Hometown History : Landmarks: Official state sites in the area range from a Western-style hotel to a pile of rubble. Either way, they’re monuments to California’s golden past.

In the search for California historical landmarks, getting there is at least half the fun.

The actual landmark, when found, might be some grand monument to the Golden State’s past, but it’s just as likely to be an empty lot, a pile of rubble or a building that has nothing to do with what is “historical” about the spot.

“The purpose of the program is to recognize that there was at least something that was important about a place,” said Marvin Brienes, a historian with the Office of Historic Preservation. The agency, which is overseen by the state Department of Parks and Recreation, manages the program that was started in 1931.

Since then, more than 1,000 places in the state have been officially designated historical landmarks, a distinction that is purely honorary.

Twenty-four of the landmarks are in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys, and many of these are in remote areas. So even if a landmark is not much to look at once you get there, finding it might take you to pockets of the valleys that you have probably not explored.

Any person or group can nominate sites as historical landmarks. The site might be where a notable person lived, worked or was buried. It could be a place where an important discovery was made (recently, the Palo Alto shop where the integrated circuit was invented was designated as a landmark), a battle fought, an architecturally notable structure built or an engineering marvel installed.

After staff review, the application is considered by the governor-appointed Historical Resources Commission. The only hard and fast rule for acceptance is that the site “be of statewide historical importance in California,” Brienes said. Beyond that, it is up to the judgment of the commission.

Because the applications are pre-screened by staff members at the Office of Historic Preservation, the commission rarely turns one down.

“We have people call in with places they want to nominate for state landmark status and we can usually advise them, on the phone, about what we are looking for,” Brienes said. “A man called recently who wanted landmark status for the first diamond found in California. I asked him, ‘Was this a significant event in California history, did it start a diamond industry here, or have a big impact in some other way?’

“He couldn’t really tell me. I sent him an application and now he knows what we need. Maybe we’ll get the application back, maybe not.”

If accepted, the landmark is adorned with an official metal plaque that is sometimes provided by the state, but in this era of tight government funds, the $1,000 plaque is more likely to be provided by a local sponsor.

The site is also listed in a guide issued by the agency and made available to the public. To get an order form, write to the California Department of Parks and Recreation, Publications Section, P.O. Box 942896, Sacramento 94296.

Some of the more notable or unusual sites follow:

* Western Hotel: The northernmost landmark in Los Angeles County is also one of the best preserved. This two-story hotel, built in the late 1880s (researchers have found an 1888 advertisement for it), came into its own in the early part of the 20th Century when it provided rooms for crews working on the many electrical, water, gas and road projects in the Antelope Valley.

Proprietor Myrtie Webber kept it going into the 1960s when she entered a convalescent home (she died in 1978 at age 110). The hotel closed, deteriorated and, in the 1980s, was scheduled for demolition. But citizen efforts, ranging from an eighth-grade class’s cleanup of the site to the formation of the Western Hotel Historical Society, preserved the building.

It opened as a city-owned museum in 1989 with displays on the early years of Lancaster and surrounding communities.

Western Hotel/Museum, 557 W. Lancaster Blvd., Lancaster. Open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays. Free. For information, (805) 723-6250.

* St. Francis Dam Disaster Site: If you didn’t know what you were looking for in this remote spot near San Francisquito Canyon Road north of Saugus, you’d think you were simply climbing up a hill of oddly shaped, huge rocks. The top of the hill is a peaceful spot, with a rushing stream far below.

But a closer look at these “boulders” reveals that many are embedded with iron support rods.

They are giant chunks of concrete that were once part of the St. Francis Dam, built in 1926. On March 12, 1928, just before midnight, the dam gave way, sending 12 billion gallons of water roaring down the canyon.

More than 450 people in its path died that night, making it one of the worst disasters in the state’s history.

The plaque commemorating the spot is about 1 1/2 miles to the south at a Los Angeles-owned power plant. Entry to the plant is not permitted (you must view the plaque, which is in front of a flag pole, through a fence). But next door at an Angeles National Forest station, rangers will provide directions to the site and hand out copies of a report issued by an engineer after the disaster.

