Eaton Canyon, like much of Southern California, has evolved over millions of years to become accustomed to wildfire. Numerous plant species, including the Chaparral Yucca, Manzanita, California Buckwheat, and California Sagebrush, are all adapted to survive ferocious wildfires. Some native plant species, including the Fire Poppy, specifically need wildfire in order to clear out competition. Meanwhile, the native Coulter Pine found in upper Eaton Canyon needs wildfire in order to break open their pine cones and release their seeds. Wildfire has become a critical component to our local ecosystems over eons, though that hasn’t made it easier to watch these natural spaces experience such a massive disturbance.

In the early morning hours of October 27, 1993, Andres Huang, 35, started a campfire in a small pine forest along the Mount Wilson Toll road to keep warm. Huang was a homeless man suffering from undiagnosed schizophrenia. Given heavy fuel loads in the area, this campfire quickly spread to nearby brush. By the time anybody else noticed the fire, it had already jumped into a nearby canyon and Huang had fled. The first call was received by Station 66 at 3:48 AM. It is unclear how long the fire went unnoticed.

For the first hour of the Kinneloa Fire, the blaze mostly spread uphill towards Henninger Flats while slowly backing down hill towards Altadena and lower Eaton Canyon. Just before 5 AM, however, the Santa Ana winds kicked in and the fire quickly took off. Relative humidity levels plummeted, temperatures rose despite it being nighttime, and winds of 40 MPH quickly fanned the flames to blow into lower Eaton Canyon. The Los Angeles County Fire Department quickly responded to the incident in fear of a much larger event. Incident command was established at the Midwick Trailhead as the fire began to race towards Altadena and Kinneloa Mesa. Initially, the fire spread southward down hill towards Eaton Wash. Coyote Canyon and Walnut Canyon were burned first. At around 5:30 AM, the fire reached the bottom of Eaton Canyon, destroying chaparral and riparian habitats. The fire also moved along the Mount Wilson Toll Road, trapping 15 firefighters who had to deploy their fire blankets.

At 5:45 AM, the wildfire reached Altadena Dr., and the Midwick incident command was briefly relocated to the Eaton Canyon Nature Center. Just after 6 AM on October 27, 1993, the Eaton Canyon Nature Center was brought to the ground and the incident command relocated to Victory Park. Built in 1963, the original Eaton Canyon Nature Center was a classic mid-century modern building named after the local civic leader Robert McCurdy. It burned near its 30th anniversary after being built.

The Kinneloa Fire erupted from here on, destroying 121 homes in the Altadena, Pasadena, and Kinneloa Mesa communities. Palm trees beside St. Luke’s Medical Center began to catch fire as embers rained from the sky throughout eastern Pasadena. The fire rose up from Eaton Wash to Kinneloa Mesa in just 90 seconds, causing multiple homes to go down in flames. The fire also jumped the mouth of Eaton Canyon and began racing westward along the Altadena Crest Trail. The Kinneloa Fire was able to burn homes as far away as Glen Canyon to the east and Zane Grey Terrace to the west. In the end, 5,485 acres were torched, 196 structures were destroyed, and 38 people were injured. There was 1 direct fatality, and 2 indirect fatalities. Multiple other fires began that day throughout Southern California in what is now known as the 1993 Southland Firestorm. 

Over a week later on November 9th, 98-year-old Alfred Wagner died of pneumonia caused by smoke inhalation. In March 1994, a flash flood that tore down Bailey Canyon in Sierra Madre killed 33 year old John Henderson and his 9 year old son, Matthew. The flash flood was made significantly more lethal by the scorched landscape which was unable to absorb water.

The 1993 Kinneloa Fire remains the most recent fire to thoroughly burn Eaton Canyon to this day. In 2009, the Station Fire was able to burn the western quarter of upper Eaton Canyon, though the fire was not severe and left most trees alive. There have been many small fires since then, including a 1-acre blaze below the Midwick trailhead in February 2018. After 30 years of no major fires, Eaton Canyon is one of the most fuel-dense areas of the Angeles National Forest. Upper Eaton Canyon beyond Idlehour Campground did not burn in 1993, and the last fire there was the Pinecrest Fire in 1979. It is a question of when, not if, the next wildfire will destroy Eaton Canyon. As we have learned from the towns of Paradise, Santa Rosa, and Lahaina, a significantly worse wildfire than the Kinneloa Fire is very possible in Altadena.

