by Sheri Jansen-Olliges
Sheri Jansen-Olliges is a local historian who has researched the Shriners' land purchase and eventual sales of the land near La Honda.
It was a recovering forest. William Page of Searsville and Mayfield built the roads to it, logged it, leveraged it and lost it. Alexander Peers of Mayfield logged it and sold it. Spring Valley Water Works posted their Notice of Intent to dam up Pescadero Creek as it flowed through the area and send the water north to San Francisco. Timothy Hopkins of San Francisco added it to his already vast timber holdings in the area. Henry Middleton of Boulder Creek built the Old Haul Road through the southern edge of it and granted Hopkins a right of way over it to haul out his timber. When John Hooper, the San Francisco businessman felt Woodside had become too crowded for a summer place he bought it to replace his Mountain Home Ranch. It was next to become the Islam Redwood Shrine Grove.
The Shrine Committee considering the purchase made a favorable report to the membership in January 1924. They described “…an abandoned wagon road following the west side of Peters Creek almost to the west edge of the Tract.” That’s what was left of the upper mill road Page had built and Peers had abandoned forty years before. Today it is known as Portola State Park Road, the entrance road to the Park. They continued in their report to say “…waters in all the creeks abound with trout, fishing being particularly good on upper Evans Creek… Evans Creek is suitable for a water supply… The remains of an old saw mill may be seen near the north line… on Slate Creek.”
Mr. William Crocker, one of the Shriners’ many illustrious members, brought some fellow Shriners down from San Francisco to view the property. Many made the trip with horses, but he had a Panhard Levassor horseless carriage. It was from Paris and it had a chain drive. At the beginning of the return trip he insisted on being the first to leave so he could make a run for it and his automobile wouldn’t spook the horses. He went first but stopped about a mile up the road. When the other members passed by in their carriages they saw his chauffeur lying in the mud replacing a broken link in the chain. This spot on the road was commemorated with a sign on a nearby pole, and has been known ever since as Crocker’s Curve.
On their way down the road, the Shriners’ caravans passed through the rolling hills and open grasslands of the local farms and ranches. Kids clever enough to be done with their chores might make it out to the road in time to catch a few coins tossed from the carriages. As soon as they reached the redwoods they saw the entrance road to their Grove and the large timbers set in the ground for gate posts. If the shape of their purchase was an open hand, nestled in the palm was the newly-formed Middleton Tract. Bill Middleton, a San Francisco car salesman and sports enthusiast had been purchasing land to create residential parcels and form a community for families to enjoy summer vacations in the forest. By this time he had found his first purchasers and within a year, the first log cabins would be built. As was often the custom in those days, he included specific language in his deeds to guard against undesirable activities. Considering that he was born into a family of timber harvesters and lumbermen, it was noteworthy that one of his restrictions was to forbid logging.
Western Shore Lumber Company held most of the land to the west of the Grove, and some large parcels to the south and east. Hubbard and Carmichael operations were to the east. Spring Valley Water Company held the land south of the Grove, perhaps still hoping to control Pescadero Creek waters.
The membership prepared for a big celebration. If newspaper accounts are to be believed, 3,000 members arrived in 700 vehicles to attend the dedication ceremony on August 24, 1924. They erected a monument commemorating their encampment and built tent cabins for the women and children near the present-day Park cement bridge. They built group camps near the present-day Staff Residence #3. They also built cabins where the eldest men could sleep if they were too tired to make the return trip. They built a concrete dam about a half mile up Evans Creek to supply drinking water. You could reach them by telephone, but an operator had to place the call. It was fairly reliable service, except for the winter of 1932 when two inches of snow knocked the phone line down. They built a meeting hall for their members in the 1930’s and this building is still in use today as the Park Visitors Center. It was reported thousands of Shriners and their family members continued to attend the annual gathering on held on a summer weekend.
They hired Edward Blockley, a civil and hydraulic engineer as a superintendent for the Grove beginning in 1925, replacing A. J. Davis, noting it “was advisable to hire an engineer.” The Blockley cabin was located in a clearing on the entrance road; it may have been a gate house for a previous superintendant. They had a gasoline pump, later electric, to feed water to a tank on the hill above the house and a chicken coop on the hill on the other side of the road. There was a path down to a hydraulic ram and dam in Peters Creek downstream; they were crafted from timbers moved from the Slate Creek mill site. The family spent several summers there while Superintendant Blockley laid out the park and installed improvements. After the Blockleys, George Hanson took over as superintendent. He built a two-story house in the same clearing sometime during the late Thirties; it is still used today as the residence for the Park’s Chief Ranger. Hanson was recovering from a heart attack when the Blockley cabin caught fire and burned. By the time help arrived, the cabin was gone and Hanson, described as an elderly superintendant, had collapsed in exhaustion.
