The Verdugo Mountains, also known as the Verdugo Hills or simply The Verdugos, are a small, rugged

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arise ...

of the

Transverse Ranges The Transverse Ranges are a group of mountain ranges of southern California, in the Pacific Coast Ranges physiographic region in North America. The Transverse Ranges begin at the southern end of the California Coast Ranges and lie within Santa ...

system in Los Angeles County, California. Located just south of the western San Gabriel Mountains, the Verdugo Mountains region incorporates the cities of

Glendale Glendale is the anglicised version of the Gaelic Gleann Dail, which means ''valley of fertile, low-lying arable land''. It may refer to: Places Australia * Glendale, New South Wales ** Stockland Glendale, a shopping centre *Glendale, Queensland, ...

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. ...

, and

La Cañada Flintridge LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note * "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on ''Figur ...

; the unincorporated communities of

Altadena Altadena () ("Alta", Spanish for "Upper", and "dena" from Pasadena) is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in the Verdugo Mountains region of Los Angeles County, California, approximately 14 miles (23 km) from the downtown ...

and

La Crescenta-Montrose La Crescenta-Montrose () is an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The community is bordered by Glendale to the south and west, La Cañada Flintridge to the east, and Angeles National Forest to the north. Acc ...

; as well as the

City of Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

neighborhood of Sunland-Tujunga. Surrounded entirely by urban development, the Verdugo Mountains represent an isolated wildlife island and are in large part under public ownership in the form of undeveloped parkland. The mountains are used primarily for recreation in the form of hiking and mountain biking, and as the site of communications installations on the highest peaks. The mountains arise directly from the eastern floor of the San Fernando Valley, exaggerating their height from some vantages. Beginning with foothills, they rapidly rise to rugged sections, with the highest peaks topping 3,000', nearly as high as the nearby

Santa Susana Mountains The Santa Susana Mountains are a transverse range of mountains in Southern California, north of the city of Los Angeles, in the United States. The range runs east-west, separating the San Fernando and Simi valleys on its south from the Santa C ...

Geography

The northwest-trending range is approximately long by wide, and roughly parallels the southern front of the San Gabriel Mountains at a distance of to , with the

Crescenta Valley The Crescenta Valley is a small inland valley in Los Angeles County, California, lying between the San Gabriel Mountains on the northeast and the Verdugo Mountains and San Rafael Hills on the southwest. It opens into the San Fernando Valley at t ...

lying between the two. The southern front of the range forms part of the northeastern boundary of the San Fernando Valley; at their southeastern end the Verdugo Mountains are separated from the

San Rafael Hills The San Rafael Hills are a mountain range in Los Angeles County, California. They are one of the lower Transverse Ranges, and are parallel to and below the San Gabriel Mountains, adjacent to the San Gabriel Valley overlooking the Los Angeles Bas ...

by the

Verdugo Wash Verdugo Wash is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed March 16, 2011 tributary of the Los Angeles River, in the Glendale area of Los Angeles County, California. The strea ...

. The highest summit is the informally named Verdugo Peak (), located near the center of the range and rising to approximately above its southern base. Other peaks include Tongva Peak (2,656

feet The foot ( : feet) is an anatomical structure found in many vertebrates. It is the terminal portion of a limb which bears weight and allows locomotion. In many animals with feet, the foot is a separate organ at the terminal part of the leg made ...

), recently named in honor of the

Tongva The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer Kizh as an endonym that, they argue, is more historically ...

(Gabrielino) people, the original inhabitants of much of the

Los Angeles Basin The Los Angeles Basin is a sedimentary Structural basin, basin located in Southern California, in a region known as the Peninsular Ranges. The basin is also connected to an wikt:anomalous, anomalous group of east-west trending chains of mountai ...

Santa Monica Mountains The Santa Monica Mountains is a coastal mountain range in Southern California, next to the Pacific Ocean. It is part of the Transverse Ranges. Because of its proximity to densely populated regions, it is one of the most visited natural areas in ...

, and San Gabriel Valley areas. Other informally named peaks are Mount La Tuna on the north end and Mount Thom on the south end of the range. With the exception of Mount La Tuna, all these summits, as well as several others, are occupied by communications towers. The Verdugo Mountains lie within the corporate boundaries of the cities of

, Burbank, and

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

. The neighborhood of

La Crescenta La Crescenta-Montrose () is an unincorporated area in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The community is bordered by Glendale to the south and west, La Cañada Flintridge to the east, and Angeles National Forest to the north. Accor ...

