by Paul R. Spitzzeri
During this scorching heatwave with temperatures today, the hottest of the period, above 110 in many areas of greater Los Angeles, it’s natural for so many to head for the beach to cool off in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. There are, however, quite a few Los Angeles County locales that are subject to a warning for visitors to avoid swimming, surfing and playing in the water because of elevated bacterial levels exceeding health standards.
One of these is Topanga Beach, one of the many very popular places along that section of coast north of Santa Monica where Pacific Coast Highway threads its way along the edge of the Santa Monica Mountains range and the shoreline. In the early 20th century, this area was isolated as no road made it way through and the owners of the Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit, a three-square league (or about 13,300-acre) tract in the mountains and along the coast, were determined to prevent public access as much as they could.
Frederick Rindge and his wife May acquired the ranch in the early 1890s and, while he had grandiose plans for the property, his 1905 death forestalled these visions of developing casinos, hotels and marinas. May Rindge, however, was doggedly determined to keep the ranch undeveloped and to prevent public access, building gates at either end of the coast and hiring armed men to patrol the mountains and turn back trespassers—imagine her trying to fight the California Coastal Commission!
After years and many dollars of legal fighting, however, May lost her crusade in 1923 and an immediate consequence was the pushing of Pacific Coast Highway northward through the ranch. In the meantime, at one of the most picturesque spots along that long, beautiful stretch of coastline, Topanga Beach and the Cooper Ranch were developed at that time as among the earliest public venues in that area.
The featured artifact from the Museum’s collection for this post is a snapshot photograph, dated 6 September 1924 of a view from just off the newly constructed highway looking over simple wood-frame cottages toward the beach, on which there are plenty of folks enjoying themselves on the sand or walking along the shoreline and a few in the ocean. In the distance, where some large trees are in view is the lagoon, into which Topanga Creek, having wended its way through the mountains, empties. Given that it was only very recently that any public access at all was allowed, the photo is of no small level of interest.
The creator of what was officially called Cooper’s Topanga Beach Ranch was Archie Miller Cooper (1883-1932), a native of Danby, located in northwest New York State south of Ithaca, where his family had a farm. Whether or not it was for health reasons, a common driver of migration to grater Los Angeles, the Coopers relocated to South Pasadena by the turn of the 20th century, where he family continued farming, likely citrus.
Cooper had the distinction of being the first motorcycle patrol officer in the town’s police department, sharing that role with another officer who ended up as the police chief with Cooper. In 1907, he married Emily Broxholme, a native of England, and the couple had a daughter, Edythe.
After a decade or more of serving in South Pasadena and then a stint with the United States Forest Service, Cooper was hired as a deputy for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and it appears that one of his postings was the Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit, so that it is likely he obtained some sort of lease from the Rindge family for his operation. For a time, he also sold and leased horses including to motion picture studios.
The earliest found reference to Cooper’s project was from the South Pasadena Courier, which informed readers,
Archie M. Cooper, formerly a South Pasadena speed cop but now a deputy sheriff, was in the city Saturday calling upon some of his many friends. Besides being a deputy sheriff Cooper is manager of the Malibu ranch in the Topanga canyon which has a long beach frontage. Cooper has named his resort Topanga Beach and he already has 150 cottages on the property.
It took no small amount of capital to include, by summer 1923 when the first advertisements were located, a tent city, those wooden bungalows, restaurants, and a bathhouse and it looks like Cooper had a deed of trust on the ranch. The Courier also commented that “a portion of the ranch is to be used by Helen Gibson for motion picture productions of western stories,” it adding that “Miss Gibson is a daring horsewoman and some thrilling pictures are to be filmed on the Malibu ranch” where “a complete studio is being built.”
Gibson, briefly and unhappily married to Western stat “Hoot” Gibson, was more than a stellar equestrian, often being referred to as Hollywood’s first stuntwoman. It is unclear, however, whether the project actually got beyond the conceptual stage as, by 1924, she worked for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and then went back to working as a film stuntwoman, completing her last stunt in 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. For all of her perilous risk-taking, Gibson lived until 1977 when she died at age 85.
To boost his resort, Gibson hosted large-scale rodeos early on, including one for the Santa Monica lodge of the Brotherhood of the Protective Order of Elks (Walter P. Temple, owner of the Homestead, was a member of that fraternal society at the time) in early June 1923 with a pair of “Wild West” shows over a weekend, featuring bull and bronco riders, trick ropers, a “Days of ’49” camp with dance halls and gambling dens and a massive Sunday meal prepared by “Barbeque King” José Romero, whose daughter, Modesta or Maude, was Temple’s beau and whose son, Frank, was later the Homestead’s foreman.
Some of Romero’s sons were in law enforcement, including his namesake who died in the line of duty in 1919 while an officer for the Los Angeles Police Department and Frank, who also worked for the department, so that may have been how he was acquainted with Cooper, though Romero cooked for such well-known figures as Leo Carrillo and Will Rogers, who had property in the area.
