by S. O. Coutant
For years the two big-city newspapers in our neighborhood were the Los Angeles Times and the Mirror. My family took the Times.
One day in 1954 a co-worker of my dad, Bob Adam, described five-acre parcels of desert land available for homesteading from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The price was $25 an acre, with the stipulation that “improvements” had to be made in the form of a 400-square-foot dwelling to be built on the property within five years.
Bob said that his dad, who worked in the Monotype department of the Times, was buying a parcel, as were several other Times-Mirror employees.
Along with our next-door neighbors, Marshall and Clara Annis, we drove to the BLM office one Saturday morning, where we obtained information about which parcels were available.
The next weekend the three of us piled into our 1948 Studebaker Commander and headed over the Cajon Pass on our way to the desert, the first of what would become hundreds of repetitions of this journey. Interstate 15 did not yet exist. We used the narrow, winding, two-lane State Highway 66-91-395.
The 1948 Studebaker Commander at our camp site, a quarter-mile west of our property.
Our campfire circle.
Nowadays the distance of 116 miles between Sierra Madre and Johnson Valley can be traveled in two hours. Not so in 1954. Providing one did not stop along the way, a minimum of three hours was required. The 26 miles of road between Lucerne Valley and Johnson Valley were dirt, known simply as “the county road.” It ran between Lucerne Valley and Yucca Valley, a distance of 52 miles, and was replaced by Highway 18 in 1957, which became Highway 247. Portions of the original county road still exist, and old-timers now call it “the old county road.”
The directions we were given.
Fortune has smiled upon us many times during our desert adventures, and this first trip was one of them. We found a mining road angling off from the county road that headed toward the spot where we wanted to go.
Looking north along the old mining road.
We stopped at what seemed the right spot according to the directions we had been given. After some searching, we found some BLM section markers. I was surprised that someone had actually come out to the middle of the desert and stamped numbers into a small brass dome that was fastened to a steel pipe driven into the desert floor. How did they know where to put them? At the time I was eleven years old.
A pencil rubbing of a benchmark.
My dad was excited, as we had found the southern boundary of “Section 18,” whatever that meant. We were standing in Township 3 North, Range 4 East of something called the San Bernardino Meridian.
A five-acre parcel is 330 by 660 feet. In the desert vastness, that doesn’t seem like much. In town, it would be a huge lot for a house. We paced off the distance. We found a spot we liked between two washes. My dad speculated that if we bought and built on this spot, any future runoff would miss us. He was absolutely right, as we have since observed more than once during desert flash floods.
Our property is at the center. Washes flow on both sides.
Faint trails forming two rectangles outline our parcels.
We also realized we were on the border of the homestead parcels… on the uppermost part of the slope. As long as the BLM did not open the land to the south, we would have an unobstructed view of the mountains. This turned out to be exactly what happened. The federal government later declared the land between our lot and the foothills a wildlife preserve. Also, we were a mile from the county road, as remote as we could be.
Our house is at the center. We are looking south at the Bighorn Mountains.
As it turned out, when the new paved highway was constructed in 1957, it bypassed the county road, doubling the distance between our lot and the major thoroughfare to two miles. We accepted this as a plus, as it enhanced our remoteness.
In the weeks that followed we returned to the BLM office and put down our $25 filing fee for the south half of the southeast quarter of the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter of Township 3 North, Range 4 East. We had filed on a piece of the Mojave Desert. Marshall and Clara filed on the five-acre parcel alongside ours.
For the next three years we headed out of town on Friday night to visit our desert property, and returned to Sierra Madre Sunday evening. Like it or not, we had become “week-enders,” a term the then-few permanent residents inflicted on newcomers who still lived and worked “down below.” We had a 15-foot house trailer that we would pull with the Studebaker and park alongside the old mining road. It was a pleasant quarter-mile walk among the creosote and bladder pod bushes to our five acres.
The two Stans and the family trailer.