, most of which lies within Glendale, is adjacent to the range's northern end, as are the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Tujunga, Sunland, Shadow Hills, and Sun Valley (the last of which includes La Tuna Canyon).

Geology

The Verdugo Mountains consist of an east-west-trending antiformal fault block, bounded on the south by the Verdugo Fault, a north-dipping

reverse fault In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectoni ...

, and on the north by the Sierra Madre

thrust fault A thrust fault is a break in the Earth's crust, across which older rocks are pushed above younger rocks. Thrust geometry and nomenclature Reverse faults A thrust fault is a type of reverse fault that has a dip of 45 degrees or less. If ...

near the front of the San Gabriel Mountains,Arkle, Jeanette, C, and Armstrong, Phillip A. (2007). "Quaternary exhumation of the Verdugo Mountains, Los Angeles Basin, constrained by low-temperature thermochronometry." Geological Society of America ''Abstracts with Programs,'' vol. 39, no. 6, p. 83. thus including the sediment-covered Crescenta Valley within the Verdugo Mountains Block. The Verdugo Fault lies slightly south of the topographic range front and is completely covered by sediments. The rocks within the Verdugo Mountains block are almost entirely igneous and metamorphic similar to the crystalline basement rocks exposed to the north in that portion of the San Gabriel Mountains south of the San Gabriel Fault. These consist of

gneiss Gneiss ( ) is a common and widely distributed type of metamorphic rock. It is formed by high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic processes acting on formations composed of igneous or sedimentary rocks. Gneiss forms at higher temperatures a ...

, and gneissic

diorite Diorite ( ) is an intrusive igneous rock formed by the slow cooling underground of magma (molten rock) that has a moderate content of silica and a relatively low content of alkali metals. It is intermediate in composition between low-sili ...

and

quartz diorite Quartz diorite is an igneous, plutonic ( intrusive) rock, of felsic composition, with phaneritic texture. Feldspar is present as plagioclase (typically oligoclase or andesine) with 10% or less potassium feldspar. Quartz Quartz is a hard, ...

, intruded by irregular bodies of equigranular granitic rocks, predominantly quartz diorite and

granodiorite Granodiorite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock similar to granite, but containing more plagioclase feldspar than orthoclase feldspar. The term banatite is sometimes used informally for various rocks ranging from gr ...

, with accompanying pegmatite and

aplite Aplite () is an intrusive igneous rock in which the mineral composition is the same as granite, but in which the grains are much finer, under 1 mm across. Quartz and feldspar are the dominant minerals. The term ''aplite'' or ''aplitic'' ...

. Exposed rocks in the Shadow Hills neighborhood at the extreme northwestern end of the Verdugos are typically marine

sedimentary Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic particles at Earth's surface, followed by cementation. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause these particles ...

rocks of

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

age, predominantly

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...

and shale. The Verdugo Mountains are part of the western

, which have risen in the last 7 million years as the result of contractional deformation resulting from transpressional motion and rotation of crustal blocks in the "Big Bend" region of the

San Andreas Fault The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizonta ...

. The amount of crustal shortening since the beginning of the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Arkle, Jeanette C.; and Armstrong, Phillip A. (2009). "Exhumation of the Verdugo Mountains, Southern California; constraints from low-temperature thermochronology and geomorphic analysis." Geological Society of America ''Abstracts with Programs,'' vol. 41, no. 67 p. 300. Uplift along the Verdugo fault may total approximately , at a minimum rate of per million years since 2.3 million years ago,Meigs, Andrew; Yule, Doug; Blythe, Ann; and Burbank, Doug (2003). "Implications of disturbed crustal deformation for exhumation in a portion of a transpressional plate boundary, Western Transverse Ranges, Southern California." ''Quaternary International,'' vol. 101–102, pp. 169–177. moving the crystalline rocks of the Verdugo Mountains up and over younger

Tertiary Tertiary ( ) is a widely used but obsolete term for the geologic period from 66 million to 2.6 million years ago. The period began with the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start ...

and Quaternary sediments to the south. The Verdugo Mountains are, therefore, young and rapidly rising, reflected in their steep topography and rapid rates of erosion.

