A Postcard Tour of Early Big Pines Park

[GRAHAM_RANCH]

[GRAHAM_RANCH]

[GRAHAM_RANCH]

[GRAHAM_RANCH]

[GRAHAM_RANCH]

[WWMtnGal]

I just love all of the postcards and your comments!  These are just beautiful and I love seeing the one of the cars and families at the campground!  That was so awesome!

The one of all of the skiers at Big Pines looks like today but older cars!

Love them so much!
 

[GRAHAM_RANCH]

[Nolena]

Jody had a great collection!  
I'm glad she donated them to the museum.

[ForestGal]

Great job, Terry!     This is as much a tribute to Jody as it is a fascinating look at some of our local history.  I wish she could read this topic.

[RobertW]

I spend a lot of time at the Big Pines VIS Center.  The "recreation hall" has tons of old pictures surrounding the walls.

Is there anyway a montage of these photos could be put together and added to the Recreation Hall or posed the VIS center?  It's an amazing look at history.

I've seen pictures of the Arch and towers all my life, but I'd never been up in the tower.  A few weeks ago when Aaron and I were about to go out on patrol I was talking to him about the history of the Arch.  He said have you ever been inside?  Of course, I jumped at that chance. 

I actually walked up the stairs in the surviving tower into the old "jail" at the top.  Once you get through the outside locked door, you see an original door to a storage area under the stairs.  The stairs are very steep and narrow and it was creepy to think people were actually held in there until Sheriff Deputies could take them down the mountain.  From the inside you can really appreciate how they did the masonry back then.  It has the orignal bars.

I was going to take pictures, but they use it as a storage area now and it's pretty messy.  I didn't think the pictures would look that good.  Maybe that can be a project for the USFS Volunteer Patrol Group.  We can get that historic tower cleaned out and move the storage material to the storage shed at the VIS center just 50 ft away.  It would be great to have pictures posted here of the inside of the tower as well.

[RobertW]

Thought I'd add my pictures of the Big Pines area to this thread as well to keep them all in the same place.  I always have trouble finding them on this forum.

My Grandparents visited Big Pines frequently.  These are c. 1930.

Gandma and Grandpa Schobert:



Grandma and her brother Chet:

[GRAHAM_RANCH]

Sure like those photos of your grandparents. The lodge still does have many old time photos hanging from the walls within. In regards to the "holding cell"...there are many disagreements that it actually did exist. Park Administer, and forest ranger at the time, Harry Grace said that it did not; Bud Rowe, the son of the late Howard Rowe, a county ranger who also worked at the Big Pines Park at that time, also said that they did not exist. Ranger Doug Milburn at Big Pines concurs. I've yet to find any documentation that anyone was detained in the storage room on the bottom of the step within the arch's north tower. There has been sources of local history that wrote that the cell was used to detain troublesome park visitors until the San Bernardino Sheriff could pick them up...yet the Park is well inside Los Angeles County and fell under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Dept, whose nearest station was in Lancaster.

In regards to the "cell" or bars that are located on top of the stairs in the existing north tower: those bars were put in to prevent anyone from climbing through the opening that was left when the south tower and arch walkway was removed.

thanks for the photos.....keep 'em coming for history's sake.
T. G.

[Merle]

The color pictures are how I remember WW from the 60's thru the 80's.  I am trying to insert a picture from Holiday Hill of my family, my with my parents in the ski instructor uniforms.