Tag Archives: Wrightwood

History of the Big Pines Recreation Area

Origins in the 1920s: Vision and Creation of an All-Year Playground

Big Pines Recreation Area was conceived around 1920 when Los Angeles County Supervisor R. F. McClellan promoted the idea of creating a grand alpine park at the county’s northeast edge. The County began acquiring land in the Swarthout Valley, including Big Pines Ranch, eventually securing nearly 4,000–5,600 acres by 1924. Construction started in 1923 with help from county jail work crews. Access was initially limited to routes through Palmdale or Lone Pine Canyon; a direct road from the Los Angeles basin would not arrive until the Angeles Crest Highway reached Big Pines in 1956.

The park officially opened in August 1924. Its centerpiece was the Community House (Recreation Hall), a rustic lodge with high wood beams, large stone fireplaces, and amenities like a reading room and store. The Swarthout Valley Lodge, completed in 1925–26, added dining, a soda fountain, and a post office, and later served as Forest Service offices. A 35-acre lake provided swimming in summer and ice-skating in winter, while over 100 stone stoves and picnic tables dotted the grounds. By the late 1920s, numerous clubs and youth groups had built permanent camps at Big Pines.

The most iconic structure was the Davidson Arch, a massive stone gateway dedicated in 1926, featuring a footbridge on top and castellated towers on each side of the road. Big Pines quickly became a destination for both summer and winter recreation. It hosted activities such as fishing, camping, and hiking in the warm months, and skiing, tobogganing, and ski jumping in the winter. In 1929, the world’s most significant ski jump was built there, briefly making Big Pines a contender for the 1932 Winter Olympics.

A political scandal erupted in 1926 when the county district attorney accused supervisors of misusing Big Pines for personal benefit, but charges were dismissed. Despite the controversy, the park thrived as Los Angeles County’s showcase alpine playground.

The 1930s: Winter Sports Boom and Depression-Era Challenges

The 1930s saw the addition of the first rope tows on Table Mountain and the Blue Ridge ski area, making Big Pines a hub of winter sports. State championships and ski jump competitions drew national attention. Yet the Great Depression strained county finances, making the park expensive to maintain. Some facilities closed or were scaled back, though skiing remained popular because it was relatively affordable.

By the late 1930s, the County began negotiations to transfer Big Pines to the U.S. Forest Service, viewing federal management as more sustainable. Plans for a land swap with the federal government were under discussion by 1940.

The 1940s: World War II and Transition to the Forest Service

During World War II, gasoline rationing and reduced travel led to fewer visitors. Services were scaled back, but the park remained open. In July 1941, the Forest Service began operating Big Pines, though legal complications delayed the formal transfer until 1946. At that point, the recreation area became part of Angeles National Forest. The Swarthout Lodge became the Big Pines Ranger Station, while the Recreation Hall served as a visitor and community center.

Mid-20th Century (1950s–1970s): New Roads, Resorts, and Scientific Outposts

The completion of the Angeles Crest Highway in 1956 made Big Pines easily accessible from Los Angeles. The Forest Service improved campgrounds, picnic areas, and trails, including segments of the Pacific Crest Trail. Skiing expanded into three areas: Blue Ridge, Holiday Hill (opened 1949), and the Table Mountain site (later Ski Sunrise). These evolved into Mountain High Resort, one of Southern California’s most popular ski destinations.

In 1924 the Smithsonian had established a research station on Table Mountain, which NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory took over in 1962. The Table Mountain Observatory became an important site for astronomical and atmospheric research.

Some historic structures changed during this period. The Davidson Arch was partially dismantled in 1950, leaving only the north tower. The tower was once used to hold unruly guests in a makeshift jail cell. The Swarthout Lodge continued in use until the 1980s.

Late 20th Century: Preservation, Fire, and Modern Recreation

In 1987, arson destroyed the Swarthout Lodge, which at the time housed ranger offices and historic archives. This loss highlighted the need for preservation. The Recreation Hall and the surviving Davidson Arch tower remain as historic landmarks. Efforts since then have sought to preserve and interpret Big Pines’ history. In 2006, the area was nominated as a Historic District, and in 2014, it became part of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument.

Today, Big Pines offers camping, hiking, fishing, skiing, and snowboarding. The Mountain High Resort dominates winter activity, while summer visitors enjoy campgrounds and trails. The Recreation Hall now serves as an information station, and interpretive signs explain the area’s rich past. Big Pines continues to embody its original vision: an all-year playground where city dwellers can find alpine recreation just a short drive from Los Angeles.

