by Paul R. Spitzzeri
As many posts in the “At Our Leisure” series on this blog have observed, the use of the San Gabriel Mountains for recreation of various kinds, including camping, fishing, hiking and hunting great increased in the late 19th and 20th centuries as greater Los Angeles grew dramatically and the broader interest in the outdoors in America came about during what has been the called the “Great Hiking Era” of the 1890s to the 1930s.
Several prior posts here touched upon Mt. Wilson, the peak above Pasadena and Altadena named for Benjamin D. Wilson (1811-1878), who came to the region with the Rowland and Workman Expedition of 1841 and owned by widely-known Lake Vineyard estate below the range. His trail to the peak, completed in the mid-1860s, was utilized by him for securing lumber, but also became, by the end of century a key entry point into the San Gabriels.
In the early 20th century, the famed Mt. Wilson Observatory was established on the peak near a well-known hotel and cabins resort and visitation ballooned as access was made considerably by the completion of Pacific Electric Railway stops at the base of the mountains. With the increasing popularity of the automobile, some intrepid souls made their way to the peak through that means, as well.
The highlighted object from the Homestead collection for this post is a real photo postcard of a modest little cabin at Mt. Wilson, with the cozy cottage having a covered porch (on which appears to be a box of kindling) and the simple clapboard structure has a window facing the porch and next to the door. A guess is that the edifice was probably all of 300 square feet, but enough for a couple or small family to enjoy the great outdoors amid pines and other mountain greenery.
The card has a postmark from the Mount Wilson post office, dated 28 December 1910, and addressed to a woman in a newly completed home in the Historic Highlands area of Pasadena. The message, from “Ike,” is very short and doesn’t say much, though it is a bit colorful—”Wall! by cracky, I’m glad to see you. How’s everything?”—and may be a reference to the fact that the sender could look down on the Crown City and “see” the recipient.
While the card doesn’t have much to it in both the image and message, there were some interesting material found in the local press during December 1910 concerning Mt. Wilson to add some context to the artifact. Olive Gray, in her Los Angeles Times column, “Facts, Features and Fancies for Women,” in the edition of the 9th remarked about the Christmas holiday season that:
I don’t know but as our Christmas is as legitimate as that of the colder localities. I suppose Christmas has been occurring in this climate as long as in the northern countries—possibly longer. If Noah’s ark first rested on Mt. Wilson, and the Garden of Eden was somewhere in the glorious Southwest, maybe we have an indisputable right to set the fashions in Christmas holidays.
Just after the Yuletide and before the onset of the New Year, in her column of the 29th, Gray told her readers that “if you love the open and have never visited Mt. Wilson in winter, you have missed a genuine treat.” She continued that “a jolly party of girls whom I know took their Christmas dinner there and they say they mean to go every winter if possible,” adding that the group walked up and back and, taking in side trips on connecting trails, logged some thirty miles in two days.
One of the women was quoted as saying that, though it was cold when the party set out from Los Angeles at 7 a.m., “we soon warmed up with the climb and at the half way house [along the trail] we purchased hot water and made bouillon from beef cubes which we had.” Enjoying this simple repast, with the correspondent observing she would never take such a trip without those items, the hike continued and “when we reached the snow, we were all wild with delight” and the group “snow-balled and coasted and had a regular northern Christmas.”
Moreover, the account went on, “that night the view of the lights in Pasadena, Los Angeles and Venice was like a dream of fairyland,” while the following morning, “we were in an isolated world, far above a sea of clouds.” At point, there was “one strange effect” as clouds came in and “seemed to form a rushing Niagara down the side of a peak,” leading the writer to proclaim, “oh, it was glorious and yet almost eerie, that unreal land so far above our every-day affairs.”
The group stayed at the hotel and another of its members exclaimed to Gray that
It seemed so cozy there sitting beside the great fireplace, with its burning logs—real logs!—and everything was so cheerful and we were really as comfortable as we could have been at the [luxurious downtown Los Angeles Hotel] Alexandria and had as palatable a dinner.
