by Paul R. Spitzzeri
During the Great Hiking Era, which was roughly over a forty to fifty year period from the late 19th century to the Great Depression, Americans embraced the “Great Outdoors” as part of the country’s economic ascent, rise of the middle class, access to more leisure time and the abundant goods and services utilized as folks tramped along trails, camped in cottages and tents, fished and hunted and much more.
In greater Los Angeles, the fulcrum of such activity was the San Gabriel Mountains range, generally known in the earlier period of the era as the Sierra Madre, and its network of trails, gorgeous canyons, waterfalls, resorts and camps and other elements attracted legions of locals and tourists as something of a flip side of the region’s renowned beaches.
Posts in the “At Our Leisure” series have frequently focused on locales within the San Gabriels, including one of the most important and heavily patronized, Mount Wilson. The peak was named for Benjamin D. Wilson, whose Lake Vineyard estate was one of the San Gabriel Valley’s best known and who built the heavily-used road, on which tolls were long charged, to the summit from Little Santa Anita Canyon.
In addition to such accommodations as the Mt. Wilson Hotel and Strain’s Camp, the peak became best known for its observatory, where remarkable work has been done in astronomy and related sciences for 120 years by such widely recognized figures as George Ellery Hale, who focused heavily on research regarding the sun (which led to the facility being known as a “solar observatory”) and Edwin P. Hubble, whose efforts with stars and nebulae contributed heavily to the understanding of the Big Bang model of the origins of our universe.
This post features, from the Museum’s holdings, a real photo postcard, titled “Cabin Cafe, Mt. Wilson,” with a difficult to read part of the caption appearing to read “Ross Photo,” this evidently being the hotel’s manager, Fred Ross. What dominates the image is the remarkable and intricate use of rough-hewn wood for fencing, the porch screen and entrance portico, chairs and benches and what may be a water fountain at the right. Also of note is the sign pointing guests to the structure to reach the hotel office.
The message is written in pencil and, not surprisingly, has faded to a significant degree, but also doesn’t say anything noteworthy, but does provide us the date of 16 August 1916, with a postmark the next day at Pico Heights. It appears that Myrtle bought the card at Mt. Wilson, but wrote the message and sent the card from that section of the Angel City just west of downtown. Looking at activities pertaining to Mt. Wilson from August 1916, however, we find some notable items in the local press.
Advertisements, for example, that it offered a “new hotel and cabins and Strain’s Camp” and, among the “delightful air, [and] purest spring water” there were “picturesque walks” and access on the “finest auto road in Southern California.” In addition to the new American plan hotel, there was dancing and “delicatessen and groceries cheap as city,” Mt. Wilson boasted the “largest observatory in the world.” Access was also by the Pacific Electric Railway to a Sierra Madre station to get guests to the hiking trail, while auto stages daily left from downtown Los Angeles and from Pasadena.
Speaking of automobile access, the 27 August edition of the Los Angeles Times reported on a recent demonstration by a King seven-passenger eight-cylinder vehicle that made the climb up Mt. Wilson, while the edition of the paper on the 14th reported,
Mrs. James Ferdon has the distinction of being the first woman to drive an automobile up the tortuous Mt. Wilson automobile road. Accompanied by five other women and no men, Mrs. Ferdon made the climb yesterday afternoon. At no time was the daring woman driver frightened and she would gladly do the feat over again.
The account added that the tollgate attendant first tried to deny her access, though on what grounds was not stated, but, when “Mrs. Ferdon told him that she had driven from Chicago to this city,” the gatekeeper “opened wide the barrier.” Lastly, it was stated that she drove an Overland on her ascent, though what model was left unspecified.
Alpha Staley Ferdon was a 39-year old resident of Los Angeles, whose husband James, was a medicine manufacturer and then a real estate agent. She owned a nut factory in Eagle Rock during the 1920s and early in that decade registered a 1918 Cadillac Phaeton, likely the Type 57 Suburban seven-passenger and cost $4,090 (or nearly $83,000 in modern dollars.) In her later years, Ferdon resided in Palm Springs where she ran the El Casa Don (which should have been La Casa Don?), a “cottage hotel.”
Another reference to a woman visitor came in the 28 August issue of the Long Beach Telegram, which printed a description from Agnes Wolcott, who headed the algebra section at Long Beach Poly High School. Visiting Strain’s Camp, she sent back home her impressions:
Yesterday morning about five, I was awakened by rain drops coming right into my face. They were so gentle that I just let them come. Later I went down by the brook which was unusually beautiful. In about an hour I saw a buck and a doe coming down the hill. How stealthily they came and how gracefully. I had a full view of them for some minutes. Then some young ladies came along and how they did gallop up the hillside. Then a nice, heavy shower came and I had to gallop to my tent.
I am going to take the girls next to my tent to Deer Park this afternoon to watch the sunset. There are white clouds above the horizon line now. It is so unusual to see clouds above us here. It is delightfully strange to have absolutely nothing to do but I shall be glad to get back and feel ready for anything.
Another Long Beach woman was referred to with regard to Mt. Wilson, as well, this being pianist and composer Fannie Charles Dillon (1881-1947), a Pomona College graduate who taught there from 1910-1913 and then in Los Angeles high schools from 1918-1941. A lover of the outdoors, she established the Woodland Theater at Fawnskin on the north shore of Big Bear Lake and managed it from 1926-1929.
