I grew up in the city of Hacienda Heights, California at the foot of the Puente Hills. To get to the neighboring city of Whittier roads had to be carved through the hills. The oldest road over the hills to Whittier is Turnbull Canyon road. It winds along 4 miles of this canyon from Hacienda Heights to Whittier. My family often drove from Hacienda Heights to Uptown Whittier to buy some really delicious ice cream. Unfortunately the great ice cream parlor went out of business decades ago.
During the day it isn't very ominous but at night the canyon is dark and can be foreboding. It's especially eerie in foggy weather. A plane crashed into a hillside in the canyon, in 1952 killing 29 people, in foggy weather. In the evening tarantulas often can be seen crossing the road. Old abandoned restaurant ruins at the top of a hill look like the ruins of an old cemetery. This atmosphere has given rise to stories of devil worshippers meeting at the restaurant ruins, and other strange occurrences. You'll find references, and videos, on the internet referring to this Turnbull Canyon site as the "Gates of Hell".
There have been urban legends regarding a sanitarium once located in the canyon where lobotomies, and electric shock therapy, were performed. These stories sometimes include eerie references to these patients wandering the canyon.
Researching my family in the recently released 1950 US Census I was curious about the sanitarium my grandfather, Charles Forgey, worked at as a gardener. He worked at Douglas Aircraft in shipping an receiving during WWII, but he decided to work closer to his home on 4th avenue in La Puente after the war, The El Encanto sanitarium was practically within walking distance from where my grandparents lived.
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| 4th Avenue home |
This sanitarium was right off of Turnbull Canyon road. It's not in the canyon. It's a few miles away. I believe the stories of a mental facility in Turnbull Canyon stem from memories of the old El Encanto.
When I found the El Encanto patients listed in the 1950 census they weren't all elderly, which surprised me. The El Encanto today is a nursing home mainly housing the elderly. My grandmother was a resident of that nursing home for several years.
After the new nursing home was built I remember touring the old abandoned building site with a security guard who was living downstairs in the empty 1920s mansion. I was just a child and remember him telling us sometimes you could see ghosts in the old windows. I was afraid to look at the windows after that. Certainly many people died in those houses from 1841 until the new nursing home was built.
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| 1920s mansion was turned into a convalescent and mental hospital |
I decided to use my Newspaper.com subscription to learn more about the old El Encanto. I was surprised to find out that mental patients were housed there along with elderly convalescent patients in the early days. In the 1940s and 1950s patients were housed in the 1920s Spanish Style mansion. Next to this 1920s mansion is an even much older 1841 adobe which was upgraded later by William Workman into an English style manor house.
Looking at old newspaper articles I discovered some dangerous mental patients were housed in the sanitarium. This shocked me thinking my grandfather could have been injured by a criminally insane patient. Below are some sample articles about escaped patients from the 1940s and 1950s:
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| Dangerous patients kept in locked rooms with restraints when my grandfather worked there. |
One of the mentally disturbed patients was suicidal. I'm sure the environment in the sanitarium was enough to drive anyone to suicide. My mother visited someone inside on the convalescent side of the hospital and said the conditions weren't great.
Below is a photo of my grandfather Charles with his dog Frank sitting in the grounds of the old sanitarium. Outside the manicured grounds where empty fields. My grandfather probably shot rabbits with the rifle he is pictured with.
The old houses, which once housed the sanitarium, have been restored and are now open to the public. The Workman Temple Family Homestead Museum, in the City of Industry, offers guided tours and hosts special events throughout the year.
If you look into the old windows at night you might catch a glimpse of the ghosts the security guard saw?
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