Old Short Cut

Newcomb's Ranch is a roadhouse at 5,340 feet (1,630 m) in elevation in the Angeles National Forest, near Los Angeles, California. It is the only private property along the Angeles Crest Highway and is very popular with motorcyclists and is called "the informal headquarters for riders" by the Los Angeles Magazine and "one of Southern California's most famous Rickey Racer Roadhouses" by Motorcyclist. The roadhouse is located in unincorporated Los Angeles County, near La Cañada Flintridge.The Newcomb family, who also created the Mount Waterman ski area, settled the property using the Land Revision Act of 1891, building the roadhouse in 1939. The roadhouse has served as a restaurant, hotel, general store, gas station, and as a brothel or love hotel. The inn burned in 1976, allegedly started by a cook who had been terminated. The fire destroyed most of the second floor, which was not rebuilt. It was purchased in late 2001 by Frederick Rundall, an oncologist who purchased the roadhouse from Lynn Newcomb and remodeled it in 2003 for $340,000. The second floor became lodging for employees.Motorcyclist and comedian Jay Leno is a "frequent visitor" to Newcomb's.The roadhouse closed in 2009 for the Station Fire. In January 2010 following the storm closure of Angeles Crest Highway between Newcomb's and Los Angeles, as well as a South Coast Air Quality Management District violation for operating a diesel generator without permit, Rundall shelved remodeling plans and discussed closing down completely.The ranch was closed in March 2020 and put up for sale in June 2021. As of January 2023, the ranch is still closed and up for sale.

Horse Flats is a region of the San Gabriel Mountains in the Angeles National Forest north of Los Angeles. It is known for its US Forest Service campground (open April 1-November 15) and for the excellent granite bouldering near the campground. It is off California State Route 2. The elevation is 5,800 ft (1,800 m). Closed in the winter months. In the campground is Mount Hillyer Trail, which connects to the Silver Moccasin Trail.

The Silver Moccasin Trail is a 53-mile (85 km) trail located in the San Gabriel Mountains, northeast of Los Angeles. It begins at Chantry Flat Recreation Area above the city of Arcadia, California, traversing upward and down through several canyons and along the high ridges of the Angeles National Forest. This trail connects Mt. Baden-Powell, Mount Burnham, Throop Peak and Mount Hawkins. It comes to its highest point of 9,399 feet (2,865 m) at Mount Baden-Powell after which point it descends to its terminus at Vincent Gap on the Angeles Crest Highway near Wrightwood.

Stony Ridge Observatory is an astronomical observatory built by and for amateur astronomers in the mountains of Los Angeles County, California, in 1957. When installed, its 760 mm (30 in) Newtonian-Cassegrain likely ranked as 8th largest of all telescopes in California, and one of the largest amateur telescopes in the United States. The telescope is designed so that one of four Newtonian foci, or a Cassegrain focus, can be used. Asteroids 10168 Stony Ridge, 144633 Georgecarroll and 327030 Alanmaclure, were discovered at the observatory, and other scientific research (including an extensive lunar photography and mapping project in cooperation with Lockheed upon which the decision on the lunar lander touchdown site was based) has been conducted there. The observatory also has a 12-inch Cassegrain telescope and a number of accessory items, including CCD cameras and computer equipment. Facilities include an administration building with a small galley and bunkroom, the dome containing the 30-inch telescope, and a vault-style outhouse. The facility has Edison electric power and a landline telephone connection, but water must be carried in. Stony Ridge is located on a remote, restricted-access site north of Mt. Wilson, near Charlton Flat in the Angeles National Forest. In September 2009, Stony Ridge was at risk of being lost to a wildfire but escaped with minimal fire damage to one side of the outhouse building, although nearby ground cover was burned away, and the foliage of surrounding Coulter pines was destroyed.Recent restoration projects, completed in mid-2017, included: Re-installation of the original, George Carroll-designed right ascension and declination drive systems; installation of a Software Bisque-based "go to" system which will point the telescope at a computer-selected celestial object too faint to be seen with the naked eye or the telelescope's finder scopes; stripping and re-aluminization of the primary and secondary mirrors, which were significantly deteriorated by age, as well as smoke and heat from the infamous Station Fire, which burned more than 200 square miles of the Angeles National Forest surrounding the observatory in 2009.

Vetter Mountain is located in the San Gabriel Mountains and within the Angeles National Forest, Los Angeles County, California, United States. Elevation 5,911 feet (1,802 m) feet. Named by USFS surveyor Don McLain (c. 1933) for Victor P. Vetter (nd.), a dedicated forest ranger and fire dispatcher. Vetter won the USFS Bissell Medal for outstanding work in forest conservation (1930). The Silver Moccasin Trail crosses the mountain on its eastern slopes.