In 1957 we decided to hire a builder. We traveled to Yucca Valley and met building contractor Art Katje in his model home alongside the Twentynine Palms Highway. He agreed to build us a one-room cabin with a combined water tank house and bathroom on a concrete slab. One porch was included in the cost, but because our cabin was the first to be built in Section 18, Mr. Katje wanted it to be a showplace to attract other customers. He asked if he could add a second porch on the opposite side of the cabin at no extra charge. Of course we said yes.
Today in Yucca Valley the street called Katje Way marks the spot where Art’s model home stood on the south side of the highway. Art pronounced his last name “cagey.”
Our lot number was 118, something my dad considered a good omen: “First in Eighteen.” And we were. The brass 118 marker now hangs above a doorway inside the house.
Because neither the county road nor the mining road reached our parcel, a man with a tractor was hired to cut a new road so Mr. Katje and his men could reach our building site.
The man with the tractor helped make it possible to begin construction.
We visited our property every weekend during this time, anxious to see what the builders had accomplished during the week.
January 3, 1957. Stan and Martha warm up as I take the picture.
First came the footings and forms for the concrete slab, along with the rough plumbing. We noticed an identical set of footings had been dug on the parcel next to ours. Neighbors already? Nope. It turned out Katje’s men had started to build our cabin in the wrong spot!
While admiring the new slab, Martha protects her ears against a cold wind.
One cold, windy Saturday morning we arrived, anxious to see what had evolved during the week. My mother did not have a scarf with her, so she took a long, white strip of cloth and tied it around her head to protect her ears. What a thrill to find the slab had been poured!
Martha gazes westward while I take pictures. Note the wind blowing my pant leg.
During the weeks that followed, the walls were framed, Celotex was added with hot-mopped tar on top for a flat “shed” roof, windows were set, and the backing wire, black paper, and stucco mesh wrapped around the outside of the walls. One weekend all was “chicken wire;” the next our house had beautiful yellow-buff stucco walls and a white “snow coat” roofing on top of the tar. The snow coat, which looked like thick white paint, lasted for several years, but eventually flaked and blew off in huge chunks that littered the desert around our cabin. We picked up what we could. Fifty years later I occasionally find a small fragment in the yard.
January 19, 1957: The cabin is framed.
February 3, 1957: The cabin is wrapped and ready for stucco.
Forms are set for the north porch, a gift from Mr. Katje.
Yes, that is indeed snow on the ground.
Later the same afternoon, from the southeast.
The original cabin is finished.
The bathroom, an eight-foot-square, twelve-foot-tall structure at the southeast corner of our cabin, was also the tank house. With closely spaced 2 x 12 rafters, it was designed to support a thousand-gallon water tank, which provided a low-pressure gravity feed domestic water system: seven pounds of pressure when the tank was full. When it ran dry, we would leave a message in Lucerne Valley for the water man to bring us a load.
We soon added a Kenmore kerosene water heater from Sears-Roebuck. One had to monitor it closely. If left unattended, the water in it would boil, and shoot up through the pipes into the roof tank. Then one waited for the water heater to cool, refill, and start over.
First in Eighteen, looking due north. Stuccoing is complete.
Just before Christmas of 1957 we bought a cast iron pot belly stove, also from Sears. It sat in its wooden crate on our front porch in Sierra Madre over the holidays. In my mind I can still see rain water dripping off its spherical shape, and I remember wondering if we were going to get it out to the cabin before it rusted. We did, and until 1997 it served as our wintertime heating source.
Packing slip for our pot belly stove.
Definitely a remote location. We are looking west-northwest,
toward Lucerne Valley. Our water tank reaches for the sky.
By this time it was November of 1958. At this stage we were set. We had a kerosene water heater and kerosene lamps, running water from the tank on the roof, a Coleman camp stove for cooking, and a wood-burning stove for heating. There was no electrical utility service available for over 20 miles, but we didn’t care. We had our own desert cabin!
Secretary Irene Miller at the TIMICO Acres
property owners registration tent.
A property owners meeting announcement.
A June 17, 1957 clipping from the Los Angeles Times.
Employees of the Times-Mirror Company who also owned desert property got together and formed an association they named TIMICO (Times Mirror Company), and sections 7 and 18 became TIMICO Acres. Property owners were assessed and roads were put in so that each property owner had access to his five-acre parcel… except for Marshall and Clara Annis.
