Bobbie Trueblood, soci 1963-68

The staff that produced The Signal in the quarter century 1963-1988 is honored to have been a part of The Signal’s long and storied history!

Scott Newhall at editor’s desk, 1986

Editorial, photo, circulation reps, 1983

Jon Newhall, editor, 1966

Signal editorial staff, 1983

t Newhall, Ruth and Scot 78 editors, 19

Signal Fireworks, 1968-198

Newhall Scott (obscured) and Skip 6 confront klansman, 196 Ruth Marks, Randy Wic ks, and Anita Maier Noble, 198 6

Signal production staff, 1984

Tony Mason, Head Photogra pher 1980s

Linda Pedersen, aka Caro lina Kelly, covering society news, 1977

Wicks, Jeff Stalk, tt Newhall, Randy Editorial staff: Sco whall, 1985 Ne y Ton her publis Russ Minick, and

Ruth, Scott, and Victoria at home in Piru, 1985

The Newhall family salutes the staff and citizens in this community who have contributed over the past 100 years toward making The Signal one of the world’s great newspapers!

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 53

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The SCV name game By Jerry Reynolds For The Signal

s one looks back on the past 75 years, a variety of names come to mind. Some have changed, and some have stood the test of time, but nearly all of the Santa Clarita Valley’s names can be placed in a historical context. To wit:

ACTON

Acton Station was established in 1876 as a depot on the Southern Pacific Railroad, taking on a great deal of gold, silver and other ores from nearby mines. It was named for a Massachusetts village.

AGUA DULCE

Spanish for “Sweet Water.” Captain Don Pedro Fages found natural springs in the region while chasing Spanish army deserters in 1772.

ANGELES FOREST

The 555,520-acre San Gabriel Timberland Reserve was created Dec. 20, 1895, becoming the Angeles National Forest on July 1, 1908. In September 1925, the Saugus District was separated from the old Santa Barbara National Forest (now Los Padres) and attached to Los Angeles. It is the oldest national forest in California.

BEALE’S CUT

General Edward F. Beale, hero of the Mexican-American War, ambassador to Austria, surveyor general of California and master to the 297,000-acre Tejon Ranch, called out the Army to hand-dig a 90-foot-deep slash through the mountains, bypassing the hazardous Old Road through Elsmere Canyon. It was the main route north from Los Angeles from 1862 to 1910, when it was replaced by the Newhall Tunnel.

BOUQUET CANYON

Originally “Live Oak Canyon,” “Ship Ranch” (Rancho de Buque) was started there by a French sailor, Francois Chari, in 1843. American mapmakers spelled “Buque” as Bouquet, changing the meaning from a vessel to a bunch of flowers.

CANYON COUNTRY

The intersection of Soledad and Mint Canyons was known as “Solemint” since the 1860s. A century later, with a growing population and mushrooming shopping centers, community leaders such as Arthur Evans, Dr. Everett Phillips and entertainer Cliffie Stone attempted to establish a Solemint Post Office. Rejected by postal authorities, they fell back on another name — Canyon Country — that had floated around for a decade. The Canyon Country Post Of-

J A N UA RY 26, 2019 fice was established in 1968, making the term official.

CASTAIC

An Indian word, “Kashtuk,” meaning “eyes,” was applied to a small lake just east of modern Lebec. Spanish explor ers wrote it in a variety of ways, until Rancho Castic was granted on Nov. 22, 1843. The “a” was added to Castaic by Yankee mapmakers. Castaic Junction started as a railroad siding in 1887. The town of Castaic was founded in 1914, when Sam Parsons started a store to supply workers building the Ridge Route. Lake Castaic, part of the State Water Project, opened in April 1972.

ELIZABETH LAKE

This sag pond on the San Andreas Fault was known as Rabbit Lake and La Luguna de Chico Lopez until 1849, when Charles Wingfield camped on its shores with a party of pioneers bound from Los Angeles to Visalia. His wife went down to the pool for water, slipped and fell in, so it was Elizabeth’s Lake from that time on.

ELSMERE CANYON

Canada de Uvas, or Grapevine Canyon, was an Indian trail followed by Spanish explorers, padres, Mexican ox carts, John C. Fremont and the Butterfield Overland Stage, bypassed by Beale’s Cut in 1862. Known as Fremont Pass for a time, it was named “Ellesmere” in 1889 by Ed Lingwood, for his birthplace in Port Ellesmere, England. Over the years, the spelling was changed to its present nan1e of Elsmere.

GORMAN

James Gorman was an Irish immigrant serving in the Mexican-American War, and then as a government hunter supplying meat to Ft. Tejon after 1854. He bought the “Widow Ranch” four years later, becoming a stop on the Butterfield Stage route. The property was sold to George Ralph, founder of the grocery store chain, after Gorman’s death. The Ralph family still owns the town.

HART PARK

Renowned western film star William Surrey Hart bought the Horseshoe Ranch in 1921, using it as a movie set until he retired four years later. Hart then began construction of a magnificent Spanish-style home on a lofty hill, moving in during 1928 and entertaining a host of celebrities, including Robert Taylor, Will Rogers, Charlie Russell and Barbara Stanwick. The estate was willed to the Los Angeles County Parks and Recreation Department upon Hart’s death in 1946, and is now a museum.

