The Gates of Paradise

By: Ben Marcus | Special thanks to Jefferson "Zuma Jay" Wagner, Glen Howell, Ernest Marquez and the Seaver Center. | January 30, 2009 | In Print Non Fiction Profile

In June of 1926, the Rindges invited “prominent Los Angeles architects, engineers and builders” to inspect the Malibu Potteries, a $200,000 investment to exploit the real mineral wealth of the Malibu: not oil or gold, but clay. Malibu Potteries was a going concern and a big success as the ’20s roared, but a fire in November of 1931 destroyed the south half of the building and did between $50,000 and $75,000 in damage.
In 1926, the Marblehead Land Company made a $6 million deal with Harold Ferguson to develop the La Costa area, but that deal fell apart when Ferguson was sentenced to jail for securities fraud in 1931.
In 1932, a $2 million development plan for 200 acres around Encinal Canyon did not save the Marblehead Land Company or the Rindge estate, and by 1935 the estate was “sued as bankrupt” by the Union Ice and Storage Company over a debt of $72,389.50.
In June of 1938, Mrs. Rindge was declared bankrupt. She was allowed to keep the million-dollar home she was building overlooking Malibu Creek — but her legal battles continued. In May of 1939, Mrs. Rindge was arrested and taken into court to face the music on two old warrants stemming from a debt of $4,686 owed to the Los Angeles Ice and Storage Company: “We don’t want any more trouble from you,” Judge Schmidt was quoted in the L.A. Times.
But Mrs. Rindge’s troubles were almost over.
When May Rindge died in 1941, her hand-lettered will stated, “In the name of God, Amen. I May K. Rindge, being of sound mind, wish to dispose of my property in the following manner, if I have anything left.” She left what remained of her estate to her daughter Rhoda Adamson and her grandson Frederick H. Rindge III. “And to all others who would lay claim to my property, I give one dollar.”
What she had left was $750 in cash, the equivalent of about $11,000 in modern dollars. The rest of it was almost all gone: the stocks, the bonds, the land from Stockton to Sinaloa, the railroad and the dream of the Malibu Ranch —  consumed by the worldwide financial Depression of the 1930s that is all too familiar in this era of Madoff, subprime mortgages and trillion-dollar bailouts.
In April of 1942, Tom Cameron of the Los Angeles Times was allowed to tour “The dream castle of the Queen of Malibu,” and he wrote an epitaph not to Mrs. Rindge, but to her husband’s dreams:
“The dream castle, as the result of a bankruptcy liquidation, is now for sale. And Louis T. Busch, in charge of the sale, will throw in 130 acres surrounding the place.
What you would do with the indomitable woman’s dream castle would then be, of course, your problem.
All the rest of the 17,000 acres now comprising the rancho also will be offered to liquidate the estate. Some of the land is beach frontage.
But the dreams of the Queen of the Malibu are blasted now; her American Riviera can never exist in a land whose burgeoning population’s needs and interests take precedence over those of the individual, no matter how rich or influential that person may be.”
On April 15, 1942, the L.A. Times showed an aerial photo of the incomplete, 70-room mansion, and reported that the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscan) had purchased the property for an undisclosed price.
Epic is an overused word, but the story of Mrs. Rindge’s battle to preserve the Malibu Ranch — to carry forward the wishes of her beloved husband — is epic in every way: cowboys pulling guns, smugglers making death threats, dynamiters blowing up roads, cattle rustlers, arsonists and endless, endless court cases. In the first half of the 20th century, the Malibu Ranch was like an island of the Wild West, pushed all the way across the continent and hanging on by its fingertips to one last stretch of pristine, beautiful Southern California coast.

