Don’t Blame The Horses

   The headline in the Sunday Los Angeles Times Opinion section caught our eye immediately.
   “Will Rogers Didn’t Leave His Park to Horses,” it said
   In fact, Rogers not only didn’t leave “his park” to anyone, he didn’t have a “park.” When he died in a plane crash in 1935, he left his ranch in Pacific Palisades, along with the rest of his estate, to his widow, Betty. When she died in 1944, she deeded the ranch to the state, with the proviso that it become “a memorial and historical monument to the memory of the late Will Rogers.”
   The opinion piece in the Times was written by Rusty Areias, Director of the California Department of Parks and Recreation, which has been in charge of the Will Rogers State Historic Park for 57 years and spent considerable time and money developing a general plan for it in 1992. Now, in Areias’s words, it is “developing a new operating plan…aimed at doing a better job of highlighting Will Rogers’ life.”
   Rogers grew up with horses and was a cowboy in Oklahoma. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he leased and bought the land in the Palisades, outfitted it with stables, barns, corrals, a roping arena, bridle paths and a polo field and ran as many as 100 horses on it. He made movies in Hollywood and appeared on the radio and on stages all over the country. But, on the ranch, he was primarily a horseman – one of the leading horsemen in this area. Yet, before the “new operating plan” is done, Areias has moved to reduce the role of horses.
   In his words, “I have ordered the temporary suspension of private horse boarding. This follows years of problems arising from horses living permanently at the park, including damage to historic buildings, compaction of soil in corralled areas, erosion and pollution of the creek…This suspension will give us time to ascertain damage caused by the horses to structures and vegetation and to measure pollution to nearby streams caused by horse manure.”
   Will Rogers also owned a lot of oceanfront property in the Palisades, much of which is now owned by the state. After Areias assesses the “damage” horses have done to the old horse ranch, perhaps he should, in like fashion, assess the “damage” done by people to Will Rogers State Beach.
   Like people, horses inevitably do “damage” their habitats. And, just as our houses and offices must be maintained and regularly refurbished, so horse ranches must be maintained and occasionally refurbished. The state owns and operates the park. If buildings are in poor repair, the soil in corrals is compacted, erosion has occurred and streams are being polluted, it is not the presence of horses, but the absence of Parks department maintenance that should concern us.
   The 1992 plan, which is now to be abandoned, called for the department to address the so-called problems cited by Areias, which seems to suggest that it doesn’t need a new plan, it needs to finally put the 1992 plan into play.
   150 years ago, the Westside of L.A. was open land. Horses were at least as numerous and as uniquitous as people. They were transportation, sport, livelihood – everything. They were integral to this area and its development. Today, Will Rogers State Historic Park is the only place in the Santa Monica-Palisades-Brentwood area where horses can still abide and run free. It is a vital vestige of our past.
   There are any number of places in this area where people can escape the usual Westside sturm und drang, stroll, hike and picnic, but Will Rogers State Historic Park is the ONLY place where people and their horses can work and play together in the way our forebears and theirs once did.
   Today, thanks in large measure to the horses who board there and their owners, park visitors can not only get a glimpse of what life was like on the Westside 150 years ago, they can ride themselves, or simply enjoy the sight of horses being groomed and trained and exercised.
   Rogers’ other roles -– as a movie star and humorist – have been chronicled on film and in books and can be more than adequately displayed in his commodious ranch house. His life as a horseman can not be depicted, much less contained in a museum; it can only be mirrored by real horses and real riders in a real landscape.
   Without horses in residence, impeccably restored stables and barns, corrals of fluffy soil and bridle path rimmed with pristine vegetations would not only be meaningless, they’d be dead.
   The horses are doing their job. It’s time for the Parks department to finally do its job.