Oasis: Will Rogers State Historic Park

Peggy Clifford
Editor

                                                  photos by Michael Rosenthal

   Part II
   Just as Will Rogers’ rise from Oklahoma cowboy to major movie star and beloved humorist personified the classic American success story, his horse ranch in Pacific Palisades was the American Dream made real.
   Set on a mesa above Beverly (later Sunset) Boulevard, the ranch was a mere whisper from the ocean. One of the area’s leading horsemen, Rogers had no sooner perfected his ranch –- fitting it out for his family and his horses – when he was killed. For nearly 60 years, it has been a state park and, by any measure, Will Rogers State Historic Park is one of this area’s most cherished landmarks and treasures.
   It came about almost inadvertantly. Anticipating a land boom as Santa Monica became an increasingly popular vacation area for Angelenos, Robert Gillis’s Santa Monica Land and Water Company bought thousands of acres in the Palisades in the 1880s. In 1923, Alphonso Bell, who developed Bel Air, formed the Los Angeles Mountain Park Company and bought 22,000 acres from Gillis, some of which were leased to Japanese truck farmers.
   Having bought a house in Beverly Hills in 1920, in 1923 Rogers began paying taxes on acreage in the Palisades and making plans for it. In January 1925, Rogers and his wife, Betty, signed a one-year lease agreement for the ranch property. A year later, she signed a second lease agreement with Bell and, in 1927, work began on a six-room house. About the same time, Rogers started to add fit out the ranch – with stables, barns, riding rings, bridle paths, trails, paddocks, corrals, a roping arena and a polo field. At one time, Rogers had over 100 horses on the ranch – ranging from cow ponies to polo ponies.
   The Rogers family was living in the ranch house by 1929. The following year, work on a 13-room addition got underway. A grant deed was signed for portions of the property in 1928 and Rogers subsequently bought some other parcels. By 1934, the Rogers owned 340 acres of ranchland and 1600 feet of ocean frontage stretching north from the mouth of Santa Monica Canyon.
   In 1931, a gatekeeper’s lodge was built In 1932, Rogers signed over his ranch deeds to his wife. In 1935, building permits were approved for the addition of three more bedrooms to the south wing, a sunroom adjacent to the master bedroom, a three-room cabin in Rustic Canyon and a three-room caretaker’s cabin
   On August 3, 1935, Rogers wrote a one-page will, leaving everything to his wife. On August 15, he and pilot Wiley Post were killed in a plane crash at Point Barrow, Alaska.
   Mrs. Rogers stayed on at the ranch, but nearly lost it when she was unable to pay the taxes. During World War II, she opened the house to tours benefiting the Red Cross. She died and in 1944, and the state took possession of the 186.5 acre ranch, with the proviso that it be “a memorial and historical monument to the memory of the late Will Rogers.”
   In 1944, the state had 7 million residents and the population of the city was 1.5 million. Today, about 30 million people live in California and nearly 4 million people live in Los Angeles. In 1944, the focus of the new Will Rogers State Historic Park was, as it had been in Rogers’ day, horses. Rogers’ stables, barns, paddocks, riding and roping arenas, polo field, bridle paths and trails were used by a variety of riders. Today what was once a splendid place for people to ride, train and compete has become the only public place in this area where people can ride, school their horses or simply enjoy the sight of horses in a natural setting. It is, then, a precious and rare oasis in the contemporary hurly-burly.
   According to the State Parks and Recreation Department’s own documents, it has always been its responsibility to preserve that setting and the “ranch atmosphere.” The Department has also stated that “The primary historical period shall reflect the years 1927 to 1935…the spirit of the place should give the feeling of going back in time and of visiting Will Rogers’ ranch as one of his guests…the spirit should be of a homey family ranch, peaceful, and at the same time active, especially with the equestrian activities that Will Rogers loved.”
   To this day, the Parks Department has kept its pledge to the Rogers family.
   Horses are boarded in Rogers’ stables and schooled in his arenas. Riders use his trails and bridle paths. Polo players continue to thunder up and down his polo field, as they did in his day.
   If Rogers saw his beloved ranch today, he would probably be pleased that it has managed to survive intact through nearly 60 years of tumultuous growth and change in Los Angeles, downright thrilled to see horses still running on his cherished ranch, and astonished that the State has not, as it so often does, fatally tampered with it.
   But all that may change as the Parks Department is now developing a new plan for the park, and, ominously, has ordered the eviction of the ranch’s resident horses. It would be hideously ironic if the state, having preserved this priceless Westside treasure for 58 ye ars, were now to destroy it by “improving” it..