This treacherous mountain trail through the Santa Susana Pass was an important artery for stagecoach passengers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in the 1860s-70s, and an official Butterfield Overland Mail route during the Civil War

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 10, 1974

It was gray and rainy in LA for much of the last week of 2021. But on December 28, the skies cleared and the sun shone, as if the universe were beckoning me to spend the day outside. And who was I not to heed its call? It was the perfect day to head into Chatsworth, at the far northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley, for a solo hike on the historic Old Santa Susana Stage Road.

The Stage Road begins in the Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park, a sprawling landscape of rocky peaks and abundant plant life. It starts off flat on the valley floor, but soon cuts upward into the Simi Hills, ending at a ridge overlooking the entire San Fernando and Simi Valleys. You wouldn’t know it by the bumpy sandstone that makes up the Road today, but in the latter half of the 19th century, this was a vital artery for travelers heading from LA up through Santa Barbara and parts north. 

Centuries before the Stage Road was widened and graded, Native Americans used this passage through the mountains (called the Santa Susana Pass) to travel between modern day Chatsworth and Simi Valley. During the Spanish colonial period, the missionaries made use of the Pass as an alternative to El Camino Real, the road that connected the missions up and down the California coast. Father José Señan made the first recorded mention of the Pass in an 1804 letter to a provincial Mexican Governor, in which he suggested that cutting through the Simi Hills might be a quicker way of getting from Mission San Buenaventura (in Ventura, CA) south to the new Mission San Fernando Rey de España (see visit #17).

Following the Mexican War of Independence in 1822, the road leading through the Pass was widened to accommodate ox-drawn carretas carrying goods between LA and Santa Barbara. Increasingly, you’d find herds of cattle and sheep traversing the Pass, driven by rancheros – the owners of huge tracts of land carved out of the original Spanish mission lands.

The passage grew mightily in importance after the Mexican-American War (1846-8), when the US took control over Alta California. Pioneers and gold prospectors flowed into the new territory, and private stagecoach companies competed for contracts with the US government to carry mail, passengers and cargo from St. Louis to San Francisco via Los Angeles. By the late 1850s, the Butterfield Overland Mail Company was using a route further east in the Tejon Pass. But they were looking for an alternative route, especially since the coastal road, following along the old El Camino Real, often got washed out during high tides and floods.

So here’s where the Old Santa Susana Stage Road proper came into being. In 1859, the young California legislature set aside $15,000 toward rehabbing the old wagon road that had recently been “rediscovered” in the Santa Susana Pass. Santa Barbara and LA Counties kicked in some cash too, and the improvement contract went to James P. Thompson, a prominent Angeleno settler who served as sheriff and tax collector for LA County. Thompson was the husband of Manuelita de la Osa, daughter of Vicente and Doña Rita de la Osa, proprietors of the famous Rancho El Encino (see visit #2).

Thompson’s team used blasting powder to explode parts of the walls surrounding the Stage Road, until it was wide enough to fit a team of horses and a wagon. While it was a vast improvement over how the pass used to look, it could still be treacherous. Especially the portion between the Simi Hills into the San Fernando Valley, nicknamed “the Devil’s Slide.” Thompson and his team carved steps into the sandstone to help the horses gain traction. Still, drivers would have to put blinders on their horses to keep them from getting freaked out. Passengers used to get out of the coach on the steep parts, holding rocks to place behind the wheels in case the horses needed a rest. Elaborate braking mechanisms were devised to prevent runaway wagons.

On April 6, 1861, the first stage coach made the three-day journey from San Francisco to LA through the newly improved Road. And it was auspicious timing: as the Civil War broke out just six days later, disrupting the Butterfield mail route through the Tejon Pass. Luckily there was a newly improved mountain pass to pick up the slack.

Old Santa Susana Stage Road had its glory days from 1861 until 1876, when the Southern Pacific Railroad came to LA and ran a tunnel through the Newhall Pass. Rail travel soon overtook stagecoach travel for long-distance travel, and in 1895, local stagecoach traffic was diverted to “El Camino Nuevo,” which had a much easier grade, retaining walls and passing turnouts.

Though it flourished for a short 15 years, this narrow, horse-frightening mountain road occupies a fascinating corner of Los Angeles history. It touches on so many aspects of LA’s development – the transition from indigenous to Spanish to Mexican to American inhabitants; commerce and agriculture; transportation and US Postal Service history; state and federal politics; the Civil War.

The Stage Road was deemed important enough to earn a commemorative mosaic plaque in 1939, mounted on a rock near the ridge on the San Fernando Valley side. It was installed by the Native Daughters of the Golden West, a consortium of California-born women dedicated to preserving California history. Here’s a picture of the 1939 dedication. The rather austere-looking woman just behind the wagon wheel at left is Minnie Hill Palmer, whose story I’ll tell in an upcoming post about Homestead Acre in Chatsworth. 

One last note…on my way out of the Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park, I encountered a guy named Mike, who said he was somehow involved with the Chatsworth Historical Society. Mike showed me the foundations of an old stagecoach stop called La Cuesta, right at the entrance to the Stage Road, which used to operate in the 1860s and 1870s as a “swing station” where stagecoach drivers could rest their horses or swap them out for new teams on their way up the hill. There’s not much left to see, but here are some pics of the foundation:

La Cuesta was run by Fabricio de la Osa, brother-in-law to James Thompson, the man responsible for creating the Old Santa Susana Stage Road as we know it. By that time, the relationship between Thompson and the de la Osa family had soured for reasons too complicated to get into right now (read this insanely comprehensive history from the California State Parks system if you’re interested). But man, what a full-circle moment – and a reminder of just how small the San Fernando Valley community was in the late 19th century!

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Much appreciation to the Chatsworth Historical Society for pointing out a factual error in an earlier draft of this post. I had mistakenly stated that Doña Rita de la Osa ran the “swing station” La Cuesta – while she did live there in the 1870s, the station was operated by her son Fabricio.

Recommended Reading

+Chatsworth Past & Present: The Stagecoach Trail PDF (Chatsworth Historical Society, 2010)

+Chatsworth Stagecoach Trail – Powerpoint Presentation (Chatsworth Historical Society, 2019)

+Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park Cultural Resource Survey Historic Overview (California State Parks, 2007)

+Chatsworth Historical Society website