By Patric Hedlund, TME, based on research by Bonnie Kane, Ridge Route Communities Museum Historian

Mourning the loss of the beautiful little pond at the heart of Frazier Mountain Park is a quiet grief shared across the entire Frazier Mountain Community.

Loss is worse if it is combined with feeling powerless. So, if knowledge is power, The Mountain Enterprise offers a two-part special, this week and next, about this pond. We want you to be well-informed—and powerful—armed with what five years of reporting has discovered since the pond went dry in 2016.

On Tuesday, Sept. 14, at 6:30 p.m., a meeting at the Frazier Mountain Park Community Center will explore the future of the park and its pond. Everyone is invited to join in.

So…How Did It All Begin?

The story of how a beautiful Chumash Indian campground under a majestic grove of giant valley oaks was transformed into Frazier Mountain Park begins well before Henry Ford’s automobiles…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

A swimming pond was popular in 1946 at the ‘upper lake’ in Frazier Mountain Park.

Below: A sales flyer from Glendale developers in the 1920s about this exciting new resort of Frazier Mountain Park

A group of investors led by the mayor of Glendale had a brilliant plan in the 1920s: to create a mountain getaway for the families of Glendale—so they could escape the ‘frying pan’ summer temperatures of the San Fernando Valley. They built a system of five ponds, a rustic clubhouse and divided a meadow into camping parcels. Then the Great Depression came along.

Left: Frazier Mountain Park pond in 2014, with families fishing happily, to (above) the pond in 2017 after it had gone dry.

A map from 1881 shows no lake in the area of today’s Frazier Mountain Park. It was found by The Mountain Enterprise in documents of the Ridge Route Museum & Historical Society, that also included a 1924 news story telling of plans to dam Cuddy Creek to form seven lakes for a country club.

There were no lakes before the developers came. This map shows where the ponds were coaxed into existence with piping to augment natural snowmelt from Frazier Mountain that bubbled up in springs.

Right: Our Ridge Route Communities Museum historian Bonnie Ketterl Kane took a canoe ride with youngsters Andrea Kiesner and Mike Westmoreland in 1976, on Frazier Mountain Park pond during the Fiesta Days model sailboat races.

Some of the happiest memories and some of the most heartbreaking are clustered around this pond for local residents. Now they are asking how they can help.

Wade Jones at a Park Master Plan meeting in 2016

Kimberlee Hoven and Debbie Turner, founders of Friends of Frazier Mountain Park, now on hiatus

Stan McCuen sculptures, holding the memory of the spirit of the pond

Through art, research, lobbying or planning, it is a good time to add your talents to explore what can be done to restore Frazier Mountain Park.

To see full stories with photos, please purchase a copy of the newspaper at many locations (click this link for a list) throughout the Mountain Communities.

Or, have your newspaper delivered via mail and include internet access. Just call 661-245-3794. Classified ads are FREE to paid subscribers! See front page at www.mountainenterprise.com for details.

The e-Edition is available now with full photos and stories at The Mountain Enterprise e-Edition. Select the 2021-0903 edition.

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This is part of the September 3, 2021 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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