The first signs of civilization in TIMICO Acres.
The white arrow is stenciled “COUTANT.”
As it turned out, all the other homesteaders had chosen to orient their parcels with the 660-foot length running north-south. Not realizing what this would mean later, the Annis and Coutant contingent chose east-west. Our parcel ran alongside the road. The Annis parcel was marooned.
There was no road to the Annis abode.
Another man with a tractor was hired, and added what became known to the five of us as “Annis Avenue” along the east edge of our property. Clara said “Annis Alley” seemed more appropriate. Now Marshall and Clara could drive to their parcel, and soon towed an old green house trailer there, put it up on blocks, and removed its wheels. Marshall built an outhouse out of two-by-fours, plywood, and corrugated siding for the roof, with a vent made of stovepipe.
Stan, Martha, Clara Annis, yours truly,
and Marshall Annis in May, 1959.
Marshall and Clara never built on their Johnson Valley property. Instead, they bought a lot in Hesperia where they constructed a beautiful home. In 1975 they sold us their Johnson Valley parcel, which pleased us immensely.
An amazing thing happened in 1959. Someone at the Cal Electric Power Company in Victorville decided to extend the existing service beyond Lucerne Valley, and our house was to be at the end of the line. New poles appeared, marching eastward alongside Highway 18, abruptly turning south at the road leading to our property.
An intriguing letter from Cal Electric.
The last pole was set in place at the corner of our parcel. It was almost too incredible to believe. We had commercial power! Not only that, we were the lone customer on a 20-mile line. With advice from Mr. Annis, who was an electrician, my dad and I wired our cabin. Except for one short in a kitchen receptacle, which we soon corrected, the new wiring worked perfectly.
Commercial power arrives in 1959!
As the years passed, other property owners had cabins built and signed up for power, but many were a parcel or two from the pole line, and had to pay for a connection. $2000 each was about average for the extra poles and wires required. Some of our neighbors were angry when they learned the line was brought to our door yard at no cost to us, but got over it when they realized someone had to be first, and that it was only logical the power company wasn’t going to run a new line to an uninhabited spot. Fortune had smiled upon us once more.
Another letter from Cal Electric.
In time Cal Electric was bought by the Southern California Edison Company, which continues its now vastly expanded service to Johnson Valley via a new line from Yucca Valley. The original line from Victorville still exists as a backup, and according to a friend who works for Edison, the switch that must be thrown to make the change-over is at the north end of Bighorn Road.
Eventually the original Cal Electric 5 kVA power transformer became
inadequate, and in 1983 was replaced by one with a 15 kVA capacity.
Also in 1959 my dad replaced the Studebaker with an International Harvester “Travelette.”
At the corner of Bighorn Road and Highway 247
when it was simply the Old Woman Springs road.
In 1958 I spent the summer with Clarence and Ina Goodridge. “Goodie” was a builder, and asked if I would like to spend time with them and in the process learn about construction. It was the beginning of a friendship that lasted until his death in 1995. I spent the next six summers working for Goodie building cabins on the desert or at Big Bear. This included everything from setting forms and digging footings right up to putting on the roof. Goodie did not like electrical work and I didn’t like plumbing, so he worked with the pipes and I did the wiring, and we got along famously. I also learned to use Goodie’s various tractors, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I enjoyed operating Goodie’s Case tractor.
We dug foundations with Goodie’s Minneapolis-Moline tractor.
Ina’s home cooking was world-class, and we ate well. I lived with the Goodridges each summer. The first year I worked for my room and board. The next five summers Goodie paid me, explaining that I had learned enough to share in the profits. Each morning and evening we milked Ina’s goats named Frosty and Ruth Ann. On weekends we rode Goodie’s horses named Holly and Buck. We also dragged the roads and delivered water, two of my favorite tasks. In the early sixties Goodie built a swimming pool, which became a favorite place to spend time.
A SAD UPDATE: Ina left us on Tuesday, July 7, 2009.
One of my favorite jobs was delivering
Adam’s Ale with Goodie’s water truck.