The Times of the 14th briefly noted that coloratura soprano singer Edith Norton, a recent settler in the Angel City, returned from the mountain “where she and Miss Dillon, well-known local pianiste, have a summer studio,” and it added that “the two musicians gave a programme of distinct charm at Strain’s Camp just before Miss Norton’s return.”
The Telegram of the 24th, however, went into great detail about the Strain’s Camp studio, saying that it was “on the mesa under the pines” and where Dillon “is giving [a] course of music lectures and lessons” as part of the headline. Dillon was one of the four children of Florence Hood and Henry C. Dillon, who moved from Denver to Long Beach in 1891 with Henry immediately securing election as Los Angeles County District Attorney, serving four years. After working in private practice and relocating to Los Angeles in 1906, Henry died in that city a half-dozen years later.
The family remained in the Angel City, but the Long Beach paper was clearly proud of the 35-year old artist as it followed its comment that she “has conceived quite the nicest summer plan yet” by observing that “everybody in Long Beach knows Fannie Dillon so it is quite superfluous to say that she is one of the most talented pianist composers in Southern California. The Telegram continued that,
Miss Dillon has encamped herself on the top of Mt. Wilson on the peak known as Strain’s camp, and here she has established a summer music school, and has a practice clavier, a zelophone and a camp piano. Very attractively situated is her mountain studio on a little mesa under the pines, and her camp salons at which she gives lectures on musical history, and attended by musicians, teachers and students and others of the artistic colony summering thereabouts.
A visitor at the studio was Agnes Wolcott’s sister, Lucy—the siblings resided together in the coastal city—who, the Times remarked, “heard Miss Dillon tell of her experiences while studying in Berlin, and of the great composers she had met while in Europe.” Following the talk, “an impromptu musicale” took place with guests involved, including singing from Lucy Wolcott.
Moreover, the account continued, Dillon “played a burlesque on futurist music and a group of Finlanders sang their own folk songs.” The paper reported that “so well received have been Miss Dillon’s out-of-door musicales and course of lectures and lessons, that she has acceded to the request of many of her patrons to continue it another year.” As for Strain’s Camp, the piece concluded that it was “very lively” with campfire roasting of hot dogs and marshmallows, as well as concerts, storytelling and, the prior Saturday night, “a vaudeville entertainment with local talent quite cleverly demonstrating unusual ability.”
Yet another Long Beach connection concerned a high school boys camp from the city’s Y.M.C.A. and its dedicated facility close to Mt. Wilson and nearby Mt. Lowe. With the camp being accessed only by “narrow burro trails,” it was asserted that it “possesses charms peculiarly attractive to beach boys.” This seventh season, lasting from the 21st through the second day of September, prior to the return of school, had a limit of thirty young men, with plans for activities still being devised.
As to the observatory, the Times of the 10th reported that Hale was on his way to England to serve as chair for an organizing committee for the National Research Council, created by the National Academy of Sciences to devise a national preparedness study. Prior to departing, Hale met with President Woodrow Wilson, who approved of and helped with the committee and it was expected that the observatory head would stay in the east for several months after returning from England.
It bears recalling that World War One was in its third year at the time, but the United States was several months from entering as a member of the Allies. The account added that “several other members of the staff” were gone, as well, as they were at the Pacific Division confab of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, gathered at San Diego.
Lastly, there was a report early in August of a missing employee of the Mt. Wilson Hotel, Minnie Wendt, who was said by the Redondo Reflex of the 4th to have “missed her footing while on a hike and rolled about 300 feet down into the canyon,” where rescuers located her some 32 hours later unhurt.
The next day’s Times, however, stated that Wendt went back to her residence and that, while she did leave the hotel for a lengthy excursion over the trails, “was surprised to learn that any alarm had been caused as a result for her absence.” A search party was sent out, but only speculated that she may have fallen.
We will, of course, continue to share more great photographs and other material from our collection related to the San Gabriels and the trails, camps and resorts, and other aspects of this mountain playground that became so popular during The Great Hiking Era. So, be sure to keep an eye out for those as we share tales of the great outdoors a century or so ago and more.
The brief mention in this post about Mount Wilson Observatory, along with another comprehensive post here from 2019 fully dedicated to it, are both highly intriguing. They provoke reflections that span from historical facts to the limitless future, and from Earth to the mysterious universe beyond. Following the construction of the 60-inch and 100-inch telescopes at Mount Wilson and the 200-inch telescope at the Palomar Observatory in 1949, there were decades without new, larger telescopes being built on the U.S. mainland. This led many to worry that America might be falling behind in astronomical science. In fact, I also shared this concern for a time, until I realized that the U.S. has maintained its leading position in this field by extensively collaborating with other countries and by owning or co-owning top observatories around the world, including two in remote Hawaii.
Another significant shift has been the emphasis from merely increasing telescope size to integrating large digital cameras. Additionally, over the past quarter-century, several space observatories have been launched, contributing breakthrough discoveries related to the origin of the universe. However, nearly a hundred years after its proposal, the Big Bang Model, hugely contributed from the Mount Wilson Observatory, remains the prevailing hypothesis. Despite decades of study, the evidence supporting it remains largely empirical, and a comprehensive theory has yet to accomplish.
I believe the next step is to establish a large observatory on the Moon. I’m convinced that a lunar-based project could provide a more stable platform supporting a larger observatory than current space-based ones, with longer observation cycles beyond the day/night constraints. However, I still doubt that the mystery of the universe’s origin can be resolved in the foreseeable future. Perhaps new discoveries will eventually lead to an alternative theory totally different from the Big Bang Model.