The troubles in paradise began in the first week of December of 1907, when U.S. District Attorney Oscar Lawler filed suit in the Circuit Court against May K. Rindge as executrix of the Rindge estate and against Mrs. Rindge personally, asking for a restraining order to prevent her or her employees from interfering with or blocking a county road through the Malibu Ranch, which had been used for many years to access federal lands. The suit asked the court to make an order that illegal fences, gates and other obstructions be at once removed.
According to the suit, in March of 1907, the Rindges had put several gates around the property and posted guards who informed homesteaders and anyone else that access across the Malibu Ranch was by invitation or permission only. The suit alleged that these gate guards were armed and had shoot-to-kill orders.
“This bill in equity was filed to bring the matter to a speedy determination,” Lawler was quoted in the Los Angeles Times in the Dec. 4, 1907 edition. “It does not preclude criminal action, which may follow the civil proceedings. A careful investigation has been made of the situation, and the government is determined to force the owner of the Malibu Ranch to treat settlers on government land with justice.”
Free passage across the Malibu went back before the Rindges, to the 1870s, when Matthew Keller and then Henry Keller owned the property. Hunters, beach combers, trout and steelhead fishermen, birders, naturists, picnickers, sight-seers and settlers in the Santa Monica Mountains had been using a coastal “road” all along the Malibu Ranch seafront, and there were well-worn tracks turning off into private property leading up into the many canyons, and over the hills to open land on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains. Now, all of a sudden, Rindge guards had put up gates and manned them with guns.
Those who had been freely using those roads now found gates and locks, and they didn’t like it. In April of 1907, the L.A. Times described the first incident in a story whimsically called The Rape of Locks: “As a result of the rape of the locks of the Malibu trouble is brewing… At some time last Sunday the locks were deftly removed and the gates thrown open. A file and cold chisel had done the work, and these tools were in the hands of persons who went up the beach Sunday morning in automobiles.”
That incident lead to the arrest of several people, but the gates and locks were also assaulted with writs and lawsuits. One of the outsiders who all of sudden found himself locked out was Mr. Frank C. Prescott Jr. of Los Angeles. He had hoped to bring lumber through the Malibu Ranch and up over the hills to build a ranch house he was homesteading. When the locked gates barred his way, Prescott was forced to leave the lumber on the side of the road and that forced him to complain to his father, Gen. Frank C. Prescott, who happened to be the registrar of the U.S. Land Office.
The General Land Office was formed in 1812 to take responsibility for public domain lands in the United States. The Land Office was part of the Department of the Interior in 1849, and one of its duties was to oversee the homesteading of empty federal lands. There was a lot of empty land that didn’t belong to the Rindges in the canyons and hills and flats behind the Malibu Ranch. These lands are never specified in the L.A. Times other than the Decker Ranch, but anyone who has driven along Mulholland Highway or come down Piuma Road or Kanan Road or hiked Malibu Creek State Park has seen how rural and desirable these lands are now behind the Malibu. In 2009, citizens will pay millions for a small patch of rural paradise on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains. In 1907, Uncle Sam was giving it away and hoping homesteaders would raise cattle, farm apples and carve communities from the western frontier of Los Angeles County.
There were dozens if not hundreds of settlers, homesteaders, ranchers, farmers and squatters who relied on passage through the Malibu to get to their homes and land. The Rindges were all of a sudden blocking access to federal lands, and a couple of busted locks exploded into a federal case.
Gen. Prescott of the Los Angeles Land Office presumably alerted Richard Ballinger of the General Land Office in Washington, who consulted with Secretary of the Interior James R. Garfield. When Garfield was in Los Angeles, he brought the matter to the attention of Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte, and that lead to U.S. District Attorney Lawler making a “careful investigation” of the situation.
He needed to be careful. Toward the end of 1907, Lawler and two men took the coast road from Santa Monica to the eastern gates of the Malibu Ranch. What Lawler encountered was detailed under the headline Shooty in the L.A. Times Dec. 4, 1907 edition:
“The story of an eventful trip of U.S. District Attorney Oscar Lawler to the Malibu Ranch a short time ago is disclosed in affidavits filed in the Federal clerk’s office yesterday. Lawler, it is asserted, narrowly escaped being shot by one of the guards of Mrs. May Rindge, and the whole party became involved in all sorts of difficulties in the effort to secure evidence of the violation of the law.”
Lawler traveled by horse with a posse that included Special Land Agent C.O. Pollard and Joseph A. Anker. When they arrived at the first gate — most likely at Las Flores Canyon –— they were stopped by an armed guard named H.H. Marsh, who emerged from a small hut and challenged the horsemen “in approved military fashion,” the L.A. Times reported. “Lawler replied that they were on their way to the government land a few miles farther on. The guard haughtily refused them leave to pass, and defied them to break open the gate.”
Lawler politely informed the “boorish” guard that he was the U.S. district attorney and one of his riders was a special agent of the government. Marsh is quoted as replying: “I don’t care a damn who you are, you can’t pass through this gate.”
Lawler warned the guard that any interference with government officials would result in arrest. The guard replied: “I don’t care if I am sent to jail. They will habeas corpus me out.”
Lawler might have been impressed with the guard’s knowledge of habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, but the lawman was not impressed when the guard pulled a gun and held it to his head. In modern 2009 California, pulling a gun in any way will get you 10 years in prison, and attempted murder on a peace officer is life in prison.
But this was 1907; only 26 years removed from the Earps and McLaurys blazing away at the O.K. Corral, and the West still ran wild through the veins of some cowboys. Lawler persuaded the gate guard to lower his gun, which allowed the three men to put their hands to their pockets and produce credentials. The gate guard still said anyone passing through the Malibu Ranch had to be “on the list” of approved travelers provided by ranch manager N.D. Darlington.
When Lawler produced a “passport” signed by Secretary of the Interior Garfield and Attorney General Bonaparte, the gate guard allowed them to pass.
The three men rode into the Malibu Ranch along the beach road and then turned up into one of the canyons that lead to the homestead land. Lawler’s mood was probably not improved when his horse broke down and he was forced to lead the animal for several miles.
On the way out, the three had a meeting with N.D. Darlington, who made excuses for his “zealous guard.” Lawler made it back to Santa Monica and then Los Angeles in one piece, but as he was the district attorney who sought the restraining order against the Rindges, he saw with his own eyes — down the barrel of a gun — that the Rindge guards were indeed aggressively keeping trespassers off the property and that such actions were likely to cause injury or death as the situation grew more heated.
Lawler’s action in court was primarily to reopen passage to homesteaders across the Rindge land, but also to prevent a feud and bloodbath.

Bookmarks: Page 2 of 3 pages  <  1 2 3 >