In 1995, a severe storm set a wall of mud thundering down Moist Canyon, burying parts of Eaton Wash in up to 15 feet of mud. This debris flow pushed Eaton Creek to the Nature Center side of the wash where it remains today. The large alluvial plain created by this flood can also still be seen today. The 2005 flood was made worse by the 1993 Kinneloa Fire, though 12 years of fuel growth prevented more serious flooding. The next wildfire will prepare any major storm over the following 15 years to completely reorder Eaton Wash. 

The Eaton Canyon Conservation Group set out to remove a large castor bean grove located on the east side of the equestrian area this past Saturday, October 14, 2023. With a total of 12 volunteers in tow, Conservation Chair Max Yasuda began at 9:00 AM as a partial solar eclipse neared its maximum point. With the sun being unable to heat the ground, the crew hacked away at several huge, 30′ tall castor bean plants. Within the hour, the trees came down and were being hauled away. Other volunteers spent time carefully pulling the seeds off the castor beans to dispose of them properly. This particular area had been mired in the castor bean species for many years, and native species were nearly entirely choked out.

According to Conservation Chair Max Yasuda, this particular area is important as it is a “wildlife corridor, allowing animals such as mountain lions and bobcats to travel between the city and the mountains.” 

Castor beans, also known as Ricinus communis, are native to northeast Africa in Ethiopia and Somalia. They have been cultivated in many other regions of the world and are incredibly invasive. Castor beans grow quickly, reproduce widely and rapidly, soak enormous amounts of water out of the soils, and can lay waste to the biodiversity of any native ecosystems they are introduced to. Following the landfall of Tropical Storm Hilary in Southern California in August, these invasive castor bean plants exploded in Eaton Canyon. Several hillsides are completely covered in them. Volunteers have been doing their best to keep them contained to certain areas that require crews to handle, but they are growing faster than we can remove them.

If you would like to help, please join the next conservation group meetup in November. You can sign up here.

It was a chilly, clear night in Eaton Canyon as the first Pacific rainstorm of the season approached. A light breeze rustled some Douglas Fir Pines on Mount Wilson while the skies overhead offered incredible views of the heavens. The moon was nowhere to be found. A large band of milky light dotted with secrets not yet discovered by humankind stretched high across the sky from one horizon to another. The year is 1923, and a certain astronomer on Mount Wilson is about to give all of humankind a reminder of just how small and insignificant we humans are.

Inside the brand new 101″ Mount Wilson Observatory Telescope, famed astronomer Edwin Hubble was peering into the night sky. He was aiming for a small cluster of light rising in the northeast over Mount San Antonio. On this night, Edwin Hubble was using a new method of measuring the distance of the stars called Leavitt’s Law. Its creator, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, was a scientist at Harvard who had studied a unique type of star called Cepheid variable stars. In 1908, she discovered that this type of star undergoes regular and predictable variations in brightness over time. By observing the period of a Cepheid variable star, astronomers could determine its intrinsic luminosity, and by comparing it to its apparent brightness, they could calculate the distance to that star. These stars have since earned the nickname “standard candles.” 

All around the world, astronomers who caught wind of this discovery began searching for those stars to calculate the true distances to them from Earth. Over the next 15 years, it became clear that the Milky Way was some 20,000+ parsecs in diameter. Edwin Hubble was one of those astronomers, and on the night of October 6, 1923, he discovered something odd. This method of determining the distance of the stars was seemingly not working for the small inconspicuous cluster he was staring at. His calculations showed that the Andromeda Nebula was 275,000 parsecs from the Sun, much further away than any Cepheid variable star previously discovered. After further investigations and confirmations, it was determined that he was not in error. Upon this discovery at Mount Wilson, Edwin Hubble realized that the nebula he was looking at was in fact the Andromeda Galaxy, a galaxy both different from our own and 250 million light years away. Before this discovery, scientists only had proof that the Milky Way existed, and nothing else. Now, we have proof that the Universe is far, far bigger. Henrietta Swan Leavitt died in 1921, never getting the chance to see her work completely reshape our understanding of the Universe. 

Eaton Canyon has a long history of water, homesteading, and tourism. However, its most significant contribution to the world is that it was here where we discovered the cosmos was incomprehensibly large. It was here atop Eaton Canyon that humankind once again was reminded that we are nothing against the grand scale of everything there is. In this age of fast moving headline news, pointless conflicts, and political drama, such a revelation is worth dwelling upon. 

PBS produced a short documentary at Mount Wilson that you can view here.