Free Friday evening historic preservation webinar: Save Old Trapper’s Lodge, A California State Landmark
Gentle reader,
For Kim’s birthday in February this year, we visited a special place that had been inaccessible for much of the pandemic on the closed Pierce College campus: the mid-century California landmark roadside folk art environment Old Trapper’s Lodge.
And on that visit, we fell in love with the weird and heartfelt figures that reflect Michigan native, motel owner and sculptor John Ehn’s personal spin on Western mythology, tall tales and hospitality.
Yes, some of these sculptures crafted by a man born in 1897 who grew up in lumber camps filled with crude single men include once commonplace symbolism that reads today as offensive or insensitive. It would be shocking if they didn’t. But there’s so much more to Old Trapper’s Lodge, including a stunning family group of a 19th century mother determined to get her children safely across the continent that brought us to tears. (Later, we learned the woman was modeled on the artist’s mother, Marie Ella Berg, a tiny Finnish orphan who earned her passage to America working as a household servant.)
Since our visit in February, some bad things have happened at Old Trapper’s Lodge, including the brutal desecration of the Boot Hill Cemetery portion of the landmark.
Our preservation page that tells the story of the crisis is here.
But we’ve also had the opportunity to walk with John Ehn’s family, helping to advocate for the protection of his sculptures with a college administration that has inexplicably concealed its destructive actions from the wider community that cares.
Now Pierce College has issued an ultimatum to the Ehn Family: come and get the huge, heavy sculptures next week, or this designated California State Landmark will be thrown away!
We join the Ehn Family in asking Pierce College to stop making threats, and do what it should have done in the beginning: secure the artwork, issue a public RFP (Request For Proposals) to find a suitable new home for Old Trapper’s Lodge, and to work with that new home on a safe and appropriate art transit plan, to ensure this California State Landmark can be preserved and enjoyed for generations to come.
We hope you’ll join us on Friday 10/14 at 7pm (or streaming later on-demand) for a free live webinar featuring John Ehn’s grand-daughter Marsha Klopfenstein and great-granddaughter Kristen Cassidy.
In an original short film produced by preservation storyteller Damian Sullivan, you’ll tag along as Marsha and Kristen pay their first visit to Old Trapper’s Lodge since the Boot Hill Cemetery sculptures were brutally dug out of the ground, to reconnect with the sculptures that represent their beloved family members, share stories of grandfather John Ehn’s creativity and larger than life personality, and to express their profound concerns about how poorly Pierce College is treating the landmark, the community and their family.
Then we’ll take your questions about Old Trapper’s Lodge, how it was saved from demolition in the 1980s, and the current campaign to protect it, and what we all hope will happen next.
Decades of work went into the creation of Old Trapper’s Lodge, then an enormous effort was made to landmark the sculptures and move them to safety before the motel where they were originally installed was bulldozed by Burbank Airport. We just don’t believe all that care and creativity should be destroyed, when a preservation solution is possible.
The Old Trapper is dead. Long live Old Trapper’s Lodge!
yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Psst… If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar and a subscriber edition of this newsletter, vintage Los Angeles webinars available on demand, in-person walking tours, gift certificates and a souvenir shop you can browse in. Or just share this link with other people who care.
UPCOMING TOURS
Join us on a time travel trip to Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract (10/22), Evergreen Cemetery (10/29) and Angelino Heights (11/12).