My cousin Pete is on the right.
Sometimes Goodie would hire additional workers, and when he did, I was assigned to take one of his trucks to the Gibson Lumber Yard in San Bernardino for a load of building material. I would leave at sunup and get back to the desert at sunset.
The lineup: Goodie’s trucks and my Model A Ford.
During one of these journeys I was eastbound at Old Woman Springs when I noticed a blue Volkswagen beetle headed west. There is little traffic on desert roads; it’s difficult to not notice every car one sees. Its occupants were wearing dark glasses as they faced the setting sun. They looked familiar. In fact, they looked like Mia Farrow and Frank Sinatra.
While in town a day or two later I overheard a fellow telling his friend how he had stopped to help two people in a blue VW with a flat tire. He said it was Sinatra, and that Mia had wandered off a short distance into the desert and appeared to be admiring the scenery. This fellow said he changed the tire, and that Frank gave him a $50 bill for his trouble.
Shortly thereafter I learned that Frank and Mia were married in Palm Springs, and from there headed off on their honeymoon. I had been in the right spot at the right time to see them. Sadly my memory of the day has lasted longer than their marriage.
UPDATE: Frank and Mia were married on July 19, 1966, and according to what I have just read, the ceremony was in Las Vegas rather than in Palm Springs. Nevertheless, they did pass through Johnson Valley on the day that I saw them. There is no doubt in my mind on that point.
CB radios played a significant role in Johnson Valley from 1959 until telephones arrived ten years later. A number of permanent residents set up CBs, which were used not only to stay in touch, but also served as a means for summoning aid in an emergency. Two of the originals were Daisy Crawford, 11W6892 and the Goodridges, 11W9463. As the week-enders learned about the value of a CB set, antennæ appeared on Johnson Valley cabin roofs. We applied for a license, and were issued the call letters 11Q0318. It was one big friendly party line.
April of 1962 saw the addition of two bedrooms on the west end of our cabin. Goodie and his helper Dick Meeks did the work. They enclosed the back porch at the same time, in effect giving us three new rooms which turned our cabin into a house. No longer were we compelled to go outside to get to the bathroom, a great relief on cold, windy nights.
An extension of the slab flooring is added to accommodate two new bedrooms.
Looking south at the new bedrooms
with the Bighorn Mountains behind.
Looking slightly north of due east. To the left of
the water tank is a four-element CB antenna.
Looking due west toward Big Bear.
The new bedrooms are stuccoed, but the south porch is still open.
We decide to enclose the porch as well.
A better view of the CB antenna.
April, 1962: The two new bedrooms are completed.
We added a utility pole to support the CB antenna.
The south porch is enclosed. We are looking due north.
The Gizmotchy and the ground plane.
The Gizmotchy is the taller of the two.
Yes, on this day in 1962 the sky was that blue.
Immediately after acquiring our CB radios, my dad and I began to experiment with a variety of antenna designs. The Utica Radio Corporation had introduced the “Gizmotchy” in 1960, and we decided we had to have one. For the technically inclined, it is a circularly polarized, directional antenna with a forward gain of approximately 12 dB and a front-to-back ratio of 28 dB. Enough of that kind of talk; there may be women and children present. One reason for having the two antennæ is that the ground plane is non-directional, or “omni-directional,” making it well-suited for communicating with all stations in the area. The Gizmotchy is “uni-directional,” in that it transmits toward and receives from the specific region in which it is pointed. This makes it ideally suited for communicating with a certain locale, often over greater distances than are possible with the ground plane antenna. For example, if we wanted to contact a station in Lucerne Valley, we would point the Gizmotchy west-north-west, and have a better chance of getting through, as the Gizmotchy type of antenna focuses all the power in one pathway, plus it receives signals from that area better, and tends to reject signals coming from other directions. This explains why the generic name for this type of antenna is “beam.” There are other designs of beam antennæ besides the Gizmotchy. One popular type is the Yagi-Uda. Another is the cubical quad.
A Johnson Valley jam. Martha is closest to the camera,
then Cousin Pete, Cousin Flo, and me on the organ.
