By RICHARD BRODIE Special to the Palisadian-Post The before-and-after photos on this page show Santa Ynez Canyon in the early 1970s, before home construction began in the Palisades Highlands, and the resulting Palisades Drive early this year. At the time the early shot was taken, the entire range of mountains from Pacific Palisades to the San Fernando Valley was owned by two developers back east, Lazard Freres and William Zeckendorf. Without creation of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, the entire range would have been developed like the Highlands. Throughout the 1950s and 60s there was a private guard station and a 10-ft.-high chain link fence at the entrance to Santa Ynez Canyon on Sunset, so not too many people’except for teenage fence climbers like myself’saw what a glorious place the canyon was before it was developed. My mom, the author Fawn M. Brodie, who was instrumental in the creation of the park, rode in the same car with then-Governor Pat Brown in a caravan that drove all through the area to choose the parts they thought ought to be included in the proposed national park. She later told me that by the time the caravan reached the central and lower part of Santa Ynez Canyon late in the day, everybody was all hot and tired and thirsty and ‘had seen a few rattlesnakes.’ Capriciously, they simply decided not to include that area in the park. As a result, developers were able to build the Highlands. Of course, other factors were probably at work that my mother never heard about, or didn’t relate to me. But sometimes history does just happen like that: capriciously.
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