Municipalities and neighborhoods

Incorporated cities (independent)

Unincorporated communities

City of Los Angeles neighborhoods of The Verdugos

* Sunland-Tujunga

Flora, fauna and climate

The Verdugo Mountains lie almost entirely within the chaparral plant community, as defined by Munz and later authors, including Sawyer ''et al.'' This dense, shrub-dominated community of the California chaparral and woodlands is more highly developed on the north-facing slopes than on the drier, hotter south-facing slopes. Among the shrub species that characterize this community, prominent in the Verdugos are laurel sumac (''

Malosma laurina ''Malosma'' is a plant genus which contains only a single species, ''Malosma laurina'', with the common names laurel sumac and lentisco (Spanish).Integrated Taxonomic Information System (2007)''Malosma'' retrieved June 10, 2007. ''Malosma laurin ...

''), toyon (''

Heteromeles arbutifolia ''Heteromeles arbutifolia'' (; more commonly by Californian botanists), commonly known as toyon, is a common perennial shrub native to extreme southwest Oregon, California, and the Baja California Peninsula. It is the sole species in the genus ...

''), poison oak (''

Toxicodendron diversilobum ''Toxicodendron diversilobum'' (syn. ''Rhus diversiloba''), commonly named Pacific poison oak or western poison oak, is a woody vine or shrub in the sumac family, Anacardiaceae. It is widely distributed in western North America, inhabiting coni ...

''), chamise (''

Adenostoma fasciculatum ''Adenostoma fasciculatum'', commonly known as chamise or greasewood, is a flowering plant native to California and Baja California. This shrub is one of the most widespread plants of the California chaparral ecoregion. Chamise produces a specia ...

'') and two species of California-lilac (''

Ceanothus crassifolius ''Ceanothus crassifolius'' is a species of flowering shrub known by the common name hoaryleaf ceanothus. This ''Ceanothus'' is found throughout the coastal mountain ranges of the southern half of California, and its range extends into Baja Calif ...

'' and '' Ceanothus oliganthus''). Native trees are restricted to protected canyons, especially on the shadier north slope of the range, where soil moisture levels are higher. Coast live oak (''

Quercus agrifolia ''Quercus agrifolia'', the California live oak, or coast live oak, is a highly variable, often evergreen oak tree, a type of live oak, native to the California Floristic Province. It may be shrubby, depending on age and growing location, but is ...

''), California bay laurel (''Umbellularia californica''), California sycamore (''

Platanus racemosa ''Platanus racemosa'' is a species of plane tree known by several common names, including California sycamore, western sycamore, California plane tree, and in North American Spanish aliso. ''Platanus racemosa'' is native to California and Baja ...

''), California walnut (''

Juglans californica ''Juglans californica'', the California black walnut, also called the California walnut, or the Southern California black walnut, is a large shrub or small tree (about 20-49 feet tall) of the walnut family, Juglandaceae, endemic to Southern Calif ...

''), and several species of willow (''

Salix Willows, also called sallows and osiers, from the genus ''Salix'', comprise around 400 speciesMabberley, D.J. 1997. The Plant Book, Cambridge University Press #2: Cambridge. of typically deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist s ...

'' spp.) are the most common native trees. Non-native trees, particularly pines (''

Pinus A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden ...

'' spp.), cypress ('' Cupressus'' spp.), locust (''

Robinia pseudoacacia ''Robinia pseudoacacia'', commonly known in its native territory as black locust, is a medium-sized hardwood deciduous tree, belonging to the tribe Robinieae of the legume family Fabaceae. It is endemic to a few small areas of the United States, ...

''), and Australian eucalyptus (''

Eucalyptus ''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including '' Corymbia'', they are commonly known as e ...

'' spp.) have been planted locally along the fire roads and, most notably, in the Fire Warden's Grove, established in the wake of a

wildfire A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identi ...

in 1927. Except for a tenuous link to the large wild area in the San Gabriel Mountains through Big Tujunga Wash at their northwestern end, the Verdugo Mountains are an urban wildlife island completely surrounded by development. Among the large mammals, coyote (''

Canis latrans The coyote (''Canis latrans'') is a species of canine native to North America. It is smaller than its close relative, the wolf, and slightly smaller than the closely related eastern wolf and red wolf. It fills much of the same ecological ni ...