In 1965 my dad and I built a two-car garage to the west of our house. A workbench was included so we could move our tools—and our projects—out of the house. No longer did our car have to sit outside all weekend long regardless of the weather. Here are five views of our progress, beginning with the site preparation and ending with the preliminary coats of stucco:
Recently a group of black and white Polaroid prints was found that show details
of the garage construction. After viewing them, click the BACK button to return.
My dad and I became interested in Amateur Radio, which offers a greater range than CB radio. He was issued the call sign WA6BLK. Mine was WB6WFI, and is now AA6SC. In 1967 we built a radio room, our “ham shack,” fifteen feet east of the house. This got the radios and their sometimes obnoxious noise into a room of their own, much to the relief of all. We intentionally aligned the ham shack with the house, planning for the day when we would join them.
1967: We build a ham shack adjacent to the house.
The new structure is finished, and radio noise is no longer heard in the house.
The Ham Shack stands alone at the right; the garage at the left.
1981: The decision is made to construct a utility room between the house and Ham Shack.
Sons David and Jonnathan apply shingles to the utility room roof.
David decides the new room is to be known as the Cram Shack.
Stan O., Clarence “Goodie” Goodridge, and Stan spread stucco.
Now only the garage stands apart.
The house, Cram Shack, and Ham Shack are contiguous.
Additional ham shack and Amateur Radio-related images are available.
Please use the BACK button to return to this location.
Sometime in the early seventies the original shed roof on the house began to leak whenever wet weather came along. We tried patching it, to no avail. We hired Bill Lee, a contractor from Yucca Valley, to add a gable roof to match the roofs on the ham shack and the garage. He did, and not only did the leaks stop, the house was noticeably cooler on hot days.
While working for Goodie during the late fifties and early sixties, I had noticed an Allis-Chalmers Model M crawler tractor equipped with a bulldozer blade sitting next to a cabin about a mile east of the Goodridges’ house. Years before it had been used to level the building site for the Community Hall, but it had not turned a tread since.
Because I so enjoyed operating Goodie’s tractors, and because the dirt roads throughout Johnson Valley to this day are maintained by residents, I thought it would be great if we could have our own tractor. We could take care of the roads around our place, and for me running a tractor still held its appeal. To the best of my recollection, the year was 1962. I made inquiries and contacted the tractor’s owner. Yes, she said, it was for sale. The price was five thousand dollars. To me at age 19, it might as well have been all the money in the world.
Eighteen years later, in 1980, I contacted her again. She asked, “You still want that old thing? My first husband is gone. He’s the one who liked that tractor. My new husband has no interest in it. If you want it, you can have it for eleven hundred bucks.”
Our longtime friend Fred Mayes had been a heavy equipment maintenance foreman for the Hazard Construction Company for many years. He came out and looked over the tractor. “I’m surprised it’s in such good shape,” he commented. Having received his enthusiastic approval, I wrote a check. At last the tractor I had coveted for years was mine.
I had to drive it past Goodie’s on the way home. He came out, beaming. “I’m glad you got that,” he exclaimed. “It’s a good’un, and you deserve it.”
1980: Sons David and Jonnathan in the tractor
the day it was brought to its new home.
A few days later I telephoned Allis-Chalmers in Los Angeles. “We don’t make tractors,” announced the young, slightly haughty feminine voice on the other end. “That’s funny,” I retorted. “I own one.” She finally was able to determine that I needed to contact the Superior, Wisconsin office. (The Los Angeles plant makes only gravel-screening equipment, she said.)
I called Wisconsin, and Fortune shone once more. “What’s the serial number of your tractor?” he inquired. I gave it to him. “Can I call you back?” he asked. “Sure.” I gave him my telephone number.
Our tractor crawls past the house.
Here is an iPad-compatible version of the tractor video.
Twenty-five minutes later he called. “I have the original invoice for your tractor here on my desk in front of me,” he announced. “It was built in 1937, and is number ninety-five in its series. Would you like a copy of the operator’s manual for it?” You can guess my answer.
“Is it still running?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied. “Could you send me some photos and a write-up? I’m the editor of our company newsletter, and I’d love to publish a story about your Model M.” Eagerly I complied.
