Description

Lake Hughes is a small community located inside Angeles National Forest. Named after the small body of water which bears its name. Lake Hughes is probably a remnant of a much larger lake sometime in past, at least 12,000 - 8,000 years ago, and it was probably connected with Elizabeth Lake. Or both may have a glacier ancestry. Lake Hughes is Northwest of Palmdale and with Lake Elizabeth nearby. Elizabeth Lake Road is a long road that connects the suburbs of Palmdale, Lake Hughes, and the lake itself. Leona Valley is a long narrow valley separated from the Antelope Valley by the San Andreas earthquake fault ridge, known as Ritter Ridge, so named after one of the settlers from Nebraska in the 1880's. The valley is about a mile wide and 25 miles in length and is the geographic home to the towns of Lake Hughes and Lake Elizabeth. Residents here enjoy a different setting from the desert landscapes of the surrounding Antelope Valley communities. This quiet community of Lake Hughes displays beautiful rolling hills decorated with green farmland, cherry orchards, and horse barns. This ideally located community enables its residents to enjoy the best of two worlds.

History

The area's history can be best described as land abundant with cattle ranches. In the mid-1800s, after the departure of the Shoshone Indians the area's original inhabitants immigrants from Spain and Mexico quickly established themselves within the land. The majority of the Spanish and the Mexican immigrants were primarily interested in the land in order to establish cattle ranches. During the 1880s, the ranches were broken up into smaller homesteads by farmers from Germany, France and the state of Nebraska.