HASLEY CANYON

An Indian word, “Islay,” meaning “berries.”

HUGHES LAKE

Patrick Hughes trailed 5,000 sheep down from the Santa See SCV Name Game, page 66

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 55

e invited local community leaders to send in their memories of The Signal upon the newspaper’s 100th anniversary. The following are samples from some of them. For the complete comments, and more, see www.signalscv.com: “While much has changed in Santa Clarita over the last 100 years, one thing remains constant. We want to know what’s happening in our hometown… We trust The Signal to deliver that news, because that’s what it has done for a century now. And that trust is maintained by the paper’s staff and leadership as they do what is often a difficult job with fairness, passion and conviction. It’s an amazing record of accomplishment, and one that is certainly worth celebrating!” Dr. Dianne G. Van Hook Chancellor, College of the Canyons

“When my family and I first moved to the Santa Clarita Valley, the go-to for community news was The Signal. Every morning without fail, I would start my day with a cup of coffee and The Signal. Fast forward to 2019 and The Signal remains the No. 1 local news source for the Wilk family and the residents of the SCV. I congratulate the paper and its staff for covering our news with heart, passion and a true love of this wonderful community.” Scott Wilk State Senator, 21st District “From the early years to now, The Signal has provided thoughtful insight into the news of the day — always from a local perspective and always with an eye out for the community it serves. The accounts of stories of major significance as well as thorough coverage of local government and community affairs— coupled with provocative opinion pieces— have been the order of the day for each new issue. The Signal has proved over and over again that stories matter, reminding us of who we are, how far we’ve come, and the possibilities and potential we have moving into the future.” Kathryn Barger Los Angeles County Supervisor, 5th District “Our family moved to Santa Clarita in 1972. I became involved in the Parent Teachers Organization at Sky Blue Mesa Elementary School… I planned the carnival and had arranged to have a sky diver land on the school grounds. The Signal printed my press release and our carnival was a success, bringing in a record amount of money for PTO. … This is just a small sample of how The Signal has helped through the years to bring the local news to residents and to help nonprofits raise much-needed dollars. Thank you Scott, Ruth and Tony Newhall, Tim Whyte and all the editors and reporters in years past, and, congratulations to the Budmans for bringing The Signal back home.” Marsha McLean Santa Clarita Mayor “Whether it as a scribe of daily life, as our community cheerleader or as our conscience, The Signal is integral to the Santa Clarita Valley. The Signal informs us, inspires us, and occasionally brings us to fury, and that is the sign of a great

See Quotes, page 65

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THE SIGNAL STORY

continued from page 44

Owner/Editor/Publisher Fred Trueblood (above) carried The Signal torch during the 1950s. A Signal archive photo (below) features an unidentified employee in the typesetting department of the 1950s. SIGNAL FILE PHOTOS.

In the 1950s, the sherriff’s station was in Downtown Newhall. the Signal would later occupy the building. SIGNAL FILE PHOTO.

a few trademarks. Owner-editor-publisher Fred Trueblood’s “Signal Tower” column ran each week on the front page, while his editorials took government officials to task for everything from letting the military “go to pot” after the war to hauling Los Angeles trash to the SCV and feeding it to hogs. The Signal print shop moved from its 32-year home at 636 Spruce Street, where Signal readers had been told to kick the door a few times if it should happen to stick. A big piece of valley history made the news in 1950 when the future of the William S. Hart estate was decided in court. Hart, the famed cowboy star of the silver screen, had left his Horseshoe Ranch to the County of Los Angeles for preservation as a public park. Not all of Hart’s family members were pleased, but in the end the county won. The Signal printed a big program announcing Fourth of July festivities at Slippery Gulch, which would come to be known as Melody Ranch after “Singing Cowboy” Gene Autry purchased the old Monogram Ranch in 1952. In that year, The Signal’s July 4 program, the “Slip-

pery Gulch Gazette,” proclaimed that the valley’s first “real” fireworks show would be held at Hart High. Then as now, The Signal was the hometown paper of “Newhall and vicinity” — a portion of which would soon get a new name. In 1957 the top of The Signal blared, “NEWHALL RANCH REVEALS VAST DEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR FUTURE.” The plan would ultimately transform “Newhall and vicinity” from a small town to a thriving modern suburb.

The 1960s

Every decade has its particular signature. For the little Santa Clarita Valley, the indelible, burning brand of the 1960s came in the person of pirate. His wolfish grin and his seeming ability to inhale all the air out of a room disarmed the meek and mighty alike. He was Scott Newhall. See The Signal Story, page 58

