Most people think of Los Angeles as the home of Hollywood, or as "The City of Lights", and both of these monikers are true. But it has also been host to some unexplained phenomenon. Such were some disappearances near Devil's Gate Reservoir.
The location itself is unimpressive-looking. Devil's Gate is a dam which sits near Interstate 210 in the lush and privileged community of La Caņada. Even calling it a reservoir is a stretch, as the water it reserves is barely a trickle. Nevertheless, the dam sits there, modulating the stream and holding back enough to support a stretch of green in the heart of the San Gabriel mountains.
On March 23rd, 1957, eight year-old Tommy Bowman was hiking through Devil's Gate in the company of his family. As children will, he ran ahead of his family with a burst of youthful speed. He went around a curve in the trail and out of sight, and straight into oblivion. When his family followed around the curve of the trail scant seconds later, Tommy was nowhere to be seen. They searched the trail, and the surrounding brush to no avail.
For the next seven days, a search team totaling four hundred people hacked their way through the dense chaparral, called out Tommy's name, but failed to find any trace of the boy. Finally, the search was called off after failing to turn up any clues. It was as though Tommy had literally walked off the edge of the world.
Three years later, the Devil's Gate claimed another young victim. A YMCA group was on a hike through the Devil's Gate, close by the site where Tommy Bowman had gone missing. For safety's sake, the children were kept together. But long walks and young children do not always work well together, and six year-old Bruce Kremen was lagging behind the others. The group leader decided to send young Bruce back to the camp, a mere three hundred yards away. But Bruce never made it there. Like Tommy Bowman before him, he vanished into thin air. Another massive search failed to turn up any evidence of foul play or otherwise.
Speculation was wild about the disappearances, and fingers were pointed in every direction. Theories ranged from abduction by gypsies to botched kidnapping, to the predations of child molestors. One outlandish theory speculated that an occultist who had flourished in the 1940s had opened a dimensional portal which had turned Devil's Gate into a true passageway to the netherworld.
No one knows what became the two children, or whether Devil's Gate is more than just a pretty nature area with a sinister name. Is it a gateway to another world? And if so, are Tommy and Bruce still trying to get back through it to go home? How it changed my life:It didn't, but I did use Google Earth to look at this location. There is not much to see, but even the most innocuous of places can have a dark history. You can join Unsolved Mysteries and post your own mysteries or
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