Magic Mountain is a mountain in the western

San Gabriel Mountains The San Gabriel Mountains () are a mountain range located in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, California, United States. The mountain range is part of the Transverse Ranges and lies between the Los Angeles Basin and the Mojave Desert ...

in Los Angeles County, California. It is part of the

Angeles National Forest The Angeles National Forest (ANF) of the United States Forest Service is located in the San Gabriel Mountains and Sierra Pelona Mountains, primarily within Los Angeles County in Southern California. The ANF manages a majority of the San Gabri ...

and the

San Gabriel Mountains National Monument The San Gabriel Mountains National Monument is a United States national monument managed by the U.S. Forest Service, which encompasses parts of the Angeles National Forest and the San Bernardino National Forest in California. On October 10, 201 ...

. The mountain is the namesake of

Six Flags Magic Mountain Six Flags Magic Mountain, formerly known and colloquially referred to as simply Magic Mountain, is a amusement park located in Valencia, California, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. It opened on May 29, 1971, as a development of the Newha ...

in nearby

Santa Clarita, California Santa Clarita (; Spanish for "Little St. Clare") is a city in northwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a 2020 census population of 228,673, it is the third-most populous city in Los Angeles County, the 17th-most popul ...

. A U.S. Wilderness area of the same name is located on the north slopes of the mountain.

History

Name

Magic Mountain was originally known as Iron Mountain on

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...

topographic maps, first appearing in the year 1900. The name Magic Mountain first appeared on these maps in 1939.

Nike missile site (1955 – 1963)

In 1955, Magic Mountain was selected by

Project Nike Project Nike (Greek: Nike (mythology), Νίκη, "Victory") was a United States Army, U.S. Army project proposed in May 1945 by Bell Laboratories, to develop a line-of-sight (missile), line-of-sight anti-aircraft missile system. The project del ...

to be an Integrated Fire Control site for Nike Ajax missiles as part of the Los Angeles Defense Area. Construction included the improvement of the access road to the peak from Bear Divide, installation of water infrastructure, and construction of a transmission line. These projects, along with the IFC technology itself, were completed by the end of 1956 and the base was given the designation LA-98-C. The missile launch site itself was constructed in Lang, just east of

Canyon Country Canyon Country is a neighborhood in the eastern part of the city of Santa Clarita, in northwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It lies along the Santa Clara River between the Sierra Pelona Mountains and the San Gabriel Moun ...

. Army housing for the families of soldiers stationed at Magic Mountain (as well as nearby Los Pinetos) was completed in Sand Canyon in early 1959. The site was operational from 1957 until 1961, when the missile launch site at Lang was upgraded to use

Nike Hercules The Nike Hercules, initially designated SAM-A-25 and later MIM-14, was a surface-to-air missile (SAM) used by U.S. and NATO armed forces for medium- and high-altitude long-range air defense. It was normally armed with the W31 nuclear warhead, bu ...

missiles but control was transferred to another nearby IFC site.

Marquardt Corporation laboratory (1964 – 1970)

The former IFC site was transferred back to the

US Forest Service The United States Forest Service (USFS) is an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands covering of land. The major divisions of the agency are the Chief's ...

after 1962, before being leased out to the

Marquardt Corporation Marquardt Corporation was an aeronautical engineering firm started in 1944 as Marquardt Aircraft Company and initially dedicated almost entirely to the development of the ramjet engine. Marquardt designs were developed from the mid-1940s into t ...

. Marquardt constructed their Rocket Test Laboratory on the peak. They chose this site to test "highly reactive or toxic propellants" at a safe distance from the populated areas their existing test sites were located in, such as Saugus and

Van Nuys Van Nuys ( ) is a neighborhood in the central San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. Home to Van Nuys Airport and the Valley Municipal Building, it is the most populous neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley. History In 1 ...

. The lab was dedicated on October 30, 1964. While in operation, various tests were conducted at the site as part of the

Apollo program The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which Moon landing, landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo followed Project Mercury that put the first Americans in sp ...

. In December 1967, three residents of the

San Fernando Valley The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, Los Angeles County, California. Situated to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it comprises a large portion of Los Angeles, the Municipal corpo ...

died in a plane crash on the mountainside.

Recent history (1970 – Present)

In the 1980s, Phil Gillibrand of the P.W. Gillibrand Company made plans to strip mine

ilmenite Ilmenite is a titanium-iron oxide mineral with the idealized formula . It is a weakly magnetic black or steel-gray solid. Ilmenite is the most important ore of titanium and the main source of titanium dioxide, which is used in paints, printi ...

and

magnetite Magnetite is a mineral and one of the main iron ores, with the chemical formula . It is one of the iron oxide, oxides of iron, and is ferrimagnetism, ferrimagnetic; it is attracted to a magnet and can be magnetization, magnetized to become a ...

at multiple sites in what would later become the Magic Mountain Wilderness between the peak and Soledad Canyon. These plans were approved in 1991 but never materialized. Following the closure of the Marquardt lab, management of the peak was once again returned to the Forest Service. The Magic Mountain Wilderness area and the

were established in 2009 and 2014, respectively.

Geography

Magic Mountain is located in the western

, as well as the

and the

. The most common ascent route starts at Bear Divide, a mountain pass between Canyon Country and the

, and follows Forest Service Road 3N17, a paved but unmaintained fire road. This road is currently closed to motor vehicles indefinitely but open to non-motorized transportation such as hikers or mountain bikers.

Magic Mountain Wilderness

12,282 acres of undisturbed land on the north slopes of the mountain were designated as the Magic Mountain Wilderness by the

Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 (, ) is a land management law passed in the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 30, 2009. The bill designates millions of acres in the US as protected a ...

. Representative Buck McKeon, who led a last-minute effort to add the mountain to the bill, described the land around Magic Mountain as "some of the most magnificent in California and the country." The peak itself is excluded from the wilderness area due to the improvements made by Project Nike and Marquardt.{{cite book , last1=Hoover , first1=Katie , url=https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41610.pdf , title=Wilderness: Issues and Legislation , last2=Johnson , first2=Sandra L. , date=January 17, 2018 , publisher=Congressional Resrach Service , location=Washington, DC , access-date=27 January 2018

References

San Gabriel Mountains San Gabriel Mountains National Monument Angeles National Forest Mountains of Los Angeles County, California Mountains of Southern California Wilderness areas of California