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

SIGNAL HISTORY

continued from page 50

ongoing holy calling and unending practical joke. The second thing Scott did? The first Signal edition in January of 1964 featured a front-page story about how Zambia would be launching astronauts on the moon via catapulting them in oil barrels from giant sling shots. It featured photos of Zambians in odd positions, “demonstrating outer space angles.” It was not labeled as satire. It went downhill from there. The SCV reeled under the relentless barrage of monkey shines. The Signal ran a series of fake missives from a bogus animal rights group, S.I.N.A. (Society for Indecency and Nudity in Animals) S.I.N.A threatened to sue Newhall’s bread and butter, The Newhall Land & Farming Co., if they didn’t put clothes on all their horses and cattle. Scotty then hired a biplane to buzz NL&F’s headquarters and airdrop animal diapers. He ran front-page stories about Bigfoot sightings in Newhall and feigned outrage at the nude campus swimming pool at CalArts (while grinning toothily at sending a photographer to get pictures). But it was his patented Death To Traitors editorials, in war-declared-size headlines, above the front page

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 57 fold for which Scott Newhall was infamous. “If The Big Rigs Won’t Slow Down Throw The Bastards In Jail” was about speeding teamsters on Highway 126. “Keep Your Asses Down, And Find A New Hero” was about Patty Hearst and burgeoning extremism. “Cut Out Fighting. Not Fornicating” was about drunken Irish poets and Belfast terrorism. His wife, Ruth, was a stabilizing influence and was the 1st, 2nd, 3rd-42nd Most Powerful Woman in the SCV. She earned the nickname of “The Godmother.” In her MIMI Wednesday gossip column, one paragraph could result in a promotion or beheading. Novels and entire college courses could be taught on this larger-than-life couple. Their son, Tony, was a business genius and stabilizing force. But, in 1974, after borrowing money time and again to keep the paper afloat, Scott went to the son of a business associate for funds. Charles Morris, of Savannah, Georgia, would eventually end up owning The Signal with the Newhalls working for him. No one was happy with this relationship. One day in 1988, at a department head meeting, Tony Newhall addressed the brass. The second-to-last agenda item was about the broken peanut vending machine in the break room. Tony noted he didn’t want to deny access See Signal History, page 69

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THE SIGNAL STORY

continued from page 56

For 40 years, The Signal had been the equivalent of a family scrapbook. It had been a mom-and-pop outfit with panache under Trueblood. The paper had made him the voice and soul of Santa Clarita. The Signal resided just east of San Fernando Road, south of Market Street, wedged between the old post office and a pool hall called the Happy Valley Roundup Club. The Signal was both print shop and railroad freight office. Life was bucolic. Everyone still knew everyone else. Major community events included the world-famous rodeo and the annual “Placeritos Days” celebration, commemorating the state’s first documented discovery of gold in Placerita Canyon (1842). On May 2, 1963, after 25 years of The Signal flowing through his veins, Fred Trueblood II sold the paper to a printer named Ray Brooks. Brooks purchased The Signal as an investment and held it only six months before selling it to the man whose name would become synonymous with The Signal for the next quarter-century. Scott Newhall introduced what you might call the “modern” Signal on Jan. 9, 1964. For the first time the paper carried a screaming eagle on its masthead with “Vigilance Forever” as its motto. Newhall had been editor of the San Francisco Chronicle at a time when its rival, William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner, dominated that city’s subscriber base. Before he left the Chronicle, Newhall had gone to war with Hearst — and won. Newhall took the Chronicle from number two in circulation to number one, much to Hearst’s chagrin. “Scotty,” as his friends knew him, published the first Sunday edition of The Signal on Dec. 5, 1965. No longer was The Signal just a weekly. The following year the paper expanded to three times a week, publishing on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Scott was a biting editorialist whose above-the-masthead editorials lambasted presidents and popes alike. No one was safe from his rapier pen (actually his 1941 Royal typewriter) — not the local county supervisor, not the school board, not even the “naked cows” of the Newhall pasture. The flamboyant writing style was one of several techniques he applied to boost readership. In 1965, readership doubled, and in 1966 it doubled again. Others have tried to rival The Signal throughout the years. One of the more colorful challenges came from the “Sentinel,” published by Canyon Country leader Art Evans. The battle ended when Scotty publicly challenged

Film star Tom Mix and Tony the Wonder Horse “jumped” Beale’s Cut in an early movie stunt. SIGNAL FILE PHOTO.

Evans to a duel at high noon under the Valley Federal clock tower on Lyons Avenue. Evans failed to show, and his paper soon folded. (The two later became fast friends.) Meanwhile, the new place called Valencia was taking shape. More than a giant housing project, it was a monumental community master-planned by The Newhall Land and Farming Company — providing a tiny income to a certain newspaper publisher of the same last name.

The 1970s

Every year, optimistic officials ritualistically declared that “by this time next year,” the various communities of the Santa Clarita Valley would finally come together under the flag of cityhood. It didn’t happen in the 1970s. But the groundwork was laid. The 1970s saw the development of landmarks such as Magic Mountain, Castaic Lake, College of the Canyons, California Institute of the Arts and Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital — all of which were needed if the burgeoning population was See The Signal Story, page 63

