From Chumash to Hard Cash

By: Ben Marcus | October 20, 2009 | Local

This story of Tapia following an old Indian trail down Malibu Creek to the sea is repeated in every history of Malibu, but might be apocryphal. The original source of the story is a little more mysterious. There is no mention of this side trip in the diaries of de Anza or Pedro Font, nor is there any mention of the Tapia family at all.

Jose Bartoleme Tapia left very little behind — certainly no personal diary of his life.

Ronald Rindge is a descendant of the Rindge dynasty and a dedicated historian regarding all things Malibu. About the Tapia trail story, he said:

“The ‘Tapia following an Indian trail to Malibu’ story has been around a long time, but I have no knowledge of its original source.  I know when I walk in unfamiliar rural terrain, that I will instinctively follow a trail I come across that seems to lead me toward my destination. The Chumash surely had well-worn trails formed by thousands of years as they traversed the inland areas to and from the sea for fish and game. The bones of fish analyzed at a Century Ranch dig long ago confirmed all the bones were of saltwater fish, toted there by the Chumash. This account may simply have been started by a writer following a logical train of thought in writing his story.”

Looking at this path in modern terms, from the 101 Freeway in Calabasas to the Malibu Pier is about 8 miles in a straight line. It’s hard to know how far out in the flats of the valley the de Anza expedition was traveling, but if they “entered by a canyon which has little water, and then we went for about two leagues, ascending and descending ridges, to the camp site, which likewise is a valley, with little water…” that would have placed them 5 or 6 miles out of the flats and into the mountains at a campsite that was only a couple of miles from the sea.

Possibly their camp was where the M.A.S.H. set was located two centuries later, and the de Anza expedition watered their horses where Col. Potter fly-fished in between patients.

If young Tapia left the camp immediately — between 3 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. — it’s also hard to know how far he had to travel and how long it took him to wind along the bottom of Malibu Creek and make it to the ocean. Driving along the rim of Malibu Canyon these days, you wonder how hard of a horseback ride it would have been to take a horse along Malibu Creek, in February, when maybe the creek bottom was flowing with water.

But who knows what kind of trail had been laid down over centuries by the Chumash, and what skills were possessed by a kid who had been travel-hardened by the trail from New Spain to Alta California? Maybe he was competent enough with a horse and a rifle to make that trek by himself.

The sun sets at around 5:45 on Feb. 22 — but that is Daylight Savings Time — so Jose Bartoleme would have had not two but three hours if he left immediately on arriving at the camp. However long it took him to ride down that creek, and whatever vantage point he used, he would have been spectator to that wintery, purple-and-gold light show: one of the reasons Malibu is such an expensive, desirable place to live now.

It’s also hard to know where Tapia’s vantage point was, but it’s easy to romanticize his perch and what he saw and what he didn’t see. Using landmarks in place 233 years later, Tapia might have been checking it all out from where the Hughes Research Laboratories is now, or maybe from where the burnt ruins of Malibu Castle kind of stands now. He might have ridden to the southeast of the mouth of Malibu Canyon and to a hill where now stands the $35 million refuge of the notorious Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, son of the president of Equatorial Guinea. Maybe Tapia checked out the vista from all of these locations, and if he rode well he might have had time to ride up and down the coast a little before hightailing it back to camp and continuing with the expedition.

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