'') and mule deer (''

Odocoileus hemionus The mule deer (''Odocoileus hemionus'') is a deer indigenous to western North America; it is named for its ears, which are large like those of the mule. Two subspecies of mule deer are grouped into the black-tailed deer. Unlike the related w ...

'') are the most common; mountain lions (''

Puma concolor The cougar (''Puma concolor'') is a large cat native to the Americas. Its range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere ...

'') and black bears (''

Ursus americanus Ursus is Latin for bear. It may also refer to: Animals * ''Ursus'' (mammal), a genus of bears People * Ursus of Aosta, 6th-century evangelist * Ursus of Auxerre, 6th-century bishop * Ursus of Solothurn, 3rd-century martyr * Ursus (''praefectus ...

'') have occasionally been reported. The many rodent species support a population of western rattlesnakes (''

Crotalus viridis ''Crotalus viridis'' (Common names: prairie rattlesnake, Great Plains rattlesnake, Wright AH, Wright AA. 1957. ''Handbook of Snakes of the United States and Canada''. Ithaca and London: Comstock Publishing Associates. (7th printing, 1985). 1,105 ...

''). Of the numerous bird species present, the most characteristic of the chaparral here, and throughout California, is the small, seldom seen but often heard wrentit (''

Chamaea fasciata The wrentit (''Chamaea fasciata'') is a small bird that lives in chaparral, oak woodlands, and bushland on the western coast of North America. It is the only species in the genus ''Chamaea''. Its systematics have been the subject of much de ...

''). With its call of three or four chirps followed by an accelerating trill, often likened to the sound of a dropped ping-pong ball, the wrentit provides the most characteristic sound of the chaparral. The Verdugo Mountains have warm, dry summers and cool wet winters. Snow infrequently falls along the crest during the coldest winter storms, but melts rapidly. Annual average precipitation increases with elevation (due to the

orographic lift Orographic lift occurs when an air mass is forced from a low elevation to a higher elevation as it moves over rising terrain. As the air mass gains altitude it quickly cools down adiabatically, which can raise the relative humidity to 100% and cr ...

effect), from 17-21 inches at the base to about 24–28 inches at the crest. Annual rainfall totals are highly variable from year to year, with the higher totals usually in

El Nino EL, El or el may refer to: Religion * El (deity), a Semitic word for "God" People * EL (rapper) (born 1983), stage name of Elorm Adablah, a Ghanaian rapper and sound engineer * El DeBarge, music artist * El Franco Lee (1949–2016), American po ...

years. Most of the rain falls between November and March during periodic frontal passages.

History

The mountains were part of the indigenous

Tongva people The Tongva ( ) are an Indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately . Some descendants of the people prefer Kizh as an endonym that, they argue, is more historicall ...

's homelands for over 7,000 years, with villages at some

spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season) Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of ...

s in the canyons.Gumprecht, Blake. The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999, , page 31 The Verdugo Mountains were named for

Jose Maria Verdugo Jose is the English transliteration of the Hebrew and Aramaic name ''Yose'', which is etymologically linked to ''Yosef'' or Joseph. The name was popular during the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods. *Jose ben Abin *Jose ben Akabya * Jose the Galil ...

, holder of the

Rancho San Rafael Rancho San Rafael was a Spanish land grant in the San Rafael Hills, bordering the Los Angeles River and the Arroyo Seco in present-day Los Angeles County, southern California, given in 1784 to Jose Maria Verdugo. Geography The rancho includes ...

land grant A land grant is a gift of real estate—land or its use privileges—made by a government or other authority as an incentive, means of enabling works, or as a reward for services to an individual, especially in return for military service. Grants ...

, which covered the mountains during California's Spanish and Mexican periods. On October 20, 1784 Pedro Fages, the military governor of Alta California, granted Jose Maria Verdugo permission to use the rancho, known officially by the name San Rafael but informally called "La Zanja" by Verdugo.. The rancho's boundaries were primarily defined by the Verdugo Mountains, the Arroyo Seco and the

Los Angeles River , name_etymology = , image = File:Los Angeles River from Fletcher Drive Bridge 2019.jpg , image_caption = L.A. River from Fletcher Drive Bridge , image_size = 300 , map = LARmap.jpg , map_size ...