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 59

THE SCV CITIZEN

continued from page 22

In 1988-1989, The Citizen battled three days a week against The Signal’s six days, and it was all-hands-ondeck. Scott and Ruth committed to $1 million for a six-month trial run. A separate delivery crew wasn’t in the budget. So, forget the usual 10- or 12- or 16-hour newsroom work day (to borrow a phrase from Emory). The writers and editors and photographers and office staffers by day became paperboys and -girls by night, tossing their daytime “work product” out of their own car windows and onto their readers’ driveways. Or flower beds. Or gutters. In the snow. Yes, it snowed. Six months came and went. Scott and Ruth rolled the dice with another $300,000, which bought them two more months. And that was that. For 100 years, anybody who ever started or ran a paper with the purposeful intention of competing head-tohead with The Signal, much less putting it out of business, failed. Art Evans couldn’t do it in the ‘60s. Jackie Storinsky couldn’t do it in the ‘70s. The San Fernando Sun and Los Angeles Daily News couldn’t do it in the ‘80s or ‘90s or ‘00s. People whose names are long forgot-

ewspapers, particularly community newspapers, are the best and bravest rampart a free people have to protect themselves from political repression. ... A fine community must support its newspaper. And a fine newspaper must support its community. Newspapering is a pleasure and a privilege. Newspapering is the best and the brightest world of all. — SCOTT NEWHALL The SCV Citizen, Final Edition, May 3, 1989

ten couldn’t do it. If Scott and Ruth Newhall couldn’t do it, it can’t be done. — Leon Worden 2019 SCVTV President Leon Worden was a Signal editor from 1998-2007. He wrote sports and delivered papers in the snow for The Citizen.

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

Randy Wicks: Signal Cartoonist, 1980-1996 “His cartoons are sometimes good for a belly laugh, or a smirk or even a cringe and sigh of relief that it’s not you who is the target of the day. Other days, Wicks will make a poignant statement that brings a tear to your eye.” — Introduction, “Wicked Wicks of the West,” book of cartoons, 1995

hen Randy Wicks died at age 41 of a heart attack in 1996, it was not just a shock to his friends on the staff of The Signal. It was a shock to the community. For 16 years, Wicks had challenged the community to think, to discuss, to disagree. His editorial cartoons lampooned everyone from the president to local City Council members. He was known as an encyclopedic source of knowledge — he read three newspapers every

day, and in the newsroom, he was Google before there was Google. All a reporter needed to do when in search of information was to holler, “Hey Randy...” Presented here is just a small sampling of Randy Wicks’ award-winning work, on a wide range of topics, spread over a 16-year career that was, at once, a hall-of-fame performance — and all too brief. — The Signal

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S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 61

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Congratulates The Signal on its 100th Anniversary! Award for Winning Schools

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S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 63

THE SIGNAL STORY

continued from page 58

to develop the economic and social infrastructure that would be necessary to support the establishment of local government. With development came heightened sensitivity toward the environment by local residents. The biggest political battle of the decade was the fight for home rule — not in the form of a city, but a county. Civic leaders fought to break away from Los Angeles County and establish “Canyon County,” a large, triangular area of land with Acton, Newhall and Gorman at the corners. A small victory came in 1973 when the area was officially recognized by the county as the Santa Clarita Valley. Earlier, it had always been referred to as the “Newhall-Saugus area” or “Soledad Township.” Canyon County formation initiatives went before Los Angeles County voters in 1976 and again in 1978. Both times, a majority within the proposed new county boundaries said “aye,” but they were outnumbered by the voters in the rest of the county who feared a loss of revenue and said “nay.” Magic Mountain opened on 200 acres of hillside west of Interstate 5 on Memorial Day weekend, 1971. Parking cost 50 cents and adult admission was $5. Newhall Land would own the park until June, 1979, when it sold it to Six Flags Corporation. Higher education got a boost in 1970 as COC opened its permanent campus and accepted 1,100 students. Meanwhile, CalArts opened a temporary campus in Burbank. The campus “came home to Valencia” the next year. Medical care took a quantum leap when the $9-million Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital opened on Aug. 3, 1975, with 100 beds. The Signal reported that there was “standing room only in the emergency room.” Dramatic growth in housing was accompanied by an increase in home prices and fierce competition for new homes. When the Valencia Company held a particular lottery for 103 homes, many of the 700 hopefuls camped out overnight to secure a position at the front of the line. The environment became a central issue in 1972 as increased citizen participation caused the county to deny or delay several development projects. The Signal held steady at three days a week throughout the decade. A $500 “Mystery Face” contest in 1973 featured “disguised” photos of celebrities on the front page and clues about their identity. The “King of Kastaic” treasure hunt in 1974 was one of several Signal promotions featuring buried treasure.

Look familiar? The Highway 14 to Highway 5 interchange, then under construction, collapsed in the 1971 earthquake. It would collapse again in 1994. SIGNAL FILE PHOTO

The 1980s

Growth. That’s the story of the Santa Clarita Valley in the 1980s. The population exploded with a vengeance. No longer was the SCV a rural backwater. Before the decade was out, civic leaders would get their coveted home rule. The decade also saw The Signal blossom from thrice weekly into a full-fledged, seven-day-a-week publication. The Newhalls — Scott and his wife, Ruth, and their son Tony — had sold the paper to publisher Charles Morris in 1978, but they stayed on to run the paper for another 10 years. The Newhalls pushed hard for home rule throughout the 1980s. Given the political difficulties of county formation, the effort shifted back to cityhood. The city formation effort gained strength when voters learned that they were sending roughly $4 million more in tax dollars to downtown Los Angeles each year than they were getting back in services. See The Signal Story, page 64