Not so enjoyable an excursion, as reported in the prior day’s Times, was experienced by a quartet of boys who, “dashing breathlessly into Sierra Madre . . . threw the foothill city into a near-panic of excitement with the news that they had been the victims of another daring hold-up on the [Mt.] Wilson trail.” Marshal George Ray was summoned from his holiday reverie as the boys “gasped out in frightened chorus that there was a man coming down from the top of Mt. Wilson who had threatened them with a gun.”
Ray and a posse of citizens he summoned took to the foot of the trail and waited “for the supposed bandit, who presently appeared in the person of Charles Johnstone, who was acting as escort for a party of young women on the trip down the mountain.” Johnstone was apprehended and an Army revolver seized.
The prisoner “did not deny that he had drawn the weapon upon the boys,” but he was prepared to explain, while “the young ladies of his party were likewise voluble in making known how it all happened.” With the stories being so varied, it was decided to take the matter to the local recorder, Charles H. Perry, whose Yuletide festivities were also interrupted and a hearing held in his domicile, with it noted that,
The step was considered necessary because of the many mysterious shootings which have occurred on the mountain trail lately, and of the tense excitement of the citizenry, some of whom showed rather a tendency to execute summary sentence upon Johnstone.
The account continued that “under the spreading branches of a gigantic Christmas tree decked out in brave tinsel and candles but half consumed,” Perry presided over the proceeding. The boys asserted that “they had gone to the summit of the mountain and were returning to the foot about nightfall,” when they met with Johnstone and the women.
One of the boys, all under 14 years of age, lost some change and they headed back up and again came upon the group, at which point they claimed Johnstone “came down to where we were an’ pulled a gun out . . . and said we was to line up along the wall and be quiet” until the woman passed and then the gun was put away, with the boys telling Perry “an’ then we beat it, judge, you bet.”
For his part, Johnstone told the official that the boys “made some impudent and insulting remarks to the girls” and that “he had no intention of doing more than to give the youngsters a deserved scare, and to protect his companions from possible further embarrassment.” Perry was “imbued with the holiday spirit of generosity” and let Perry free on his own recognizance pending a preliminary hearing.
Nothing was located as to any further adjudication of the “trail trial,” but the article added that any punishment meted out might be enhanced by the determination of Sierra Madre officials “to break up the habit people seem to be cultivating of carrying deadly weapons about with them on the trail and firing them recklessly into the valley.” In one instance, it was stated that a child was narrowly missed as a bullet slammed through its bedroom window “and buried itself in the pillow.”
Something else was whizzing through the skies about Mt. Wilson just after Christmas and had to do with something of a follow-up to one of the most famous local events of the period, the first national aviation meet, which was held at Dominguez Field in modern Compton at the start of 1910 and included some of the best known flyers of that formative era. First, there was a flight covered in the Los Angeles Herald of 11 December and which account began with,
Driving his machine through rain, fog and smoke, reaching an altitude of more than half a mile and at times attaining the speed of sixty-six miles an hour; plunging through cold cloud banks that benumbed his hands and left layers of ice on the palpitating engine, Charles F. Willard made the first intercity aeroplane flight ever accomplished in California . . . yesterday morning, while thousands of residents of this city and Pasadena looked on.
From the start at Wilshire Boulevard and Bronson Street, west of Western Avenue, Willard completed his 55-mile trip in an hour and ten minutes and was the first flight of the “Los Angeles Express,” named for the newspaper by the aviator, who built the Curtiss designed plane with an engine named for famed French pilot Louis Paulhan. After flying over Westlake (MacArthur) Park and downtown Los Angeles, Willard, it was noted, undertook this during conditions that would have scared off the flyers in the January air meet.
From the center of the Angel City, “Willard set out for Pasadena, coming so close to Mt. Wilson that he was lifted up and carried for some distance by the current caused by the mountain contour.” After circling over the peak “and steering clear of the air currents,” the pilot headed back to the Crown City and then returned to the starting point and disembarking “cold and numb,” telling the press that “it was cold up there, but the trip was fine,” despite “the layer of ice which still covered [the craft] after he had landed.” Pilots then were exposed to the elements with enclosed cockpits coming quite a bit later.