, with the boundary following north along the east bank of the river and wrapping westerly around

Griffith Park Griffith Park is a large municipal park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The park includes popular attractions such as the Los Angeles Zoo, the Autry Museum of the Ameri ...

to a point near the

Travel Town Museum Travel Town Museum is a railway museum dedicated on December 14, 1952, and located in the northwest corner of Los Angeles, California's Griffith Park. The history of railroad transportation in the western United States from 1880 to the 1930s is ...

in the park.

Glendale & Mount Verdugo Railway

One of the earliest attempts to access and develop the interior of the Verdugo Mountains was the 1912 proposal by Colonel Lewis Ginger to build a cable incline railroad to the summit of Mount Verdugo, now known as Mount Thom. The proposed Glendale & Verdugo Mountain Railway was to run in a straight line from the Pacific Electric's Casa Verdugo station at the top of Brand Boulevard to the summit of Mount Verdugo, employing cars with stepped seating similar to those of

Angels Flight Angels Flight is a landmark and historic narrow gauge funicular railway in the Bunker Hill district of Downtown Los Angeles, California. It has two funicular cars, named ''Olivet'' and ''Sinai'', that run in opposite directions on a shared ...

on Bunker Hill in Los Angeles. Initially, Colonel Ginger had proposed that his cable railway would lift a Pacific Electric car directly to the summit, but Henry E. Huntington did not approve of this scheme. The railway was to have four or five stations along the incline and a large visitor's center at the summit. Several months after the initial proposal, the route was altered to run up the west side of Verdugo Canyon from a hoped-for extension of the Pacific Electric up Verdugo Canyon to Montrose. Interest in the cable railway continued for about a year, but the project was abandoned before a company could be formed, largely as the result of the Pacific Electric's decision not to build the Montrose extension.

Wildfire

Fire is a natural component of the chaparral ecosystem, and the plants that comprise it are largely adapted to survive fire or to reproduce after it. Barbour, Michael, Keeler-Wolf, Todd, and Schoenherr, Allan A. (2007). '' Terrestrial Vegetation of California,'' 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press. More specifically, the members of this plant community are adapted to a particular

fire regime A fire regime is the pattern, frequency, and intensity of the bushfires and wildfires that prevail in an area over long periods of time. It is an integral part of fire ecology, and renewal for certain types of ecosystems. A fire regime describes th ...

, which is characterized by intensity and seasonality, but most importantly, by the frequency of fires.Quinn, Ronald D., and Keeley, Sterling G. (2006). ''Introduction to California Chaparral.'' Berkeley: University of California Press. In the southern California chaparral, natural frequencies of 30 to 40 years are typical, with some areas going as long as 100 years without fires and others burning more frequently.Carle, David (2008). ''Introduction to Fire in California.'' Berkeley: University of California Press. It has been estimated the chaparral plant community can persist over the long term only with a fire frequency at a given site of no shorter than several decades, or perhaps longer, although there is variability in the tolerance of different species. Repeated shorter intervals between fires promote so-called "type conversion," in which the shrubby species are replaced by grasses, particularly non-native grasses, and other weedy species. The Verdugo Mountains have been subject to repeated wildfires in historical times. Major occurrences in the twentieth century include the December, 1927 Burbank Canyon Fire, which started in Haines Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains and burned south into the range, consuming approximately 100 homes in Burbank's Sunset Canyon. The La Tuna Canyon Fire of November, 1955 burned over almost the entire western portion of the range, ultimately destroying approximately . The Whiting Woods Fire of March, 1964, started by a power line downed by high winds, burned from the northern edge of the range southward over to crest to consume homes in Glendale. A fire in November, 1980, also called the La Tuna Canyon Fire, burned in the northern and western portions of the range. Since 2000, three major fires have occurred in the Verdugo Mountains. In September, 2002, the Mountain Fire burned over two days approximately above Glendale, largely on the southern side of the range. The Harvard Fire started on September 29, 2005, and consumed both north and south sides of the range north of Burbank during a six-day period. In September, 2017, the La Tuna fire started north of the Verdugos, jumping Interstate 210 forcing the closure of it, burning both the north and south face of the ranges. The fire ultimately destroyed four homes and of land. Beginning in 1921, the