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THE SIGNAL STORY

continued from page 63

By 1987 the cityhood drive was in high gear. Prior to election day, county officials stripped the boundaries of the proposed city from 90 square acres to less than 40. But this time, the effort would succeed. On Nov. 3, voters within the proposed city gave thumbs-up to cityhood. (The cityhood vote did not have to go before all voters in the county.) Local citizens simultaneously elected their first city council: businessman and school board member Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, book store owner and civic activist Jan Heidt, chamber of commerce executive director Jo Anne Darcy, high school teacher and COC board member Carl Boyer III, and retired fire fighter Dennis Koontz. For the first time, the people of “Santa Clarita” had a local government that could spend local tax dollars on local services. The 1980s would see The Signal get more and more involved in ever-increasing community happenings. The Signal carried a “Voice of the Valley” page early in the decade with contributions from various valley residents, including prose, poetry, photographs, drawings and cartoons. As new subdivisions sprouted and the valley’s population soared, residents took a greater interest in preserving SCV history. In 1980 a huge, community-wide fund raising drive was organized to save the Saugus Train Station, which was slated for demolition. School children pitched in pennies to move the station two miles down San Fernando Road, to its present location at Heritage Junction Historic Park. Meanwhile, downtown Newhall merchants established the Walk of Western Stars (initially Western Walk of Fame) to salute local Western celebrities, beginning in 1981 with Gene Autry, Tom Mix and William S. Hart. The Signal made strides of its own. In 1986 it moved from its longtime downtown Newhall location to the Morris Newspaper Corp.’s shiny new facility on Valencia’s Creekside Road, where a major auto mall had taken root. Two years later, the Newhall era ended as Scott, Ruth and Tony left The Signal. Scott and Ruth launched a short-lived, thrice-weekly paper called “The Citizen,” while Tony took an editorial position at his parents’ old stomping grounds — the San Francisco Chronicle. The Signal adopted a newer, more modern format and a new, aggressive reporting style under editor Chuck Cook. By the late 1980s the population had reached an estimated 140,000 people in the city of Santa Clarita alone. Official estimates predicted a 270,000 population by the

A resident digs his truck out of the mud in the Mint Canyon Wash. Water carried the truck down stream and buried most of it in the mud just off Sierra Highway past Vasquez Canyon Road. From Feb. 28, 1993. SIGNAL FILE PHOTO.

year 2010. The Signal was well positioned to serve the growing community.

The 1990s

Santa Clarita continued to grow as the 1990s dawned, but not as rapidly as it did in the 1980s. Real estate brokers and agents were hurting in the early part of the decade as a recession took hold, deflating home prices. Some developers were forced to auction homes. Yet growth remained the top local political issue, foreshadowing the resurgence of construction that would occur in the latter part of the 1990s. The decade began with the William S. Hart Union High School District announcing it was going to sue in an effort to force the County of Los Angeles to adhere to a court decision that would allow local governments to withhold development approvals for projects that would overburden schools. 1992 brought the long-awaited Valencia Town Center mall, developed by The Newhall Land and Farming Co. It was just the first piece of a “town center” commercial development that would continue into the new millennium. Also debuting in 1992 was Metrolink, the new commuter rail system, which opened for business in September. On Oct. 26, 1992, Scott Newhall, the flamboyant former owner and editor of The Signal, died at age 78. Entering 1993, the Santa Clarita Valley struggled through the worst financial problems, watched the crime rate increase and adjusted school schedules to year-round classes. The biggest issue for government was the lack of sufficient funds. The county lost an estimated 25 percent of its general fund to the state, which was attempting to cover its own shortfall, resulting in a scramble for what was left. A proposed 190-million-ton capacity landfill in Elsmere Canyon remained a hot topic until 1995, when U.S. See The Signal Story, page 68

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

QUOTES

continued from page 55 community newspaper! A local paper is indeed a treasure (and rather hard to find today.) I am thankful we have The Signal. Happy birthday!” Marlee Lauffer Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital, Foundation Vice President, Marketing and Communications

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 65

Congratulations to The Signal!

“Without the Signal there would be no local government, no city of Santa Clarita, possibly no College of the Canyons, and certainly no historical society. The Signal encouraged our people to make informed decisions.” Carl Boyer Member of the first Santa Clarita City Council “The Signal has been publishing for a century! It’s been covering the news from prohibition to cityhood – the dam break, installations, fundraisers, football champs, beauty pageants, July 4th parades, and occasional bar fights. I remember back in the 1970s, my father and Signal Editor Scott Newhall was confronted by an angry reader, pounding on the front desk, demanding that The Signal publish an overdue obituary of his 96-year-old aunt. As the reader stormed out, Scott was unperturbed. He said, ‘You know, we’ve achieved legitimacy. In this town you haven’t died until The Signal says you are dead!’ For a quarter of a century (1963-88), my family took the reins of The Signal. Those were the most exciting years of our lives. We made many friends in this community whom we’ll never forget. Happy 100th birthday, Signal!” Tony Newhall Former Signal Publisher “The Santa Clarita Valley boasts a remarkable and rich heritage steeped in western history; stories of which have been told and preserved through the pages of The Signal. The first edition back on Feb. 7, 1919, brought local news to the then small, rural areas of Newhall and Saugus. We are now a blossoming city rich with art, culture and boundless natural beauty. I want to offer my heartfelt gratitude to all of those who have served as editor of this great publication, the reporters who have penned our city’s history and the photographers who have captured and preserved it for generations to come.” Laurene Weste Santa Clarita Councilwoman “Growing up, I remember my father, Clyde Smyth, stopping each morning to pick up The Signal on his way to the office. He depended on the daily paper for community news and coverage of the William S. Hart Union High School District, of which he was superintendent. Within the pages of The Signal and in the words of owners/editors Scott and Ruth Newhall, the call for cityhood was sounded. The city of Santa Clarita formation effort gained strength through the articles, stories, columns and letters to the editor. The Signal, and its staff, over the past century have played a vital role in what our community and city have become.” Cameron Smyth Santa Clarita Mayor Pro Tem

