Cleveland National Forest

And then the chaparral sage is also a native.

It's native by the Cleveland National Forest going over the Ortega Highway.

Okay.

Okay.

Angelo Nicola Gotti, Jr. Angelo Gotti will forever remember July 13, 1974.

On that morning, he drove his son, 21-year-old Nick Gotti Jr., down along Ortega Highway towards the Cleveland National Forest in California.

As Nick got out of the car, he said goodbye to his father.

He was only supposed to be gone for a long, solitary hike in the Cleveland National Forest, but sadly, he would never return.

July 13th, 1974 was the last time that Angelo ever saw his son and now, 48 years later, the Gotti family are still holding out hope for his case to be resolved and for them to finally have some closure.

July 13th, 1974, Nick hopped out of his dad's car and began to walk down the Ortega Highway, down to San Juan Hot Springs and into the Cleveland National Forest.

Nick enjoyed living off the land and was constantly looking to push his survival skills.

This time, he had planned to stay out in the wilderness for a week or so before returning home.

We got a plaque on our volunteer fire department that said we were the last place in Southern California to get Southern California Edison electricity.

It had to be buried underground because we were in the Cleveland National Forest.

So it took a long time to get it.

Anyway, N6AQQ.

Now it's, like, an RV camp.

And so the company that had to build the bridge over so that people in Yorba Linda could get their, their homes sooner, 'cause when they built those houses in East Yorba Linda, all the way out butting up to the Cleveland National Forest, La Palma got backed up when people were trying to get home, so they had to do the bridge.

And guess what happened? There was an environmental impact report, and it was definitely gonna ruin the life of one, a endangered species bird.

Mm-hmm.

this cache is set along one of his most favorite hikes.

It goes on to say you should probably purchase a National Forest Service Adventure Pass in order to park legally in Cleveland National Forest Recreation Area.

[laughs]

Cleveland rocks.

So I kind of said, hey, you know, you guys keep running the group and I'm going to move on to my own thing and started investigating this place called Black Star Canyon.

It's up in Orange County, California, up in the Cleveland National Forest.

And I had no idea Bigfoots existed, number one, nor did I know that they were in Orange County.

So long story short, went up there and I've been researching that area for about eight, eight years on my own and, uh, decided, okay, you know what? I really want to start teaching people how to ghost hunt and to really do this.

And so I decided one night we were doing a Halloween special for about 30 people.

They were actually, so let me describe Black Star Canyon.

It's kind of between two mountains and it is up in the Cleveland National Forest.

As you walk up, Black Star Canyon got its name from the Black Star Mining Company, which mined low-grade coal.