Santa Clarita
— — the valley the freeway crests into.
Not only on a wall.
“The valley you drop into coming north out of Los Angeles on the 5. Santa Clarita gathers four older communities — Newhall, Valencia, Saugus, and Canyon Country — under one city, with the Santa Clara River running west through the middle and the San Gabriel and Santa Susana ranges holding the bowl. Six Flags Magic Mountain is the skyline above Valencia. Vasquez Rocks sit east in the high desert; the sandstone fins have stood in for a hundred films. Oaks and walnut groves still hold along the older streets in Newhall.
Santa Clarita, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Santa Clarita sits in northwestern Los Angeles County, about thirty miles north of downtown Los Angeles, on the far side of Newhall Pass from the San Fernando Valley. The city covers roughly 230 square kilometres along the Santa Clara River and has a population around 230,000, the third-largest city in the county. It was incorporated in 1987 by combining Newhall, Valencia, Saugus, and Canyon Country. Interstate 5 and California State Route 14 meet just south of the city, and the Metrolink Antelope Valley Line runs four stations through it.
Vasquez Rocks County Park, twenty kilometres east of the city in Agua Dulce, holds the angled sandstone slabs that surface in westerns, science-fiction sets, and the original Star Trek. The formation rises from a fault scarp along the San Andreas system, tilted between forty-five and seventy degrees. South of the city, Towsley Canyon and Ed Davis Park hold older Pliocene marine sediments where fossil whale bones have been recovered. Placerita Canyon, where gold was found in 1842 — six years before Sutter's Mill — sits east of Newhall in its own state natural area.
Summers run hot and dry, with afternoons routinely above 35°C from June through September and frequent Santa Ana wind events in autumn. Winters are mild, with cold nights along the canyon floors and occasional snow on the surrounding ridges above 1,500 metres. The Santa Clara River carries seasonal flow rather than steady volume. Wildfire risk peaks from late summer through early winter, when the canyons funnel offshore wind through the dry chaparral. Spring brings a short window of orange and lupine across the south-facing slopes of the Santa Susana foothills.