Thanks for telling our Santa Clarita Valley stories for 100 years!

66 · S I G N A L 1 00 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y

continued from page 54 Maria River in 1872, settling near West Elizabeth Lake. He later sold out to his brother Owen.

LANG

A New Yorker, John Lang, set up a dairy farm on the banks of the Santa Clara River (south of Shadow Pines) in 1870. Channeling nearby sulphur springs from the moun tains, he created a spa and hotel, which became a stop for freighters. On Sept. 5, 1876, Charles Crocker drove a gold spike at Lang, the final link in Southern Pacific Railroad connecting Los Angeles with San Francisco. A train sta tion existed until 1971, when Southern Pacific bulldozed it into the streambed.

MENTRYVILLE

J A N UA RY 26, 2019 and Gorman, adding up to 97 complete circles in 32 miles. Reworked several times, it was abandoned in 1933, when Highway 99 was completed. There is a movement to make it a National Historic Trail.

SAN FRANCISQUITO

Rancho San Francisco became separated from Mission San Fernando in 1804, covering the land from Piru Creek to Soledad Canyon. “Little St. Francis” Canyon was named at that time.

SANTA CLARITA

The River and Valley of St. Clair, Patroness of Sore Eyes, were named by Father Juan Crespi Aug. 10, 1769. Long confused with Santa Clara up north, A.B. Perkins coined the term Santa Clarita, or “Little St. Clair,” in 1946. The city of Santa Clarita was founded Dec. 15, 1987.

California Star Oil Co. renamed Pico Springs “Men tryville” in 1876, after their superintendent, Charles A. Mentry, drilled C.C.O. No. 4, the first commercially suc cessful oil well in the West. Now largely abandoned, Men try’s home, barn, a school house and some denicks remain behind locked gates at the end of Pico Canyon Road.

SAUGUS

NEWHALL

SOLEDAD

Southern Pacific Railroad founded Newhall Depot Oct 13, 1876, and the town gradually grew up around the sta tion. It was named for Henry Mayo Newhall, owner of the surrounding rancho. This became The Newhall Land and Farming Co. after Newhall died in 1882.

PICO CANYON

Named for Andres Pico, the Mexican general who sur rendered California to John C. Fremont in 1847, Pico skimmed oil in the canyon that bears his name and used it at his San Fernando Ranch.

PLACERITA CANYON

Jose Francisco de Gracia Lopez started the first gold rush in California on March 9, 1842, near an ancient tree known, today, as The Oak of the Golden Dream. Placerita, meaning “little placer (mines),” is a state and county park.

PYRAMID LAKE

Pyramid Rock was created in 1933, when Highway 99 was being built. The lake and dam recalling this landmark were completed in 1974.

RAVENNA

Manuel Ravenna was an Italian immigrant who set up stores in Los Angeles and Soledad City. Southern Pacific named its railroad station for him in 1876. It was aban doned and destroyed in 1972.

RIDGE ROUTE

Completed in 1915, it was officially The Tejon Route, but it quickly became “The Ridge,” as it snaked over the tops of the mountains. There were 942 curves between Castaic

Saugus Station was founded Sept. 1, 1887, named for the birthplace of Henry M. Newhall in Massachusetts. The Indian word means “a narrow, sandy spit of land.” A town, Surrey, grew up around the depot, finally changing its name to Saugus in 1915. Explorer and army officer Don Pedro Fages named the canyon in 1772, as it reminded him of his home in Catalo nia, Spain. It means “homesick” or “lonely.”

ST. FRANCIS DAM

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power built a concrete dam in San Francisquito Canyon in 1925 to store water brought by their aqueduct from Owens Valley. On March 12, 1928, the dam collapsed, drowning some 450 people and causing over $13 million in property damage. It is the second-greatest disaster in the state’s history.

SULPHUR SPRINGS

In 1860, Colonel Thomas F. Mitchell started his Sulphur Springs Ranch at Lost and Sand canyons. John Lang ran the springs down to a health spa 11 years later. In 1872, they started the Sulphur Springs School in the kitchen of the Mitchell Adobe. It is the second-oldest school district in Los Angeles County.

