As hide-outs go, you could do worse. Particularly when you have attempted to escape prison four times, sentenced for stealing horses, and finally succeed, in 1862, with ten men dead in the process. When you are a poet at heart, you’re surely sensitive to the indescribable beauty of your surrounds.

Who and what am I talking about? Tiburcio Vasquez, son of a founding family of San Francisco, born in Monterey, and drawn to Southern California in the wake of the gold rush. He wrote poetry, he operated a gambling saloon, and eventually he robbed stage coaches when he wasn’t seducing everyone with a skirt on, married or not, apparently quite generous with the spoils of his thefts to those in his crew and needy people in the region.

Eventually he was caught, after multiple feuds and shoot-outs, hanged in 1875 after spending time in San Quentin. He might or might not have been the Robin Hood-like figure who Zorro was modeled after, but he was the one from which the otherworldly landscape neighboring the small town of Aqua Dulce derived its name.

The strange formation of sandstone is a park today, some 45 minutes north of L.A. off Highway 14. You drive through the Sierra Pelona into Santa Clarita valley, then through Aqua Dulce, a small town advertising the high school Fall Festival,

and then reach Vasquez Rocks where the Pacific Crest Trail intersects with multiple other hiking loops, all opening to awe inspiring vistas.

The rocks were formed by runoff from higher mountains, dirt, sand, plant remnants and so on, layer after layer for millions of years – 25 million, I believe – compressed by the weight of each additional layer, compacted into sandstone. Underneath it all runs the Elkhorn Fault which was actively shifting tectonic plates, thus elevating the rocks into angles as steep as 40 – 50 degrees (and pushing some of them up to 4 miles underground, in equally angular formations, it is believed.)

The main rock formations within the 932 acres of the park can be divided into those that are hard and brittle, called hog back ridges and others that are soft and round, full of holes (often occupied by owls!), eroded across time. There are also grinding holes to be found in these rocks, signs of the presence of the Tataviams (originally linked to the Shoshone) who inhabited the region for some 1300 years, from 450 BC until the 1800s.

When the Spanish missionaries arrived and founded the Mission San Fernando Rey de España some 20 miles away, a lot of them were brought in, converted, and forced to labor for their colonial masters. Within a few generations their language was lost. Today, the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians instruct us about their history and heritage and are working towards official recognition by the federal government.

There was much archeological evidence that informed about the Tataviams’ lives as gatherers, hunters and traders, including pictographs. Near the nature center where you enter the park, you can see exact replicas of many of them, all in one place. The original pictographs are in a section of the park that is closed to the public so they will not be destroyed. The originals have been there since 450 AD.

When I visited, the area was dry, suffused with light, filled with shrubbery that tenaciously clung to rocks, and a shining color palette from the greens and reds of the lichen to the orange glow of some of the boulders.

It was also relatively empty, not too many people hiking mid-day, but some climbing the formations, which provided perfect scale for the photographer.

At other times the landscape was booming with people: it has been used as a backdrop for Hollywood films since the 1920s, when it was still private land, leased to the film industry. Below is the list from Wikipedia, and that does not even include a far longer one for TV shows….

It was a perfect day. And here is locally sourced music….