Three Points, California | |
|---|---|
 Three Points welcome sign and fire-burned trees | |
  Three Points, California  Three Points, California | |
| Coordinates:34°44′09″N118°35′55″W / 34.7358155°N 118.5986976°W /34.7358155; -118.5986976 | |
| Country |  United States |
| State |  California |
| County | Los Angeles |
| Time zone | UTC-8 (Pacific) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-7 (Pacific Daylight Time) |
| ZIP code | 93532, served byLake Hughes |
| Area code | 661 |
Three Points is a scenic, sparsely populatedunincorporated community at the northwestern edge ofLos Angeles County, in the northernSierra Pelona Mountains foothills and southwest of theAntelope Valley inSouthern California, United States.[1]
The settlement is on the northern edge of theAngeles National Forest,[2] on the east side of Oakgrove Canyon where it opens out into Pine Canyon, 17.5 miles (28 km) north ofCastaic.[3] Its elevation is 3,424 feet.[4]
A roadside welcome sign said in 1991 that the Three Points population was 150.[5] In 2008 a newer sign gave the population as 200.
Three Points andLake Hughes are essentially just wide spots in the road, a few homes and businesses scattered along a dry, brushy gully that marks the course of theSan Andreas fault. The combined population of the two communities is about 500.
Three Points washomesteaded in 1892 by the Lafferty family, 83-year-old Laura May Lafferty told a reporter in 1991. Her grandmother acted as a midwife, and her father, Ben Cherbbono, was aFrench Canadianmuleskinner who led a team that helped grade theRidge Route highway in the early part of the 20th century. Gookins Lake in the area was named after her mother's family, she said.[5]
In those days, Three Points was graced with aone-room schoolhouse, Pine Canyon School, where in 1953 Mrs. Lillie Knighton taught children aged 6 to 14; in midwinter, a “huge pot-bellied stove . . . hissed with heat.”[6]The school also acted as acommunity center; movies related to classwork were shown each Thursday night, open to adults.[6]
Apart from the school, a tavern variously called the Three Point Cafe, Maxine's, and Nancy's Up the Road Cafe, was another center of social life. Bert Gookins was the first owner and builder — sometime in 1912, or maybe 1924, Bert Hart, Gookins’ grandson, recalled. It was a grocery store once, Hart said, and perhaps the restaurant and bar were added in the 1930s or 1940s.[1] The building was occasionally occupied by a traveling dentist who used a foot-powered drill.[5]
Michael and Anita Felix bought the cafe in 1984 with the idea of using its park-like grounds for special events. Two years later, Anita had aheart attack and so the Felixes began leasing it to other operators.[1]When Maxine Martin had it in 1991 it was a combination bar, restaurant, social club and video-rental store featuring a decor that included
a jukebox, animal traps, rattlesnake skins, guns, old photographs, dollar bills pinned to the wall, a bottle of pickled pig feet and a sign that says “All tabs must be paid by the end of the month.”[5]
In November 1994 the Felixes resumed managing the cafe — but they opened it only on Saturdays and Sundays, and soon thereafter they put it up for sale.[1]
In 2008 it was a private residence: An unusable gasoline pump in front was purely decorative, and the only sign of commerce was an outsidevending machine that dispensedbottled water.
As an unincorporated community, there is no local government, but there is a Three Points–Liebre Mountain Town Council, which in March 2009 was working on a community standards district document and on emergency preparedness.[7]
There is no longer a public school in the settlement. Three Points is part of theWestside Union School District of West Lancaster, which operates Del Sur, Joe Walker, Hill View, Cottonwood, Rancho Vista, Sundown, Valley View, Leona Valley, and Quartz Hill schools, through theeighth grade.
The community is within theAntelope Valley Union High School District and theAntelope Valley Community College District.
The Los Angeles County public library's Antelope Valleybookmobile is at Three Points from 10 to 10:45 a.m. on Saturdays.[8]
Three Points was settled in a wooded valley shrouded in volatilepine trees, near a mountain fittingly namedBurnt Peak,[3] and the town has been threatened bywildfires many times over the decades. The earliest story about Three Points in theLos Angeles Times, the closest metropolitan newspaper to the settlement, is dated August 24, 1927, and, like many such articles thereafter, it was reporting on a massive fire in the forested area.
AID SENT IN BRUSH FIRE : Blaze Unchecked on Ridge Route Hundred Men and Supplies Rush to Help 700 Already on Job Flames Advance to Three Points in Pine Canyon; No Lives Menaced.[9]
Twenty-two years later, in 1949, another fire in the canyon made the news:
A freakish south-southeast wind which sprang up suddenly yesterday afternoon sent the Sawmill Mountain fire in the Angeles National Forest raging out of control again threatening 75 homes in the Three Points settlement, 16 miles west of Lake Hughes.
In July 2004, theTimes reported:
two houses burned in Three Points, a place defined by the only business in town, a little red-shingled restaurant named the Three Point Cafe. A third house in the area burned Thursday.[2]