The Shriners acknowledged Hooper’s request that no commercial development be allowed, but nevertheless made plans for a 500 acre golf course. They also planned a “Slate Creek Subdivision” in 1927. It was surveyed for 254 quarter-acre cabin sites and an all-year round road to the Page Mill site on Slate Creek. The lots, with a price ranging in price from $275.00 to $650.00, were to be leased to members for 25 years. Additional fees ranging from $1,500.00 to $3,750.00 for maintenance and upkeep were to be divided among the lot owners. With word that many private cabins were to be built at the Shrine Grove, Pacific Gas & Electric Company extended electric lines all the way down the road in September 1929. But only one cabin was built. By a plumber. The white stakes marking some of these lots still remained in the mid-1970’s, but none of the plans for a golf course, permanent road or cabin sites was carried through.
They did have a “Hoose Gow”. It was a holding pen in the natural hollow at the base of a redwood tree, barred with a hinged door which was held in place by a “large old round Mexican lock” and a logging chain. It was definitely on the tour when Superintendent Blockley showed visitors around. Also on the tour was Hooper’s comfortable two-story summer residence “Bendmore Gardens”, built near a large horseshoe bend in Pescadero Creek and Chris Iverson’s simple one-room cabin built before the 1880’s.
It was a beautiful place, but the danger of forest fires was ever present. Islam park employees and local residents fought fires in August and October of 1931 with bucket brigades. It took five hours of hard dangerous work to hold the October fire in check until the first county truck arrived five hours later.
Three-hundred acres burned two years later. The fire started just south of the Grove on Santa Cruz Lumber Company land and burned slash and fallen timber along an eight mile stretch to the south. Fifty youths were conscripted from a conservation camp at Bloom’s Mill, along with 20 loggers and 25 firefighters from Redwood City. The article entitled “Shrine Grove Saved from Fire” reported the fire started from blasts set off by loggers to clear roadways.
A few more years passed with no reports of forest fires, but the September 1936 fires made up for that. The first was relatively small, all things being relative. Weekend deer hunters were suspected. It started at the confluence of Oil and Pescadero creeks, about 2 miles south of the Grove border and burned east toward the old Carmichael mill and 150 adjoining acres. Men from the Santa Cruz Lumber Company and loggers in the area put it out. The second fire that month, discovered at dawn, was much bigger. It became the “first disaster call in San Mateo County’s history: ten blasts on the horn at firehouses through the county.” Five hundred men were sent to the scene. More than 1,000 acres burned in the first four hours. The smoke blanketed the city of Santa Cruz and was seen as far north as Redwood City. It started barely a mile south of the Grove on Spring Valley’s property and spread both north and south from there threatening their headquarters from two sides. A County crew of more than 800 men needed a week to put the fire out. It was reported that 7,000 acres of timber burned. Eight years later more than 600 acres of slash and felled logs burned to the west of the Grove on Western Shore and Stanford lands. Loggers and County firefighters fought with back fires and fire roads. Of the 10 million feet of felled redwood lumber, they reported only 1,000 feet was lost.
Perhaps it was the effects of the 1929 Stock Market Crash, or the forest fires, but those quarter-acre parcels didn’t sell. Perhaps it was the completion of the Pacific Coast Highway in the 1930’s, or the anticipation of the Golden Gate Bridge completion in 1937 that sent some of the discretionary money to the newest destinations — the Redwood Empire in Marin County and the Russian River area. Interest in the Grove dropped. The Shriners’ membership dropped too in the mid-40’s; they said it was due to the sacrifices of war. They had to dip into their endowment funds to keep their hospitals running. Perhaps it was a combination of all these factors. A Temple publication gave the sad news: “The Islam Redwoods Shrine will be completely closed on and after April 1, 1942 due to a limited budget”. It was no April Fool’s joke.
Only a few months passed before the front page headline reported: “State Park Board Favors Islam Park Purchase”. The article described 1,800 acres, 100 cottages, main recreation lodge accommodating 200 people, two-story administration building, and a two-story custodian’s lodge recently constructed at the entrance. In addition it had its own water system with two concrete storage tanks, seven miles of 2” mains with hydrants, power and phone lines installed, and a sewage system. In their review of the area, the Commissioners identified a spot on Peters Creek that could be developed into a swimming pool. Negotiations began almost immediately. The deed from the Shriners to the State of California was dated December 6, 1944 and described the sale as 1,660 acres. It was recorded the following March 5, 1945 with a sales price of $112,500.
The state moved slowly, creating the first campground 1946 and finishing the first bridge over Peters Creek in October 1948. The old tents and cabins were torn down. Rocks were hauled from the creeks to build barbeque pits with sides wide enough to set a pot down. Bendmore Gardens weathered in place until it was unsafe, then it was bulldozed down and the remains burned. The Park Service kept the phone service, being listed in the 1948 phone directory for the La Honda area.
Imagine how many photographs of those times were glued into family albums. Imagine how many personal letters and diary entries were made describing the times. Imagine if we knew where they were.