to Read The Gazette • What's Up in Newhall? for SCVTV.com • Local Television for Santa Clarita
to Read The Gazette • What's Up in Newhall? for SCVTV.com • Local Television for Santa Clarita
Whittaker-Bermite Site
Saugus, California
It is not known exactly what is going on in this aerial photo, which was shot, according to photographer Gary Thornhill, in 1991. The apparatus on the truck at center appears to be a drilling rig.The Bermite Powder Co., and Halifax Powder Co. before it, manufactured explosives, flares and small munitions in Saugus, on a roughly 1,000-acre parcel just southeast of Bouquet Junction, from 1934 to 1987. The company and the property played an important role in the needs of the U.S. military during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam conflict — and in the development of Newhall, establishing a row of company homes along Walnut Street in the 1930s. After World War II, Bermite formed a subsidiary, Golden State Fireworks, which manufactured fireworks on the property.
The munitions and fireworks operations left more than 275 known contaminants behind, some of which percolated into the groundwater below the property.
Bermite was acquired in 1986 by missile maker Whittaker Corp. Around 1989, plans were made for the area to be developed into a 2,911-unit residential community to be called Porta Bella. Whittaker sold the Saugus property in 1999, just before Whittaker was acquired in a hostile takeover.
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