Lighting the Way “Home” – SCV History

You never know what’s going to walk into the archivist’s office at the Santa Clarita History Center. And despite their imagined past, some items turn out not to be the stuff of legend.
Sometimes they’re better.
In the 1960s, Thomas Dixon was a teenager out on an adventure with his friends in San Francisquito Canyon, climbing a steep cliff. Tom was at the end of the pack and as his friends ascended, he found something in the dirt that he thought could be a piece of history.
Since they were in the canyon near the flood path of the ill-fated St Francis Dam, Tom surmised the lantern he unearthed could have been one from either the building or recovery crews after its March 1928 break. He carefully cleaned it and kept it for several decades, hoping his children might treasure his find.
Unfortunately, kids don’t really want some of the things their parents have kept for years. But in a community-minded family decision, the Dixons decided that the lantern needed to come “home” as a relic of the dam disaster and brought it to the History Center.
St. Francis Dam expert Frank Rock brought a map of the flood plain to confer with Tom about the location of the find and they discovered it was slightly off the flood path, but still worth some research.
After Dixon’s family left the park, Society VP Leon Worden saw the lantern sitting in the Agent’s Office of the Saugus Train Station and asked archivist Eva Gritz where the railroad lantern came from. Mike Jarel, a retired Southern Pacific Engineer who volunteers for the Society, recognized the lantern as one issued to SP workers in the early 1950s. He said he’d never seen one in such pristine condition. He also confirmed that it would not have been from any of the dam crews, as lanterns used in the 1920s and 30s had elongated chimneys, unlike the squat globe of the donated lamp.
The lantern may not be an artifact of the St. Francis Dam disaster, but it ended up in the best place – the Saugus Train Station, which is being transformed into a museum of exclusively Southern Pacific Railroad memorabilia – where it will now hold a place of honor.
To learn more about the Santa Clarita History Center, visit www.scvhs.org.