Beale's Cut Photographic Slide Collection, 1997-1998 | Special Collections & Archives

Scope and Contents: The Beale's Cut Photographic Slide Collection consists of slides and photographs of Beale's Cut, located in the Newhall area of Los Angeles. In 1854, Phineas Banning created a narrow cut through the Newhall Pass area, to accommodate stagecoach traffic to Fort Tejon. In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Edward Fitzgerald Beale as Surveyor General of California and Nevada. Beale expanded the cut to three times its original size, and named the passage after himself. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Beale’s cut was used as a transportation passage and overland mail route, until the Newhall Tunnel was constructed in 1910. During the silent film era, Beale’s cut became a favorite location of movie producers like John Ford and D. W. Griffith.