Devil's Gate Dam
Devil's Gate Dam is a flood control dam in the Arroyo Seco in northern Pasadena between La Cañada Flintridge and Altadena. The location is the narrowest spot on the Arroyo Seco's course below Millard Canyon.
Occultists Jack Parsons and Aleister Crowley believed the site of the dam was a portal to Hell.
The area surrounding the dam has officially been renamed "Hahamongna," a Tongva phrase meaning "Flowing Waters, Fruitful Valley," although this is not the original Tongva name for the site.
Name
Devil's Gate is so-named because of the natural rock feature at the site which resembles the Devil. A 1947 article in the Metropolitan Pasadena Star-News states that Devil's Gate was named in 1858 by Judge B.S. Eaton because of "its resemblance to a point of that name on Sweetwater Creek." Judge Eaton explained in a letter that he had seen the original point in 1850 when traveling along the old California trail with a team of oxen.
History
The Tongva people were the earliest known inhabitants of the Pasadena area. They believed the location around Devil's Gate Dam was highly spiritual and regarded it as a gateway between worlds. The Tongva thought the water passing over the rocks in the gorge mimicked the sound of a coyote spirit laughing and held the site as sacred, but also a place to be avoided due to the trickery of coyotes.
1800s
John C. Frémont is thought to be the first white person to visit Devil's Gate. In the 1840s, his exploration crew drove an iron survey stake into a rock near the dam site.
Throughout the 1800s, residents of Los Angeles considered the satanic-looking outcropping at Devil's Gate to be a natural wonder and often brought out of town visitors to the site. Large public gatherings were held there and children slid down the rocks while their parents hosted picnics nearby. A steel truss bridge was eventually built across the arroyo to allow easier crossing. The first dam, a low dam designed to supply water for the Lake Vineyard Company, was completed in October 1877 by Mr. J. de Barth Shorb.
In 1887, John Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor who would later create Mount Rushmore, painted a detailed picture of an old man named Kibbe who lived in a cabin at Devil's Gate. The painting was titled Substantial Expectations and depicted Kibbe relaxing in his rustic cabin surrounded by pioneer accoutrements of the Old West.
In 1888, there was an outbreak of poison oak among people who visited Devil's Gate and a public campaign was undertaken to eradicate it at the site.
1900s
In 1920, the Los Angeles County Flood Control District built the first flood control dam in Los Angeles County at Devil's Gate gorge. Construction was contracted to the Bent Brothers Company. The dam had to be greatly strengthened in 1932 due to an improper geological survey conducted when the dam was first built.
Early rocket-engine-testing began in the Arroyo Seco in 1936 and this led to the establishment of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) just north of Devil's Gate Dam. During the 1950s, JPL was heavily involved in rocket testing, and the roar of rocket engines could be heard from the Arroyo Seco area for miles.
In the 1950s and 60s, college students used the wooded area around Devil's Gate Dam for their fraternity initiations. Various fraternities routinely engaged in hazing rituals involving the consumption of raw meat as part of a bizarre initiation rite. In June 1960, 35 Woodbury College students were caught in the act by police and the hazings stopped soon after.
Child disappearances
On 23 March 1957, 8-year-old Tommy Bowman disappeared while hiking with his father and others near Devil's Gate Dam. Bowman walked through the ranger station with his friends, but he then ran ahead and disappeared after rounding a corner obscured by bushes. Despite an exhaustive search, he was not found and police believed he had been kidnapped.
Police began rounding up vagrants and transients known to frequent the Devil's Gate area after a 10-year-old boy said he last saw Bowman in the company of a "man who was dirty." Another witness said she saw a "strange-looking character with blond hair" carrying a small boy who was crying around the time Bowman went missing.
Two months after the disappearance, Bowman's parents received a postcard from Oklahoma stating that Tommy was alive and doing well. Eleven months after the disappearance, Tommy Bowman's mother received a phone call from a man who told her he and his partner were holding the boy and that he would be returned if she walked outside and went down the street. She complied with the instructions, but no one ever arrived to drop off the child.
Three years later, on 9 May 1960, 12-year-old Doug Headrick disappeared a few miles from Devil's Gate Dam while making a trip to the grocery store. Twenty-two days later, the suspect in that case attempted to kidnap three-year-old John Charles Dailey at a location even closer to the dam, but was frightened off by Dailey's older brother before he could complete the attack.
In 1970, after being caught attempting to kidnap three girls, serial child murderer Mack Ray Edwards confessed to raping and murdering several missing children in Los Angeles. He did not admit kidnapping Tommy Bowman, although in 2008, police reopened the case and speculated he could have been the perpetrator of all three crimes in the Devil's Gate Dam area. Edwards committed suicide in his cell at San Quentin while awaiting the death sentence.
Occult activities
In the 1930s, possibly at the behest of Aleister Crowley, who believed the Devil's Gate Dam was one of the seven portals to Hell, physicist and occultist Jack Parsons began practicing ritual magic at the site. His early rituals were intended to invoke the nature god Pan, but he also performed experimental ritual evocations with L. Ron Hubbard.
It is thought that Parsons selected the site to build the Joint Propulsion Laboratory due to its proximity to the Devil's Gate.
Many modern day ghost hunters have visited the dam searching for evidence of haunting activity.
Occultist Travis McHenry used the dam site as a primary location for his unfinished horror film Cult of Cthulhu in 2016.