TEJON

Lieutenant Francisco Ruiz’s soldiers found a dead bad ger north of present Gorman, naming the pass Tejon, or Badger. Rancho El Tejon was granted Nov. 11, 1843, and Ft. Tejon was established Aug. 10, 1854. Edward F. Beale acquired the ranch in 1865.

VALENCIA

A master-planned community dedicated by The Ne whall Land and Farming Co. on Aug. 20, 1967. The name Valencia was chosen by Scott Newhall, after the ancient Spanish city.

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S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 67

TOP STORIES

continued from page 40

Frank Edwin Churchill, the Oscar-winning songwriter who wrote “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” and other Disney hits, reportedly committed suicide at his Castaic ranch in 1941. Neighbors suspected his wife and the foreman, who hightailed it out of town after Churchill’s demise, murdered the songwriter. The next owner of Paradise Ranch, Churchill’s retreat, didn’t have an ear for music. He found literally thousands of original scores, all in the Oscarwinner’s hand. He tossed them in the trash. How many hundreds of dollars, if not millions, would that be worth today?

black architect Paul Revere Williams (who learned to write upside down because he couldn’t sit on the same side of the table as his famous clients), the world’s fastest 90-year-old, and Hart grad Joe Kapp, famed NFL quarterback who threw seven TDs in one game. There was a guy — I wish I could remember his name — who came through here in the 1920s. He was walking around the world — backwards.

AND THE TRUE BIGGEST STORY TMS HAS COVERED?

Honestly? I’d have to say it’s in what we do at The Mighty Signal every day. It’s printing the name of the kid who scored a goal in a youth soccer game. Or advertising a charity event. It was that little, buried, 2-inch story back in August of 1965 when a caravan of local church groups, without fanfare, motored to bring food, medicine, water and clothes to Downtown L.A. after the Watts Riots. I think it’s seeing your baby’s birth notice. Or your neighbor’s DUI. Or the obituary of a loved one. I think these are the biggest stories. I think this is the song of America, forever singing in a newspaper. John Boston has been a professional journalist since he was 16. Historian, humorist and novelist, off and on, he’s worked for The Signal for nearly 40 years and often asks: “What’s the definition of insanity?”

Best of Success

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE SCV SIGNAL, FOR ALL YOU HAVE DONE, WE LOOK FORWARD TO ANOTHER

100 YEARS

Bob Jensen, CPA Dennis King, CPA Evan Faucette, CPA Mike Garrison, CPA Tom Engman, CPA Bud Alleman, CPA Sandie Snetiker Phone: 661-705-4222 KKAJ, LLP

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68 · S I G N A L 1 0 0 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

THE SIGNAL STORY

continued from page 64

Celebrating our 20th Anniversary

Daily Wine Tasting A G U A D U L C E W I N E R Y. C O M The Board of Directors of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Foundation and Capt. Robert J. Lewis and Sheriff’s Department Staff

Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon — who had been Santa Clarita’s first mayor — succeeded in pushing through legislation with the help of Sen. Barbara Boxer that thwarted a land swap that was needed for the dump to be built. What was perhaps the biggest story of the decade broke at 4:31 a.m. Monday, Jan. 17, 1994, when a 6.7-magnitude earthquake, centered in Northridge, rocked the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys. Homes were destroyed and lives uprooted in the disaster, which would become the single most-covered event in Signal history. The quake would also spark one of the decade’s fiercest political battles: Using earthquake damage as its impetus, the city launched a proposal for a $1.1 billion redevelopment plan that would finance a wide array of infrastructure improvements throughout the city. The plan was challenged in court by the Castaic Lake Water Agency which contended it stood to lose significant revenues and that the plan exceeded the scope of redevelopment law. The city ultimately abandoned the $1.1 billion proposal after the County of Los Angeles sided with the water agency in court. See The Signal Story, page 70

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HERE’S TO ITS NEXT 100 YEARS! To The Signal Newspaper And Staff, Congratulations on 100 Years of Accomplisments!

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J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 69

SIGNAL HISTORY

continued from page 57

to anyone seeking free peanuts, but don’t slash your wrist in the attempt. Without taking a breath, he announced he and his parents would be leaving The Signal forever that afternoon. A few days later, they started the Citizen newspaper. It lasted 10 months and lost $1 million. Not hay in 1989.

A Wild Ride to the 21st Century

There are hundreds of scoundrels to good souls who deserve mentioning from the last 30 years. There’s the columnist-turned-human-trafficker, Dwight Jurgens, who is currently marinating in a Kansas pen, probably for the rest of his life. There’s the angelic artist, sent directly from Iowa and heaven, Randy Ray Wicks. He was on a strata as one of Earth’s top political cartoonists. Period. No one was better. And he worked for us. Susan Starbird was the county reporter who helped create the world’s record for shortest tenure by a Signal editor. Twenty minutes into the job, the new editor ordered her to an assignment. Sue refused, spicing it up by climbing on his desk, chanting “No-no-no-no-no!!!” while flamencoing. Business Editor Ed Beeghley would likewise climb on his desk in the AMS Logo.pdf

