The area is now called Santa Clarita, California. The area was then a clump of bedroom communities that may have totaled about 50 thousand people. Some farmland was still cultivated then (the aroma of the onion harvest is a childhood memory), sheep were even grazed. But there were tracts of houses and the tracts were already closely spaced enough to support three significant high schools. Even from a jet you should have known you were flying over a populated area by looking out the window.