At at-risk youth program run by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority will move from East Canyon to Mentryville where participants will rehabilitate Johnson Park as an overnight campground, if the Board of Supervisors approves a switch in funding Tuesday.

MRCA manages the state-owned Santa Clarita Woodlands Park, which includes East Canyon and Mentryville in Pico Canyon. In 1998, the Board of Supervisors awarded $250,000 to MRCA for the “East Canyon At-risk Youth Vocational Training Center Project,” which entailed construction and renovation of an existing facility in East Canyon, southwest of Newhall.

Pico oil families have a picnic in Johnson Park in 1939. Click for more.

The project also was supposed to include development of a vocational training and visitors center, native tree nursery and park maintenance center.

“However,” according to a county staff report, “the old motel at East Canyon intended for renovation and reuse as a training facility was damaged by fire.” It was decided the renovation was infeasible.

Now, MRCA is looking to change the scope and location of the project.

“Mentryville-Johnson Park At-risk Youth Facility Project” is the new name. It will involve “renovation of existing facilities and construction of an overnight camping facility for vocational training, recreation and education of at-risk youth in the Mentryville-Johnson Park area.”

Six decades later (in the 1990s) some historically minded folks do the same.

Johnson Park is located approximately 0.7 miles up-canyon from the historic buildings in the Mentryville oil town. It was developed as a park and picnic site for oil workers in the first half of the last century. Except for a couple of brush fires that have burned through the area, the park has sat relatively idle since the state acquired the property after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

With the change in scope and location, the terms of the funding agreement between the county and MRCA must be amended.

According to the staff report, the park bond funding was (and is) allowed because the measure specified that $12 million of the total could be used for competitive grants to develop at-risk youth service programs throughout the county, including not less than $3 million to MRCA to develop facilities for gang prevention.