CMY

3/19/09

1970s and belt out Broadway tunes in a deep bass voice before returning to typing. We had a reporter who was engaged to one staffer while she was sleeping with four others. Sometimes, we’re friendly that way. I suppose there’s me. Editors, publishers, staff came and went, each with a 12-volume memoir filled with laughs and horror stories. We made it to 100. There’s a new ownership that for the first time is local, involved, caring and capable. Richard Budman bought the paper and took over June 7, 2018. Like every publisher for the last century, there is that glorious, daily battle, the gratitude of serving one of the best communities anywhere. If I had a wish, it would be for a time machine, to visit the year 2119 and see what the 200th Anniversary Edition of The Mighty Signal looks like, with all the heroes, misanthropes, lost souls, poets and Mighty Signalites, and the stories of the previous century. John Boston earned the Will Rogers Lifetime Achievement Award to go along with 118 other major journalism honors (approximately 117 more than Signal Editor Tim Whyte). He is a historian, novelist, author, humorist and, with a career nearing 40 years, the longest-serving journalist in Signal history.

7:32:06 PM

AMS Fulfillment congratulates The Signal for 100 years of helping to build a stronger community as our #1 source of information.

Congratulations to The Signal on

100 Years! Preserving the Values & Spirit of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. —Assemblywoman Christy Smith

Christy Smith for Assembly 2020 ID #1414296

70 · S I G N A L 1 0 0 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y

THE SIGNAL STORY

continued from page 68

Throughout the 1990s, growth and related issues — traffic, school overcrowding, crime — dominated local political discourse. And although the city of Santa Clarita consistently rated in the nation’s top five lowest-crime cities in America with populations over 100,000, there were signs that this was no sleepy hamlet anymore. In response to parental concerns about youth fashions of the day, the Hart High School District approved a mandatory school uniforms policy for La Mesa Junior High School seventh graders. Significant losses for the decade included the end of Saturday nigh racing at the Saugus Speedway. Racing was discontinued mid-season in 1995 as the track’s owners cited structural problems with the grandstands. Significant gains for the community included the annual Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival, the brainchild of assistant city manager Ken Pulskamp. The idea was first scoffed at by many in the community — including The Signal — but in a few short years the event has placed Santa Clarita firmly on the Western circuit. The 1990s also saw the largest one-time event ever to grace the Little Santa Clara River Valley: In 1998, the PGA Tour paid the SCV a visit as Billy Mayfair beat out Tiger Woods to capture the Nissan Open Championship in a thrilling one-hole playoff at Valencia Country Club. For The Signal, the cavalcade into the 1990s saw the birth of new traditions in the personages of award-wining satirist John Boston and the legendary Randy Wicks. The man who needed only one name cut his eye teeth in the shadow of Scott Newhall at The Signal’s old offices on 6th Street. With the chicanery of Newhall and a style all his own, Wicks’ editorial cartoons added spice to the

J A N UA RY 26, 2019 pages of The Signal for 16 years. His untimely death on Aug. 3, 1996 at the age of 41 left a chasm deeply felt throughout the valley. Hundreds of friends, family members, community leaders and admirers attended memorial services at his alma mater, California Institute of the Arts.

The 2000s

2001 Ethel Nakutin is named Publisher. In 2004, Richard Budman becomes publisher and minority owner bringing SCV This week to The Signal and making that the Sunday paper. The Signal website continued to grow in the 2000s. Under the leadership of Publisher Richard Budman The Signal introduced video to The-Signal.com in 2004. In 2005 the Signal introduced two bell-weather special sections that continue today. The very popular Best Of poll which proclaims the best business in town according to a reader’s poll and The much acclaimed Top 51 Most Influential People in Santa Clarita which lists and ranks the most influential people in town according to The Signal. 2007 Jay Harn is named publisher 2008 Ian Lamont becomes publisher. 2009 The Signal debuts The Signal e-edition

The 2010s

February 2012 Randy Morton becomes publisher February 2014 Russ Briley named publisher. On January first, 2016 after owning the paper for more than thirty years Morris Multimedia sold the paper to Charles Champion, Gary Sproule and Russ Briley In 2016, after being located on Creekside road on the Santa Clarita Auto Road for 16 years, The Signal moved to its current location in Center Pointe on Diamond Place. On June 7, 2018 The Signal was sold again to former Publisher Richard Budman and his wife Chris Budman. On July 22, 2018 The Signal announced the return of the Sunday paper in the form of The Sunday Signal, a free publication distributed to 70,000 homes. In February 2019, The Signal will be adding a video newscast to its lineup. Much has changed since Edward H. Brown put out the first edition of the Santa Clarita Valley’s hometown newspaper in 1919. This once-peaceful little community, and its newspaper, have burgeoned into something our first settlers could not have imagined. The Signal moved into its current location in Centre Pointe in 2016.

J A N UA RY 26, 2019

S I G N A L 100 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y · 71

&NOW

THEN

A CENTURY OF EXCELLENCE For the past 100 years, The Signal has been the voice of record for the Santa Clarita Valley, and we salute the newspaper on this historic anniversary. Together, we have contributed to the growth of one of the best places to live, work and raise a family in California.

NL020152_ValenciaSignal100Anniversary_Signal_FNL | 8” x 10.5” (0.25’ bleed)