The latest historical marker of the Arcadia Historical Society to be unveiled and dedicated in a ceremony with presentations by dignitaries at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 17 in the Angeles National Forest at Adams’ Pack Station, Chantry Flat, celebrates the 75th anniversary of the oldest pack station in this part of the country, as well as the fifth anniversary of ownership by Sue and Deb Burgess.
The following is an extended version of the history of the station presented on the marker:
Adams’ Pack Station: A Short History The barn and two-room bunkhouse/store that are still being utilized at Adams’ Pack Station in 2011 were built 75 years earlier by the original owner of what has become the last remaining pack station in southern California.
Longtime owner Bill Adams delivering load at Fern Lodge in front of sleeping cottages, circa late 1940s (courtesy Glen Owens)
It was late in 1936 that J.P. Steele of Sierra Madre obtained a special use permit for a pack station, outfitter store and parking lot. Steele owned First Water Camp in the streambed directly below Chantry Flat in the Angeles National Forest and saw an economic opportunity and personal convenience in opening a pack station at the end of a new road paved to Chantry Flat in 1935 by Los Angeles County (now Santa Anita Canyon Road, which was intended to eventually be a stop on a road continuing on to Winter Creek or Angeles Crest Highway 2). The station’s donkeys and mules would be the primary form of conveyance for three-quarters of a century for everything from propane tanks, food and drink, garbage, bedding, tools, roofing, concrete, furniture, generators, firewood, and lumber – 125 pounds – 300 pounds at a time — to three active resorts and about 200 cabins accessible only on foot in Big Santa Anita Canyon, including Steele’s own family cabin. None of the privately-owned cabins have ever had electricity, heat, phone or water.
What came before the station? Gold Rush brings hikers, then cabins, then national forest
The discovery of gold in the lower end of the canyon in the 1850s led to trails such as one blazed for several miles by Wilbur M. Sturtevant, whose Sturtevant Camp – the oldest in the San Gabriel Mountains, was established in 1893 (and owned for more than 60 years by the Methodist church after 1947). A 1 /2-mile hike from Adams’ Pack Station leads to the picturesque 50-foot drop of the Sturtevant Falls.
The area was established as the San Gabriel Forest Reserve in 1892, and the first cabin was built near a gold strike by a prospector in 1898.
Less than a decade later the canyon became part of more than 650,000 acres of the San Gabriel Mountains designated as a national forest in March 1907, with elevations ranging from 1,200 to 10,064 feet. It was named Angeles National Forest in July 1908, with forest headquarters about four miles down Santa Anita to the base of the mountain in Arcadia. As many as 350 cabins were built in the canyon from the 1890s – 1920s. The cabins are privately-owned on forest land.
Current Pack Station owner Deb Burgess
Iowa-born prospector Charley Chantry arrived from the Black Hills of the Dakotas in 1905 and built a tent cabin in the canyon from where he rented riding donkeys to kids staying at nearby Carter’s Camp and began packing into any and all of the mountain resorts from his Mt. Wilson Stables. He died in 1936, the year after the road was paved to the area known as Poison Oak Flat, which was later named in his honor and is now a trail head for several hiking paths, home to a fire house and information center, and was designated as a Forest Service picnic area in 1958.
One of the many cabins in the canyon, this one owned by Mary Douglass
J.P. Steele, who had purchased animals, tack and other gear from the retiring widow of a pack station operator in Sierra Madre, was thrilled that with the new paved road, he could truck supplies to within 3/4 mile of his camp and then use his own pack train to carry them down the switchbacks. Steele built a two-story living quarters for his family, which was roughly located where the public flush-toilet facility sits today. In addition to the barn that stood virtually unchanged for 75 years, the two-room bunkhouse became the backbone of the pack station home/store for the 21st century at the southern-most end of the flat.
Only a little more than a year later in March 1938, a flood washed away 68 cabins in the canyon below the station, including the one still being used by the Steele family (No. 23), as well as the main lodge/dining room of the camp, and caused extensive trail damage. The Steele family moved to Monrovia, parceled out the remaining cabins of the resort and sold the pack animals.