1997: We add a porte cochère across the south side of the house.
Builder Vic Di Aco did a magnificent job, assisted by the
brothers Ray and Mel Dunn, along with Sharon Edwards.
1998: We add a north porch. That’s my 1937 Allis-Chalmers crawler.
The new north porch is finished.
Sure enough, about a week later a photocopy of the manual arrived, along with several beautiful color brochures for the current product line.
In case you are wondering, yes, the tractor still runs. It has what I suspect is an intake manifold leak that I hope to fix someday, which should give it back its full power. Even with this problem it’s a rugged machine. 2007 update: Neighbor Roger Taylor made me an offer I cannot refuse. With some remorse I sold him my Model M.
The day we joined the ham shack to the house arrived during the summer of 1981. I could not fit beneath the original cabin’s overhanging roof and the lower roof of the new room, so my sons, Jonnathan and David, who were 11 and 10, wriggled in and nailed down the shingles. When completed, my son David named the new room. He said, “If that’s the ham shack, then this should be the cram shack.” An electric water pressure system was installed there, along with a washing machine, a dryer, and a brand-new electric water heater. The water tank came down off the roof forever, and was relocated in the yard.
A recent image of the ham shack, cram shack, house, and garage.
A year or two later my mother hired a contractor named William Meier to finish the interior of the bathroom and enclose the front porch. One day William commuted from his place of business to the desert in a helicopter, and had his pilot give my mother a ride. I wasn’t there to witness the historic event; it must have been sensational. Sadly William died just after completing our project.
Many interesting things have happened in Johnson Valley during the past fifty years. Here are a few memorable incidents, not necessarily in chronological order.
Daisy Crawford sold me her 1931 Model A Ford for $15. I mounted bald tires all the way around and used it as a Jeep. With it I have pulled many people out of soft sand where they were stuck. Because I was the oldest kid in the valley and the only one with a car, many Saturday evenings were spent riding around with other kids squeezing in and on wherever they could: in the rumble seat, on the running boards, or straddling the front fenders.
The Model A Ford that I bought from Daisy Crawford.
I bought a “real” Jeep—a Willys CJ5-A, painted “Indian ceramic.” It could go places the Model A couldn’t, but it didn’t have the Ford’s charm.
Three families acquired property along an unnamed dirt road. They were the Goodwin, Ivers, and Norton families, so they named the road after their combined last-name initials. To this day, it is called Gin Road.
Joe di Victoria, proprietor of the Chisel Inn, went on a shooting spree and killed his wife Aileen, her lover Jim Kirkendahl, and friend Marilyn Tiggeman. He also wounded Jim’s son, and Bill Kensinger, another friend. The Chisel Inn took its name from an old chisel that was found in the dirt while the foundation was being dug.
Many hours were spent riding four horses: Holly and Buck belonged to the Goodridges, Beauty to the DuMond family, and Robin, owned by a neighbor girl named Judy Roberts.
Holly, Robin, and me on a cold morning.
A good friend and fellow printer, Michael Patrick Shane Waite, visited me in TIMICO Acres several times and fell in love with the desert. He wanted to buy a place. We found one he liked. It had a cabin on it. He was short on cash, so we bought it together. Later Mike bought me out. Now he and his wife Linda live there along with their many animals, and Mike owns and operates the local livestock and poultry feed store in the region near Landers called Flamingo. 2010 UPDATE: Mike has retired from the feed store business.
The 210 Freeway extension was completed in January 2003, and runs between the city of La Verne and Interstate 15. The newly completed section is shown above. One can travel non-stop from Sierra Madre to the Cajon Pass summit and beyond on freeways without touching Interstate 10. What a relief. We homesteaded our five-acre parcel in 1954, and have enjoyed it for more than fifty years.
A motor blade grades Larrea in preparation for paving.
Here is an iPad-compatible version of the motor grader video.
February, 2006: Larrea Road is paved! I never expected to see this in my lifetime. From Highway 247 to the Community Hall and fire station complex it is two lanes wide. From there to the church it is a single paved lane.