In September, Romero was back for another rodeo, this one by the Loyal Order of Moose lodge of Los Angeles and another event that month for local judges included an appearance by Western film star Tom Mix. Incidentally, another Homestead connection was that Josephine Belt Workman Parten, whose late husband was Joseph, son of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, resided at the Malibu ranch with her second spouse, David Parten, an employee on the spread.
Early July 1924 featured another large-scale rodeo, this one, however, incorporating bullfighting by “Refugio Hernández Cuco,” though “Cuco” is a nickname for “Refugio, said to be a champion from Spain and recipient of a royal medal said to be the highest achievement in that nation among those in his profession. Wild West circus performer Bud Crone was reportedly bringing hundreds of tamed broncs and other animals, while it was hoped that attendance would number in the thousands.
There were, however, problems with the operation and Cooper’s professional and personal life. In October 1923, he was fired “for the good of the service” by Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz because of a fight with Max Stanke, a fire warden who leased property on the ranch from Cooper as he recuperated from injuries suffered during the recent world war and who ordered Cooper to put out a fire for a barbeque for the judges’ visit. Despite spotting Cooper some fifty pounds, Stanke pounded his adversary into submission and the fisticuffs led to the dismissal.
Cooper also had marital problems and, in November 1922, Emilie filed for divorce in which, a newspaper report observed, she “alleges cruel and inhuman treatment and too close a friendship with a Miss Belle.” The aggrieved spouse told the court that “my husband threatened to kick me out of bed and also threatened to give me a good licking,” while Cooper purportedly said he was tired of her and was consorting with “Miss Belle” on picnics and vacations. Cooper did marry a second time, but that also appears to have ended unhappily.
The Roaring Twenties was already an era of noted corruption among some law enforcement personnel and, in August 1925, a Prohibition enforcement officer and the District Attorney’s office undertook a bust of the Cooper Ranch, with the Los Angeles Times of the 17th reporting,
Two county officers, a deputy sheriff [William E. Harris] and a deputy fire warden [H.D. Smith], the former in charge of the night detail at the Sheriff’s office, were arrested among others early yesterday at Topanga Beach . . . Others of the Topanga Beach colony gathered in were John Yeuk, C.P. Flood, Ben Shuff, T.P. Santee, and Mrs. Ruth Santee, his mother, all charged with the sale of liquor.
While Cooper was not mentioned, it seems hard to believe that the ex-deputy had no involvement in the operation, which likely thrived because of the remote location and the status of the ranch as a vacation and event spot. The enforcement officer, George Contreras, remarked, “the bootlegging colony at Topanga Beach has been operating a long while but we believe this finally breaks it up.” Harris had a car loaded with liquor for sale and undercover officers purchased from him.
As has been clear over the century since that time, fire is always a major risk in that area and one in early 1926 was devastating to Cooper’s ranch. The Times of 4 January reported that “a bath-house and ten beach cottages went up in flames and smoke at Topanga Beach yesterday, the fire threatening a long string of closely built but flimsy structures,” such as those shown in the photo, “that line the water front between the Coast Highway and the ocean at the mouth of Topanga Canyon.”
There were no casualties, but four families, forced out at 2 a.m. when the blaze burst forth, lost their full-time residences and the belongings consumed within them. A dance pavilion next to the bath-house was damaged, but was salvageable, while one cottage was razed by firefighters once sparks reached it and this was said to have saved perhaps twenty other structures. A paucity of water meant that fire crews from various areas of the county had to rely on axes and pinchbars. Notably, the account ended with,
The Topanga Beach property has been a subject of controversy between Archie Cooper, owner of Cooper’s ranch, and a trust company which sold Cooper his ranch, both claiming the right to collect land rents from the cottage owners.
Shortly afterward, Topanga Beach was hit by massive waves from a powerful winter storm that damaged other structures, as has been discussed here in a prior post. Despite the construction of Topanga Canyon Road, opening up access inland from the San Fernando Valley, and other events, such as a Paramount Pictures picnic held in August 1927 for its 1,500 employees, the financial situation for Cooper worsened considerably, including when the nation and world entered the Great Depression from late 1929 onwards.
Having lost the ranch, he’d returned in spring 1929 to South Pasadena and opened the Huntington Riding Stables in the Monterey Hills separating the southwestern corner of the city from Los Angeles neighborhoods like Hermon and El Sereno. In May 1930, about the time that Walter Temple left the Homestead because of his economic woes, Cooper filed for bankruptcy with debts of $5,000 and no assets. The stable soon lost its license because horses were trampling city park property and causing damage.
In September 1932, at age 49, Cooper succumbed to acute appendicitis and died at his Los Angeles residence. Obituaries in the South Pasadena Foothill Review and Pasadena Post highlighted his status as one of the first motorcycle officers in California, while mentioning his other work, including as operator of the Topanga Beach ranch. His former partner and current chief of police, Frank B. Higgins commented that “Cooper was a fearless officer and was always fair and just in handling traffic offenders.”
As noted above, this photo is significant as an early visual document of Cooper’s Topanga Beach Ranch as that section of the coast, after much legal wrangling, was opened for public access (including wrangling at rodeos.) The Museum’s holdings have some photos of Topanga Canyon Road, so we’ll look to share these and discuss more of this area of our region in future posts.