Neenach, California

Neenach ( ) is an agricultural settlement in northwestern Los Angeles County, California, with a population of about 800.The U.S. Census does not break out a separate figure for Neenach. The county registrar said in 1991 that the voting district for Neenach, which included the nearby Three Points area and Holiday Valley, had 378 voters. The 800 figure is from the Scott Gold story, below. It is facing a massive change with the proposed construction of a 23,000-home planned community to its north called Centennial.

Geography and climate

Neenach is northwest of Lancaster in the Antelope Valley portion of Southern California. It is southeast of Gorman and north of the Sierra Pelona Mountains, and from the county seat in Downtown Los Angeles. This region experiences hot and dry summers.

History

Early names

The original name for present day Neenach is ''puyutsiwamǝŋ''. This is in the Kitanemuk language. The Spanish referred to it as Ojo de la Vaca.

Cow Springs and French John's Station

A 19th century name for the area was Cow Springs (), about a mile southwest of today's Neenach School.Bonnie Ketterl Kane, ''A View From the Ridge Route, Volume III, The Ranchos,'' Frazier Park: Bonnie's Books, 2005
El Camino Viejo, the Old Road to Los Angeles, passed from Laguna Chico Lopez north via Willow Springs Canyon, then west to the water at Aquaje Lodoso, then to Cow Springs and on to Tejon Pass.Frank F. Latta, "EL CAMINO VIEJO a LOS ANGELES" - The Oldest Road of the San Joaquin Valley; Bear State Books, Exeter, 2006; p.21. Reprint of the 1936 work by Frank F. Latta. Later a shorter route was followed by the Stockton - Los Angeles Road and the Butterfield Overland Mail between Elizabeth Lake and Gorman. Instead of going north-south, travelers went east-west via the San Andreas Rift and Oakgrove Canyon, and north-south via Pine Canyon, Antelope Valley and Cow Springs. French Johns Station, 14 miles east of Gorman near Cow Springs, provided a way station for the stage line, teamsters and other travelers.

In 1888, Cow Springs was described as "a pleasant camping-place with willow trees, casting an inviting shade to the weary traveler" with a "pure, cold, limpid stream which came bubbling up from its earthen reservoir and went gaily dancing down to the thirsty soil that encompassed it about."

Establishment

Neenach itself was founded in the 1870s by Danish settlers from Neenah, Wisconsin. In 1888, a post office was established, with John A. Coovert as the first postmaster.Bonnie Ketterl Kane, ''A Brief Overview of the History of Neenach.''
Although Kane states that the post office was originally known as Neenah and it became known later as Neenach, she cites no source. The first mention of Neenach in the ''Los Angeles Times'' was on September 4, 1890, reporting a marriage license issued to Uriah W. Pratt, 32, and Estelle Hereford, 24, both "of Neenach." There were no references in the ''Times'' data base under any other spelling. In September 1905 Christian Clausen was named postmaster.

James Anderson filed a homestead claim for 160 acres (647,000 m²) at present-day State Route 138 and 300th Street West in 1887. He had a county contract to maintain and improve roads in the Antelope Valley as far as Three Points.

Construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct between 1905 and 1913, which brought water from the distant Owens Valley to the San Fernando Valley, was important to the area.

On July 13, 1917, Chief Water Engineer William Mulholland of the city of Los Angeles, the builder of the aqueduct, received word that the line had been broken. He went to Neenach and found a 60-foot rupture. He ordered additional surveillance, which saw the arrest of one man, an employee of the rival Los Angeles Gas and Electric Company. The suspect was later released.

James Anderson became a line rider or patrolman on the aqueduct: He had to shut down the tunnel periodically to check its condition. He also checked the surface to verify that none of the aqueduct's opponents had damaged it. Harry Womersley, from England by way of Illinois, was another resident who worked on the aqueduct—the 12 miles from Fairmont to Neenach.

Gold was discovered in the hills south of the community in the early 1930s. The "Oh Suzanna" mine produced some $7 million over the few years of its operation.

In the 1970s, Neenach was lively, one resident told a reporter. There were community-wide potluck dinners and almost 80 members in the local 4-H Club. Since then, he said, many of the kids moved away as soon as they were able.

Proposed development

A portion of nearby Tejon Ranch called Centennial is proposed to be a 23,000-home master-planned community adjacent to Neenach. Civic squares, parks, shops, three fire stations, and other services are proposed. Children would be encouraged to walk to one of the eight elementary schools planned. The promoters have pledged to create 30,000 local jobs. On average, a new house would be erected every eight hours, seven days a week, for 20 years.

The Tucson, Arizona,-based Center for Biological Diversity, however, opposes the project—claiming that Centennial would be built on rare ecosystems, including the largest native grassland left in California.

Education

Schools

The present Neenach School building was opened in 1993 to replace an older building that had stood for decades on a neighboring lot. The school was closed in 2001 because of dwindling population and high heating costs; lack of a natural-gas source meant the school was all-electric. Sixty-six pupils were enrolled the previous year.

Neenach is part of the Westside Union School District of West Lancaster, which also operates Del Sur, Joe Walker, Hill View, Cottonwood, Rancho Vista, Sundown, Valley View, Leona Valley, and Quartz Hill schools, through the eighth grade


The community is within the Antelope Valley Union High School District and the Antelope Valley Community College District.

Natural phenomena

Volcanic formations

The Neenach Volcanic Formations, about 23.5 million years old, are a series of igneous intrusions next to Old Post Road paralleling Interstate 5 near Gorman, California. Plate movement along the San Andreas Fault split the formations and moved half of them about two hundred miles north into what is now Pinnacles National Park.Robin Soslow, ''Washington Post,'' syndicated in "Your Spirit Can Soar Like Condors," ''Sunday News,'' Lancaster, Pennsylvania, March 2, 2014, image 61
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Meteorite

The Neenach Meteorite is a 30-pound mass of stony, ordinary chondrite discovered in April 1948 by Elden Snyder of Neenach when he unearthed it with his plow, in the process breaking it into four pieces. In 1952 it was brought to the attention of Robert Wallace Webb of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Later it was donated to the collection of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Communication

The ZIP Code is 93536, served by the Lancaster post office, and the telephone system is part of area code 661.

Gallery

See also

*Mountain Communities of the Tejon Pass

References

Additional reading

"Distance From San Francisco to St. Louis: From Station to Station," ''The Semi-Weekly Southern News,'' February 6, 1861, page 4
Settlement of Cow Springs listed south of Tejon Canyon and north of Hart's Ranch in Santa Clarita

"On His Own Domain," ''San Francisco Examiner,'' July 28, 1888, page 1
Posse on the trail of bandit chief Frank Fray stops to rest in Cow Springs, "on the eastern border of the Liebre ranch."

External links

''Antelope Valley Press'' newspaper''The Mountain Enterprise'' newspaper

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Unincorporated communities in Los Angeles County, California
Antelope Valley
Populated places in the Mojave Desert
El Camino Viejo
Butterfield Overland Mail in California
Stagecoach stops in the United States
Unincorporated communities in California