Big Tujunga Wash

Map Satellite

Big Tujunga Wash is the flood plain, approximately 3 kilometers (2 miles) long and up to 800 meters (2,600 feet) wide, of the intermittent Tujunga Creek. The convergence of desert, chaparral, stream-side woodland and freshwater communities provides a unique variety of plant and animal life found nowhere else in Los Angeles County. As occasional flooding maintains the major part of the Wash as an open community, it is a habitat where natural hybrids and their offspring can compete with their parent species and become established.

The Wash is rich in plant life, including coastal sage scrub, chaparral and riparian, the latter, in fact, a desert-wash community. Among the dozen-plus species of trees found here are the black and Fremont cottonwood, Populus trichocarpa and Populus fremontii, several willows, Salix hindsiana, Salix exigua and Salix lasiolepis, Coulter pine, Pinus coulteri, and California juniper, Juniperus californica. In the chaparral, chamise, Adenostoma fasciculatum, scrub oak, Quercus berberidifolia, Ceanothus spinosus, and mountain mahogany, Cercocarpus betuloides, are conspicuous. Prominent in the coastal sage are white and black sage, Salvia apiana and Salvia mellifera, California sagebrush, Artemisia californica, and Eriogonum fasciculatum. Several cactus, Opuntia occidentalis, Opuntia parryi and the non-native Opuntia ficus-indica, are found here.

Three rare plants, Dodecahema leptoceras, Malacothamnus davidsonii, and Berberis nevinii, have been reported from the area; the latter, which is common under cultivation, is known in the wild from only this locality. Some of the tallest known yuccas, Yucca whipplei, reaching a height of more than 6 meters (20 feet), are found in the rocky basins of the Wash.

Nearly 200 species of birds have been observed in the area, ranging from such typical water and shore birds as lesser scaup, Aythya affinis, redhead, Aythya americana, and dowitcher, Limnodromus scolapaceus, to such typical desert inhabitants as the cactus wren, Campylorhynchus brunneicapillum, and the road-runner, Geococcyx californianus.

Among the numerous mammals that inhabit the area are the coyote, Canis latrans, gray fox, Urocyon cinereoargenteus, as well as a variety of rodents. Additionally, there are several desert insects, with disjunct populations, in the area.

Geologically, one of the more interesting features is the 1-meter (3-foot) high earthquake scarp which crosses the area. It was formed by the 1971 San Fernando earthquake. In the foothills to the north are outcrops of the Modelo and Fernando formations, the former an upper Miocene marine sedimentary formation with siliceous and diatomaceous shale, sandstone and siltstones; the latter dates to the Pliocene and is formed of marine sedimentaries, siltstones, conglomerates, and fine sandstones. Both formations are fossiliferous, with marine vertebrates and invertebrates.

Integrity: A portion of the area is diked; upstream are various camps and structures, including a road. The Wash is bounded on the south by a residential community, and a portion of Interstate 210 is slated to cross the area. Additionally, there are quarries on the perimeter and a few off-road-vehicle tracks in the Wash. A portion of the area was burned in 1975.

Use: Research, educational, observational.

January 1977