SCV History at Heritage Junction

For 30 years, the green Pardee House has been nestled amid oak trees at Heritage Junction, quietly waiting for its turn for renovation and rebirth as a museum of local history. That change is coming soon, thanks to the efforts of a group of local leaders, many with strong and longtime investments in the area. They have been led by Jessica Hough, a consultant hired to find out what the community would like to see in the new museum.
Hough has taken a fresh look at the potential of the building and researched possible exhibits that would be a departure from the former one-room museum in the Saugus Train Station.
After surveying more than 650 people at public events and online, the team has come up with some suggestions that would involve modern displays and new interpretations of Santa Clarita Valley history. Visitors will soon be able to learn the basics of our area’s heritage and learn about its varied highlights with rotating exhibits, featuring subjects familiar and new.
Built in 1890 as a Good Templars Lodge by Prohibition Party Senatorial candidate and founder of the Newhall Water Company, Henry Clay Needham. In 1893, Ed Pardee, a pioneer oil man, local constable and owner of the livery stable, bought it and moved it to the corner of Market and Walnut Streets, the current location of the Veteran’s Historical Plaza.
The house was featured in the first John Ford-Harry Carey movie in 1917 and in 1946, it became the second Newhall telephone exchange. The Santa Clarita Boys Club was there from 1969 to 1977, when it was taken over by its last tenant, the Newhall-Saugus (soon to be Santa Clarita Valley) Chamber of Commerce. In 1992, with a grant from the City of Santa Clarita, the Pardee House moved to its home in Heritage Junction.
The Historical Society hopes to open the museum in mid-2023. Plans for the train station are also underway, it will become strictly a railroad museum, dedicated to Southern and Union Pacific, the lines that traversed the Santa Clarita Valley. To volunteer for the museum projects, message archivist Eva Gritz at egritz@scvhistory.com.