Hanging on a ranger office wall are pictures of the dam before its collapse and the destruction that was caused.

Plaque at San Francisquito Power Plant No. 2, 32300 N. San Francisquito Canyon Road, about nine miles north of Saugus.

* Pioneer Oil Refinery: This iron and wood structure in what is now an industrial area of Newhall looks more like an old-time liquor still than a refinery. Built in 1876 to produce benzine and kerosene, it was the first refinery in the state.

Several other landmarks having to do with the Pioneer company, which was the forerunner of Standard Oil, are in the area. The former town of Mentryville, just west of Newhall, was named after Charles Alexander Mentry, who dug the first successful oil well in the state. His home and barn are still there, as is a small school, but visitors can view them only through a fence erected by present owner Chevron Oil.

Mentry’s well, which also has landmark status, is about half a mile farther up the road. But that fence at Mentryville is as close as you are able to get even though landmark status is supposed to go only to sites that can at least be seen by the public.

Pioneer Oil Refinery, 238 Pine St., Newhall. Mentryville, 27201 W. Pico Canyon Road, about three miles west of Newhall.

* Lyons Station: This was a stagecoach stop on the famed Butterfield line that was at its busiest during the Kern River gold rush in the 1850s.

Now it is a kind of last stop. The site of Lyons Station--which also served as general store, post office, tavern and telegraph office--is on the grounds of the Eternal Valley Memorial Park in Newhall. The plaque commemorating the station is mounted on the cemetery’s Chapel of the Oaks, just inside the front gate.

Eternal Valley, 23287 N. Sierra Highway, Newhall.

* The Cascades: No matter what you think of the state’s water policy, past and present, the Los Angeles-Owens River Aqueduct is undeniably an engineering marvel. A 233-mile system of ditches, pipelines, tunnels and reservoirs, it brings water to the city from the Owens Valley.

It has no pumps; the aqueduct works wholly on gravity.

At the southern tip of the aqueduct, where the water cascades down an open-air chute before flowing into the Los Angeles Reservoir, thousands of area residents gathered on Nov. 5, 1913, to celebrate its completion.

The Cascades, as the terminus is called, is near the intersection of Foothill and Balboa boulevards in Granada Hills and can be viewed from the Golden State Freeway just north of the Foothill Freeway. You can drive fairly close on streets, but you’ll have to park several blocks away.

If you do make the trek up to the fenced-off entryway to see the plaque, notice that nearby is another, smaller plaque. This one, placed by the American Society of Civil Engineers, declares the Cascades a “Civil Engineering Landmark.”

The Cascades, Foothill Boulevard just north of Balboa Boulevard, Granada Hills.

* Old Trapper’s Lodge: John Henry Ehn, called Old Trapper or simply O. T. by most of his contemporaries, had indeed been an animal trapper in the Midwest early in this century. He moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s, worked in an airplane plant, and eventually built and operated a motel in Burbank.

But O. T.’s real passion was sculpture. Self-taught, he used his wife and daughters as models for a series of life-size plaster sculptures of Old West characters. There was “2-Gun Rosie,” “Lovely Louise the Curl Girl” and the heroic “Pioneer Woman.”

He also did huge, more stylized sculptures, including one that depicted an epic battle between a pioneer called “Pegleg Smith” and an American Indian named “Big Bear.” In the base of that statue, Ehn carved his description of them as “Mighty Americans.”

The sculptures, plus a series of tombstones he made and relics from his days as a trapper, were crammed into the front yard of the motel. Ehn died in 1981 and his daughter took over management of the motel and the collection, which was mentioned in several books on folk art.

The city of Burbank bought the land in the late 1980s to expand the airport and Pierce College took the collection. It now resides in peaceful Cleveland Park on the western end of the campus, near a cow barn.

The new home of the Lodge art doesn’t have the zany ambience of the motel yard, but it’s a pleasant spot to quietly view the work of a San Fernando Valley original.

Cleveland Park, Pierce College, Woodland Hills. The park is best reached through the De Soto Avenue entrance just south of Victory Boulevard. Drive onto campus and park near the first building (Agricultural Science) on the north side of the street. The park is to the rear of the west side of the building.

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