Lockwood Valley is a northeast- to southwest-trending valley located within the San Emigdio Mountains, divided between Ventura and Kern Counties, and surrounded by the Los Padres National Forest at an elevation of some 3,000-6,000 feet. This underpopulated valley is characterized by a fairly rugged terrain mostly composed of open meadows, dense forests, rocky slopes and few roads. Lockwood Creek, a tributary of Piru Creek, runs west to east through the southern portion of the valley. It’s uncertain how Lockwood Valley got its name, but an 1860 census report lists a Bernard Lockwood of New York, age 48, as a miner in the Tejon District, and a mining report from several years later lists the name Lockwood. The Ridge Route Museum states that Lockwood's Ranch, originally settled in the 1800s, was home to a miner who lived in a one-room cabin and mined the local area, which led to the valley being named for him. There were several mining booms throughout the Lockwood area but they were relatively short-lived and not terribly productive. The best known mining venture in the valley was found in borax. A gold prospector by the name of McClaren had sent soil samples from the northeast end of the valley in for testing. The result was no gold but instead a high grade of borax which had only a year before been found for the first time elsewhere in the United States. Borax mines in the valley were eventually reported to be the richest and most productive in the US. Shoehorned between Kern County to the east, Los Angeles County to the south and the Los Padres National Forest all around, Lockwood Valley is the most remote outpost in Ventura County, much of which is more than a mile above sea level and light-years removed in geography and spirit from the rest of the county. Rural. Rustic. Remote. These are the three R’s that rule Lockwood Valley and they are what drew its fiercely independent, pioneer-minded people here in the first place. Frazier Mountain is a broad, pine-forested peak and at 8,017 feet is the sixteenth-highest mountain in the Transverse Ranges of Southern California. Frazier Mountain is named after miner William T. Frazer, who worked in the area in the 1850s, with a spelling alteration, while the Chumash people to whom it is sacred called it Toshololo, which means "mountain of the east,” and is a possible reference to its position east of Mt. Pinos. The photographs displayed here were taken on a number of field trips in 2008, 2010 and 2014, and I don't guarantee the accuracy of some of the identifications.

Adobe yampah
Perideridia pringlei
Apiaceae
[Named for Cyrus Guernsey Pringle, 1838-1911]

Chaparral yucca
Hesperoyucca whipplei
Agavaceae
[Named for Amiel Weeks Whipple, 1817-1863]

Chick lupine
Lupinus microcarpus var. horizontalis
Fabaceae

California evening primrose
Oenothera californica ss. californica
Onagraceae

Tufted poppy
Eschscholzia caespitosa
Papaveraceae
[Named for Johann Friedrich Gustav von Eschscholtz, 1793-1831]