Los Angeles County Fire Department The Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD) provides firefighting services as well as technical rescue services, hazardous materials response services and emergency medical response services for the unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County ...

began a county-wide program of building fire breaks (or more properly, fuel breaks) to slow the spread of fire, and by 1923 the initial breaks had been constructed in the Verdugos. In 1934, the City of Glendale built a 60-foot lookout tower on Verdugo Peak, which was staffed with an observer until it closed in the mid-1950s. In order to conduct the work necessary to build fire breaks and roads, temporary construction camps were located throughout the fire-prone areas of the county. In the Verdugo Mountains, Construction Camp #2 was located in the lower reaches of Deer Canyon, at the end of present-day Beaudry Blvd, for a period during the late 1930s and early 1940s.Boucher, David, 1991. ''Ride the Devil Wind: a History of the Los Angeles County Forester & Fire Warden Department and Fire Protection Districts.'' Bellflower, CA: Fire Publications, Inc. It is difficult to determine from published sources the dates of construction for the fire roads so important to present-day recreational use of the mountains. The report of the 1955 La Tuna Canyon fire, however, indicates that at least some of these roads were in place by that date.

Protected areas

*Verdugo Mountains State Park, California Department of Parks and Recreation *Verdugo Mountains Open Space Preserve, jointly operated by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and the City of Glendale *Brand Park, Glendale * Stough Canyon Nature Center, Burbank *Wildwood Canyon Park, Burbank *La Tuna Canyon Park, Los Angeles *Tujunga Ponds, Los Angeles The Verdugo Mountains are being considered as part of the proposed Rim of the Valley Corridor National Park.

Access and recreational use

Other than the

Foothill Freeway The Foothill Freeway is a freeway in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, California, running from the Sylmar district of Los Angeles east to Redlands. The western segment is signed as Interstate 210 (I-210) from its western end at I-5 to ...

(I-210) and the nearly parallel La Tuna Canyon Road, both of which traverse only the northwestern tip of the range, the Verdugo Mountains are crossed by no paved roads. By contrast, the range contains more than of graded and well maintained fire roads that are used extensively by hikers and mountain bike riders. Several abandoned and overgrown fire roads and ridge-top fire breaks are used recreationally as well. Trails, in the sense of engineered and maintained footpaths, are few, the most notable being the 2.2 mile (3.5 km)-long La Tuna Canyon Trail, which was constructed in 1989 by the Los Angeles Conservation Corps with funds provided by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.McKinney, John (1994). ''Walking Los Angeles'' New York: HarperCollinsWest.

References

Maps

*''Angeles Front Country Trail Map''.

San Rafael, California San Rafael ( ; Spanish for " St. Raphael", ) is a city and the county seat of Marin County, California, United States. The city is located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city's populatio ...

: Tom Harrison Maps, 2001. . *''Verdugo Mountains trail map''. Matt Maxon, 2005 http://pctmap.homeip.net/data/PDF/Verdugo%20Mtns%2001-16-05.pdf *Burbank, California, 7.5 minute topographic quadrangle map.

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

. *Pasadena, California, 7.5 minute topographic quadrangle map.

. *''Mount La Tuna'' - *''Verdugo Peak'' - *''Tongva Peak'' - *''Mount Thom'' -

External links

Outdoor LA Hiking Trails
- Hiking trails in the area with maps and directions to the trailheads.
Verdugo Mountains Park Property
- California State Parks page for the Verdugo Mountains Park Property
Rim of the Valley Corridor Special Resource Study
- National Park Service page about the Rim of the Valley Corridor

- a listing of most of the hiking trails in the Verdugo Mountains.
Verdugo Hills Community Hike
- an annual community hike and trail run in the Verdugos involving the Glendale, Burkbank, and Crescenta Valley communities
Parks in the Verdugo & San Rafael Mountains Region
- Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy page, with an interagency list of parks and other protected areas in the Verdugo Mountains/San Rafael Hills area {{Authority control Transverse Ranges Mountain ranges of Los Angeles County, California Geography of Los Angeles Geography of the San Fernando Valley Burbank, California Glendale, California Sun Valley, Los Angeles Mountain ranges of Southern California