References

Homestead Museum Blog – Big Pines history (2018)
https://homesteadmuseum.blog/2018/01/15/at-our-leisure-big-pines-recreation-camp-angeles-national-forest-late-1920s/

Homestead Museum Blog – Remnants of Big Pines (2018)
https://homesteadmuseum.blog/2018/08/23/discovering-remnants-of-big-pines-recreation-camp/

Swarthout Family History – Big Pines history and lodge details
https://www.swarthoutfamily.org/History/CABigPines.htm

Angeles Crest Scenic Highway – Big Pines recreation info
https://angelescrestscenichighway.com/big-pines.html

U.S. Forest Service – Big Pines Visitor Center
https://www.fs.usda.gov/r05/angeles/recreation/big-pines-visitor-center

Wikipedia – Mountain High Resort history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_High

Wikipedia – Table Mountain Observatory (Wrightwood, CA)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_Mountain_Observatory

Within the Panorama (Creley) – Davidson Arch and history
http://www.wrightwoodcalif.com/panorama/panorama_arch.html

San Gabriel Mountains National Monument Plan – Cultural resources
https://www.fs.usda.gov/detailfull/r5/landmanagement/planning/?cid=stelprdb5410677

El Nino in the San Gabriel Mountains, 2004-2005

Here’s a view of the first Winter Creek check dam upstream from Roberts’ Camp. Note the stair-step appearance of the inundated check dam. The larger dam’s footing is protected by the smaller sill dam in the foreground. In the great 1969 Flood, also an El Nino year, all the dams in the main Big Santa Anita Canyon, downstream from the confluence of the North Fork, lost their sill dams in just one evening. Sadly, ten cabins also washed away.

Here are some photos I took of the Big Santa Anita Canyon ten years ago when Southern California experienced its’ last significant El Nino fall & winter. Wrightwood & the Big Santa

Our hiking trail (Gabrielino) washed out at this bend in the canyon between Cascade picnic area and Sturtevant Camp. The painstaking process of building a low wall for fill sand has just begun. My wife Joanie & I were running Sturtevant’s at the time. Our rain gauge had recorded over 90″ before the season was through! Opid’s Camp, in the West Fork of the San Gabriel River, recorded over 110″ that same winter.

Anita are about 25 air miles apart from one another. It’s possible to hike (approx. 75 miles) between Wrightwood and where these winter images were taken out

This is a scene of the Big Santa Anita Canyon Dam, located just north of Arcadia, at maximum spill way. Over 1,700 cubic feet of water per second was running through and over the dam the day this photo was taken.

in the Angeles National Forest’s “front country.” What the two places share, of course, are the San Gabriel Mountains!

When warmish Pacific Ocean storms come in off the coast, it’s the front country that faces the San Gabriel Valley and Los Angeles Basin, that really gets slammed. You might say that our mountain rain is a text

book example of the orographic phenomena experienced on immeasurable mountain slopes. If the base of the mountain, L.A. for example, receives an inch of rain, 2000′ upslope you

might receive over two to three inches out of the same storm. The mountainous geography wrings out the clouds as you keep climbing up in elevation. As a rule, Wrightwood receives about a third of what the front country slopes might

Here’s a scene looking up canyon, near Roberts’ Camp, Big Santa Anita Canyon. Note the two cabins in the background. These dark trees standing in the tumultuous water are white alders. It is here that I decided to turn around and not continue up canyon. The stream becomes a wall-to-wall situation not too far ahead.

get. When it’s summer time, however, our proximity to the Mojave Desert provides us with thunder storms that the front country can only dream about. So both sides of the San Gabriels have their give and take when it comes to wet weather.

Big Santa Anita Canyon is not a large watershed at all, say in comparison to the San Gabriel

Looking back at the stream as it’s about to roll over the top of a check dam. These “check dams” were built throughout many of the Angeles’ front-country canyons back in the late 1950’s through the late 60’s.

River. Yet, it’s miles of steep terrain can become saturated after days of relentless rainfall. Generally, the “canyon” can take upwards of a dozen inches of rain over several days before the stream comes up appreciably. The El Nino storm systems of 2004-2005 sometimes came in one after another, barely allowing more than a half day of blue sky and no time for the moisture to percolate down through the fractured rocky slopes. These photos show what a front-country stream can become after multiple storms come through, one after another. What they can’t convey, is the deafening sound, so loud in some cases that it’s impossible to yell across a stream this size and be heard. When in a little cabin alongside a roaring stream like this one, it’s possible at night, to feel and hear the impact of shifting boulders, jarring up against each other in the dark froth. Scent is a also a highlight of canyons in flood stage. Organics

This is how high the streams in the front country can become during a heavy rain season. What you’re looking at is a check dam, approximately 50′ across in width. This kind of water is nothing to tangle with.

locked away in loamy soils along stream banks for years and years are suddenly released. There’s this olfactory collage of crushed and soaked bay leaves, oak leaves, decomposing vegetation and grinding rock that are seldom experienced in drier times.

by Chris Kasten

This poem by W.S. Merwin, entitled “Rain Travel”, seems to encapsulate the nocturnal in watery canyons, like the Big Santa Anita, during times like these.