In its edition of 30 December, the Times, under the heading of “Hoxsey Soars Above Peaks,” reported that, “Mt. Wilson was conquered by an aeroplane yesterday afteroon” as
Arch[ibald] Hoxsey, the Pasadena boy who has been pulling off big stunts at Aviation [Dominguez] Field, performed the trick.” Flying a Wright Brothers biplane, it was added that he, after an hour-and-a-half, “was circling about 3000 feet above the peak of the famous mountain.”
There was a series of races at the Dominguez location and a recent acquisition by the Museum of a photo of Hoxsey and another flyer, from the 27th will be shared in a post at this time next year. The paper marveled that “the feat was the most wonderful that has ever been performed by an aviator in this country,” as Hoxsey got to an altitude of 10,500 feet and “when he was directly over Mt. Wilson he was nearly 9000 feet in the air.”
This was despite the fact that “the temperature was far below the freezing point and the courageous bird-man suffered severely from the icy breeze that was blowing a gale.” The paper noted that “while Hoxsey was sailing about Mt. Wilson a telephone message was received from the peak [presumably, from the hotel] that the aviator was invading the mountains, and a great volume of applause arose from the stands.”
As he disembarked from his craft, the flyer remarked,
Well, I got around old Mt. Wilson this time, all right. [After rubbing his ears and stamping his feet] Awfully cold up there. Lots of snow on the other side. I was shivering so much I could hardly keep in the seat.
It was added that the Pasadena resident, before leaving to work for the Wright brothers, Hoxsey evinced an interest to fly over the San Gabriel range and Mt. Wilson specifically and the Times commented that “people who had scaled the mountain . . . shuddered as they thought of the aviator” flying thousands of feet above them.
When asked about the sensation of ascending into the range, the aviator was paraphrased as stating, “a feeling of exhilaration such as he had never before experienced, crept over him as he speed [sic] over the peaks and ridges” and that “the keen, cold air, while chilling him to the marrow, made him more daring than ever.” The paper went on that “up, up he soared, until the greatest heights were reached” and “the hotel and observatory on Mt. Wilson was a tiny white speck far below on the rugged landscape.”
On landing, Hoxsey could not wait to get out of the plane as “he was nearly frozen” and “when he stepped from his perch, he looked as if he had been on a long sleigh ride” because “his nose and lips were blue.” The piece ended with the report that the aviator was going to try to beat his existing altitude record of nearly 11,500 feet, attained during the races, but, moreover, he had official equipment that was lacking in that previous ascent, so the flyer hoped “to be the real ‘King of the Air.'” As noted above, we’ll cover that flight next year when we share the recently purchased photo in our holdings.
In its coverage, the Herald recorded that Hoxsey’s achievement was such that the flight “is what railroads would term a ‘common point’ for the pilgriming bird man, and it will be charted on the aerial maps of the world in the future something like this”:
Mount Wilson—Explored by Prof. Archibald Hoxsey December, 1910; choppy currents; safe for cautious aviators; temperature varying but cold; nearest landing, Los Angeles.
The account continued that he reached the peak just before 2:30 p.m., circled around at 3,000 feet above “and then with the curiosity of a boy, or rather the scientific inquisitiveness of an exploring mind, he swooped down a little bit to the other side to see what nature had hidden there.” Apparently, he uttered an “Ugh!” as he spotted snow “and like a frightened bird he flew away and then headed back for the Dominguez field.
Hoxsey told the paper when he returned, “I went around Mt. Wilson. There was a choppy wind up there and it was very cold, but the view was fine. There’s snow on the other side of the peak.” It was estimated he flew about 100 miles, close to double what Willard covered, and was in the air for some two-and-a-half hours, though it was suggested, counter to what the Times observed, that the flyer “could have gone on the entire afternoon.”
The flights of Willard and Hoxsey certainly were epochal for greater Los Angeles aviation history and it is tempting to think that “Ike” may have still been at his cabin two days after he sent the card down to Pasadena and witnessed the latter’s flight first-hand—though, if so, he perhaps would have had another card to send!