Alder Creek is an approximately 4.25-mile (6.84 km) long tributary of Big Tujunga Creek in Los Angeles County, California and the Angeles National Forest. It is formed by the confluence of the West Fork and North Fork Alder Creek in the San Gabriel Mountains a short distance south of Pacifico Mountain. It then flows south, picking up the Middle Fork, East Fork and Mule Fork before emptying into Big Tujunga Creek 5 miles (8.0 km) east of Hidden Springs. Near its mouth the creek flows under a bridge carrying Upper Big Tujunga Canyon Road.

The Gabrielino Trail is a United States National Recreation Trail that runs through the Angeles National Forest. Its western trailhead is at Windsor Avenue in Altadena, California, and it runs generally east/west, with its eastern end at Chantry Flat, just north of Arcadia, California. It passes through three major watersheds and has an elevation gain/loss of 3,500 ft (1,100 m).

The San Gabriel Wilderness is a wilderness area created in 1968 of more than 36,118 acres (150 km2) within the Angeles National Forest and San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. The area lies on the southern slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains, between the Angeles Crest and the West Fork of the San Gabriel River.The area was originally set aside as the Devils Canyon-Bear Canyon Primitive Area of 35,000 acres (140 km2).The San Gabriel Mountains were first preserved by the federal government in 1892 as the San Gabriel Timberland Reserve, established by U.S. President Benjamin Harrison and influenced by California conservationists, Abbot Kinney and John Muir. This forest reserve would later become part of the Angeles National Forest in which the San Gabriel Wilderness is now located.

The Monte Cristo Gold Mine (Spanish for Mountain of Christ Gold Mine) is a gold mine in the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles, California, USA. The Monte Cristo Gold Mine is part of the quest for mineral wealth in the San Gabriels. Many of the older tunnels and shafts are closed, and the 100-year-old machinery is no longer in operation. The mine has not been operated since 1942, but for over half a century it bustled with activity. The Monte Cristo Gold Mine is on the chaparral-coated slopes of Roundtop Mountain, around Mill Creek and Ootsark Canyon. The region in the Angeles National Forest of the San Gabriel Mountains has the Monte Cristo Campground and the Monte Cristo Ranger station operated by the United States Forest Service. Although the campground is open to the public, the Monte Cristo Gold Mine is private property and not open to the general public.

Cogswell Dam is a rockfill dam on the West Fork of the San Gabriel River in Los Angeles County, California. It is located in the San Gabriel Mountains, northeast of Mount Wilson, and within the Angeles National Forest. It forms Cogswell Reservoir, which has a capacity of 8,969 acre-feet (11,063,000 m3).The dam serves mainly for flood control in conjunction with San Gabriel Dam and Morris Dam downstream. San Gabriel Dam lies 13 miles (21 km) downstream.

The Mount Wilson Observatory (MWO) is an astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The MWO is located on Mount Wilson, a 5,710-foot (1,740-meter) peak in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, northeast of Los Angeles. The observatory contains two historically important telescopes: the 100-inch (2.5 m) Hooker telescope, which was the largest aperture telescope in the world from its completion in 1917 to 1949, and the 60-inch telescope which was the largest operational telescope in the world when it was completed in 1908. It also contains the Snow solar telescope completed in 1905, the 60 foot (18 m) solar tower completed in 1908, the 150 foot (46 m) solar tower completed in 1912, and the CHARA array, built by Georgia State University, which became fully operational in 2004 and was the largest optical interferometer in the world at its completion. Due to the inversion layer that traps warm air and smog over Los Angeles, Mount Wilson has steadier air than any other location in North America, making it ideal for astronomy and in particular for interferometry. The increasing light pollution due to the growth of greater Los Angeles has limited the ability of the observatory to engage in deep space astronomy, but it remains a productive center, with the CHARA array continuing important stellar research. The initial efforts to mount a telescope to Mount Wilson occurred in the 1880s by one of the founders of University of Southern California, Edward Falles Spence, but he died without finishing the funding effort. The observatory was conceived and founded by George Ellery Hale, who had previously built the 1 meter telescope at the Yerkes Observatory, then the world's largest telescope. The Mount Wilson Solar Observatory was first funded by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1904, leasing the land from the owners of the Mount Wilson Hotel in 1904. Among the conditions of the lease was that it allow public access.

The CHARA (Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy) array is an optical interferometer, located on Mount Wilson, California. The array consists of six 1-metre (40 in) telescopes operating as an astronomical interferometer. Construction was completed in 2003. CHARA is owned by Georgia State University (GSU).