“I wake in the dark and remember it is the morning when I must start by myself on the journey. I lie listening to the black hour before dawn and you are still asleep beside me while around us the trees full of night lean hushed in their dream that bears us up asleep and awake. Then I hear drops falling one by one into the sightless leaves and I do not know when they began but all at once there is no sound but rain and the stream below us roaring away in the rushing darkness”.

Here’s my bike in front of a slide that covered the road while I was photographing the Big Santa Anita during flood stage. Fortunately, my truck was sitting in a friend’s drive way in north Arcadia. A number of Forest Service employees had vehicles trapped on the upper end of this and other slides for nearly 10 months!

Two Summer Hikes to the Big Horn Mine and Mt. Baden-Powell

BIG HORN MINE

Total Trip Length = 3.6 miles round trip

Elevation Gain = 500 feet

Trailhead Location: Vincent Gap on the Angeles Crest Highway

This grouping of alpine wildflowers softens the sharpness of Mt. Baden-Powell’s north ridge while nearing the summit. Pine Mountain, Dawson Peak and Mount Baldy make up the skyline.

When it’s hot and sweltering in the front-country of the San Gabriel mountains, taking your next hike to Mt. Baden-Powell, located in the high-country near Wrightwood, just might be a good way to go. The views are spectacular and far-reaching under deep blue skies. There are few places where you’ll encounter such a variety of conifers. Earlier this summer, my wife and I hiked out to the abandoned Big Horn Mine. A couple of miles of hiking along a dilapidated dirt

View of stamp mill and adit (horizontal mine shaft) clinging precariously to slope of Mine Gulch on Mt. Baden-Powell.

road that skirts the steep and, at times, forested mountainside of Mt. Baden-Powell, takes you to this historic relic of the earlier days of mining in the East Fork of the San Gabriels. The mine’s location was found by the back-country recluse and mountain man, Tom Vincent, back in 1895 while out hunting for big horn sheep. Various groups of investors and entrepreneurs each took their chances at developing the remote mountainside mine from the turn of the century up until the early 90’s. In all cases through out the decades, investment exceeded the value of the extracted gold, followed by diminishing returns until abandonment.

This narrow track that once carried ore cars is still looking pretty good. The Big Horn Mine is comprised of both horizontal and vertical shafts.

This pattern of running the mine for a some time, only to be followed by quiet idle years, has continued for over a century. Today the disintegrating remains and cool, empty tunnels sit quietly in the steep, rugged slopes of Mine Gulch at about 7,000′ in elevation.

To get to the mine’s trailhead, park at Vincent Gap on the Angeles Crest Highway, just west of Wrightwood, CA. Pass by the white pipe gate, continuing along the red, rutted old mine road. As you skirt alongside the mountainside, watch for a hiking trail switchbacking down into the Sheep Mountain Wilderness Area of Vincent Gulch and on into the expansive East Fork of the San Gabriel watershed. Pass by the trail turn-off, staying with the road as it skirts alongside a steep mountain chute,

Mt. Baldy and Iron Mountain as seen from within the steel framing of the Big Horn Mine’s stamp mill.

then enters into a soft and forested slope of mature sugar pine, white fir and the ever-present aromatic jeffrey pines. Eventually, you’ll leave the protection of the forested slope and enter back into steep and arid mountainsides of fractured rock, peppered with yucca, manzanita and mountain mahogany where these plants can get a toehold. In places, the road can be completely washed out, necessitating scrambling alongside narrow and crumbling scratch trails made by other hikers. The exposure and consequence of a misstep is a reality along this side of Mt. Baden-Powell, so take your time. For the most part, the hiking is fairly easy for good stretches, eventually taking you around a shoulder on the mountain to the Big Horn’s rusted out stamp mill and other assorted mining debris, pipe and concrete slabs.

The adits, horizontal mine entrances, are fenced off with steel bars; the last owner’s attempt to keep hikers from going into the mountainside. When you get to the end of the road, be careful crossing the steep slope over to the stamp mill. Return the way you came.

MOUNT BADEN-POWELL

Total Trip Length = 7.6 miles round trip

Elevation Gain = 2,800 feet

Trailhead Location: Vincent Gap on the Angeles Crest Highway

Mt. Baden-Powell, once known as North Mt. Baldy, was re-named for Lord Baden-Powell, founder of Boy Scouting in the United States. The approach to this 9,399′ peak is by way of the pleasantly forested north-east facing mountainside, affording you ample shade and stunning views out over the Mojave Desert and eastern high country of the San Gabriels.

