Allegedly – according to Wikipedia – Mentryville, CA was an oil boom town.

I’m not sure I believe it.

Right now it consists of a parking lot ($5 for parking??? give me a break), a house, a boarded up school and a couple barns.

Not too sure where the town would have been …..

For those of you who did NOT grow up in Santa Clarita with all kinds of urban legends about Mentryville and the cults that lived out there ….. Mentryville is basically a state part just on the outskirts of Santa Clarita, way out Pico Canyon road by Stevenson Ranch.

You can read the story of Mentryville or look at historic photos … which really are more exciting than the current sights. Literally a dirt road the length of a city block with 3 complete buildings. Maybe 4. And a bunch of rusting oil/farm equipment. A broken picnic table. Horse manure. Weeds.

But, in spite of the lack of physical artifacts left to represent the history of the town, it is still so interesting that this big (800+acre) area is designated as a state park! Good for California for at least attempting to preserve the state’s history.

A side note about the magic that is Twitter … the reason we went to Mentryville for a couple hours one Sunday afternoon is I was on Twitter and said that Andrew and I were trying to decide whether or not to be lazy. I got an @reply from Maggie that her family was going to Mentryville that afternoon and we were welcome to come.

Boom. Plans with zero effort.

God bless the internet.

{ You can follow Amy on Twitter here }

So we drove up to Santa Clarita for the afternoon and got to visit with one of our favorite 2 year olds!

Eleanor was pretty entertaining. And cute. As per usual. ….

{note: check out Maggie’s pics on Making Me Cranky}

Mentryville – being pretty deserted most of the time – is apparently pretty popular for photo shoots for Santa Clarita photographers. Who knew!?

When Andrew and I got there, this crew (photo below) were taking some pics …. and I’m pretty sure the girl was in a bikini. In January. In a shell of an old building. In high heels.

hmm.

yea, so Maggie and I spent the whole time taking photos.

Of course, I was hindered by little girl hand holding.

And I don’t mean Andrew.

Eleanor decided this time that she likes me best and elected to hold my hand (when she was forced to hold an adult’s hand) … her tiny little cold hands.

Can’t wait to see Maggie’s pics!

Maggie and Josh : Thanks for letting us tag along ….

Andrew : next time we should do a tour and actually figure out what we’re looking at.