Half-century of Adams family ownership A young man named Frank Adams, who worked nights at the Supreme Dairy and sometimes helped out at Santa Anita Park race track with his brother, Bill, bought the pack station in the fall of 1938.
Station owners Bill & Lila Adams at station BBQ, circa 2001 (courtesy Mary Douglass)
A few months later Frank hired his brother Bill and sister Katie to run the station. The business was expanded the following spring of 1939 with the addition of two donkeys and a lead horse, and Bill soon purchased the growing business from his sibling.
Four years later, in order to help out with the World War II efforts, Bill took a night shift at a rubber plant, where he caught his right hand in the rollers of an extruder which flattened and stretched his hand. Bill sold the station for $500 to cabin No. 9 owner Ross Macrae Axling but continued to work part-time at the station. As he recovered from his injury and grew frustrated with the decline in the quality of service and care to the animals, Bill Adams repurchased the station in the fall of 1949 for $1,500.
Lila Adams
Three-and-a-half years later, Bill married the diminutive Lila and together they packed supplies, delivered mail, brought out garbage, sold ice cream and soda, greeted visitors and generally took care of the canyon for 35 years. During these years the Civilian Conservation Corps built a campground at Chantry Flat, which was later remodeled by the Forest Service in 1958 (again in 2004-06) and designated a picnic area. At that time a 315,000-gallon water system drawn from a lateral well was installed in addition to a firehouse w/ barracks and information center, as well two 3-bedroom homes used as employee housing.
Pack train with lumber led by station owner Dennis Lonergan, circa early 1990s (courtesy Jody Lonergan)
Bill’s nephew Dennis Lonergan worked at the station with his Uncle Bill for 12 years. In 1984, the Adams’ sold the station to Dennis and his wife, Jody, when Bill and Lila semi-retired to a home in southwest Arcadia, but kept a cabin (No. 61) in the main section near the East Fork.
Longtime pack station owner Bill Adams with Jim Heasley and subsequent owners, Adams’ nephew Dennis Lonergan & wife Jody in 2000 (courtesy Jeff Lapides)
Dennis and Jody ran the station for 15 years, with their uncle Bill often packing, cleaning the campgrounds, patrolling, and volunteering for other such jobs on his own. Many times they could be found side-by-side repairing trails, putting new roofs on cabins, building retaining walls, installing water systems, or cleaning outhouse vaults by hand. Bouts with nature and the economy forced Jody to take a full-time job in the city in 1999.
Taking station into 21st century: In 2000 the station was sold to Kim Kelley, a divorced mother of three teenaged boys, who endured five challenging years of ownership during which time fires and landslides caused the access road to be closed for nearly two years.
Deb Burgess, owner of cabin No. 70 at Fern
Lodge, and her mother Sue Burgess bought the station in April 2006 and restored the Adams to signify a return the Adams’ business model with the help of day-to-day general manager Richard Conforti and other volunteers.
Under their stewardship the pack station launched a web site to create a social network for the 21st century and became a popular gathering place for hikers and families to enjoy the expanded merchandise and food offerings of the general store and myriad activities, including regularly-scheduled outdoor music programs, pulled pork sandwiches, animal petting, and guided hikes.
One of many events at the Pack Station under Burgess ownership
Santa Anita Canyon Road is the third busiest entrance to the Angeles National Forest after state highways 2 and 39. During the first five years under the Burgess ownership, the station answered questions and provided hiking tips for 300,000 visitors, distributed 80,000 Forest Adventure Passes – most in the U.S., handed out 48,000 free trail maps, served 40,000 bottles of soda, fed 12,000 hungry hikers, and coordinated about 175 rescues.
Richard Conforti and Pack Station co-owner Deb Burgess (middle) accept donations from Arcadia Historical Society’s Carol Libby to help save Adams’ Pack Station store in 2010
Despite a continuing series of economic, natural disaster challenges and more road closures, all of which constantly threaten the ongoing operation, by 2011 the station continued to fulfill its original mission of caring for burros and providing supplies for Sturtevant Camp and the 81 cabins that remained in the canyon as Adams’ Pack Station celebrated its 75th anniversary.
— By Scott Hettrick