Joanie Kasten stands at Mt. Baden-Powell’s summit. Pine Mountain and Mt. Baldy make up the backdrop as Old Glory flies in a brisk mid-summer breeze.

You’ll want to dedicate most of your day to this hike due to the high elevation of the summit and also some of the steep trail pitches between the 37 switchbacks. Bring plenty of water for each person in your group, i.e. two to three liters. Avoid taking this hike in the winter and early spring months due to steep, icy slopes that parallel this route. When there’s ice, the potential for a fatal accident is ever-present. During the warmer months, this well maintained trail is a wonderful route to the top and quite safe.

Head on up the red, dusty path alongside the split cedar fence. Scrub oak, white fir and jeffrey pines shade your route as you head toward the

A view from part way up a limber pine. Looking toward the north, you can make out the faint outline of the Pacific Crest Trail, PCT, as it parallels the left hand side of the ridge. Note the trail junction sign, where the trail continues on toward the west passing by Mt. Burnham, Throop Peak, Islip Saddle and on along the spine of the San Gabriel mountains. 2,200 miles further, the PCT terminates in British Columbia, Canada.

first of many switchbacks. The trail switches back and forth along the broad, northeast facing ridge line of the mountain. Each time the trail wraps back around the ridge, for quite a ways up, you can look back down at the Vincent Gap trailhead parking area, possibly even spotting your car. Four switchbacks up is a nice little wooden bench to rest on. By now, you can begin to gauge your progress, by sighting out across to West Blue Ridge, gradually gaining a greater view out into the Mojave desert’s vastness. Old, magnificent sugar pines begin to make their presence as you continue climbing up; their long horizontal branches terminating in clusters of long cones that exude bright, shiny sap. A large cool, flat slab of rock is up this way, too. The mountains internal coolness is often evident when laying up against this monolith.

This benchmark attests to Mt. Baden-Powell’s former namesake, North Mt. Baldy. Affixed to a boulder at the summit, it marks the high point (9,399′ elevation) of your day.

Almost half-way up, a wooden sign at the end of a switchback points the way to Lamel Spring, which makes for a tranquilly floral spot to take a rest. The switchbacks become ever broader from here, passing by inviting little flats filled with pools of shade and quiet sunlight where people have camped amongst the scented evergreens, perhaps taking in the glow of sunrises and sunsets not to be forgotten. A bit further on, the switchbacks begin to tighten up, as does the steepness. Lodgepole pines are now becoming the the dominant conifer, as you’re squarely into the 8,000′ + elevation range. The bare forest floor is in places littered with their tiny ornate cones. Glades of low buckbrush and deer brush fill in empty pockets where the perfectly straight lodge poles have left a little sunlight. On and on you keep climbing while converging ridges begin to make their way toward you and the ever-nearing summit. And then it happens – twisted and wind bent limber pines finally appear. At this point you’re nearly

The author takes a break at the base of a wind-sculpted limber pine near the summit of Mt. Baden-Powell, San Gabriel mountains, CA. At this elevation of 9,300′, the sky appears to be nearly cobalt blue.

9,000′ up and there’s a spaciousness between these ancient trees that in many cases are nearly as wide as they’re tall. The lines of the sun burnished wood of these rare trees appear twisted and deeply etched by centuries of sun, wind and ice. Not much further up, the switchbacks finally give out and you find yourself hiking atop a narrow ridge with a dizzying drop-off into the East Fork thousands of feet below to your left. Fortunately, the trail is just a few feet over on the gentler, west side of the ridge. Near the end of this airy ridge, there’s a tree near the Pacific Crest Trail cut-off and the final summit approach which is worth pondering. A weathered, wooden sign indicates that this limber pine is over 1,500 years old! There are other trees in the area that are reputed to be over 2,500…., yet remain unmarked to keep them protected.

A weathered brass tag honors the memory of a loved one. It was placed some years ago up on a limber pine, high atop Mt. Baden-Powell.

Soon you’re on top of the mountain. The top is rounded and exposed. A four-sided concrete and brass edifice to scouting, its’ base eroding, is near the top , along with an uncovered trail register with hundred of entries of hikers who made the climb. Look off in any direction and the view’s good. On clear, wind-swept days, you can make out distant peaks like Mt. Wilson and even the channel islands. Myriads of canyons drop off all around. Enjoy the return trip back.

Here’s a close-up of needles and accompanying cone on a limber pine, Mt. Baden-Powell, San Gabriel mountains, CA. Short needles are sheathed in clusters of five. The clusters of needles are concentrated at the ends of cord-like branches which withstand the very high winds that occur high on the mountainside.