The Rim of the World Highway was dedicated in 1915. Have you driven it?
Mountain Stage Lines
Kirk Phillips, probably the first man to visualize the possibilities of a mountain stage line, formed a partnership with Max and Perry Green in 1912. Theirs was the Mountain Auto Line; and for forty years this stage line, in good weather and bad, continued to serve the whole mountain area.
The automobile stages of the early days played an important part in the development of the San Bernardino Mountain resorts. A great many people who went to the mountains in those days left their own cars at home and took the stage, -it was actually more economical and saved wear and tear on the nerves. No matter what happened, those old White trucks, converted into stages, always reached their destination.
Little Bear Valley (Lake Arrowhead, CA) Post Office
It was Jack Weber who pioneered the way for the first stage line and proved the practicality of trucks on mountain roads. In 1910 he drove a two-cylinder “Little Giant” truck over the “switch-backs” and on to Little Bear Valley. Dr. Baylis often told how he and James E. Mooney stood on the crest and watched the truck pass with its one and a half tons of cement for the dam. Mr. Mooney turned to the doctor and said, “Never was it more evident that coming events do cast their shadow.”
In 1910 the Cooley Hardware Company took over the agency for the White trucks, and one of their first sales was to the San Bernardino Water Department. In order to make the sale, they first had to prove that the truck could climb the Waterman Canyon grade with a cargo of one and a half tons of pig iron. A year later, when the big thirty-day forest fire burned everything from Arrowhead to Green Valley, this same truck was kept running day and night hauling supplies.
For years the old White trucks continued to be the very backbone of the San Bernardino Mountain stage lines.
Early Los Angeles Advertising for Mountain Resorts
My Great Grangfather, William Coulthurst, and his son drove the first gasoline powered internal combustion engined car (not steam) up to Big Bear, it was a 1910 Buick stripped of its bodywork (fenders, bonnet, running boards) and they took along a third person. Using hawser rope laced through the spokes they were able to create their own version of what today is an off- road tire to negociate the silty ruts left by the logging drag carts at Green Valley, and arrived at the south shore of Big Bear Lake near the IS ranch where they were greeted by John Metcaf’s daughter on horseback who awoke the weary trio when she said” Well, look at the sleeping beauties!” They had started out at 8PM the night before in San Bernardino. On this trip, Coulthurst purchased 3.5 acres of land from Metcalf on what is now 39585 Lakeview Pines Road, behind the old Lake Drive-In Theatre. My great uncle Harold Coulthurst recounted that although there were cars on the hill, htey had been towed up by Ox, or mules, and they were informed by the residents at Pine Knot that they were the first vehicle to make it up to the lake on their own power. Harold also recounted that they passed by the Doble post office which was in operation at that date as Delmar was running a ball mill and leaching the tailings of Gold Mountain using the newly developed cyanide process to recover the gold. My mother, NEE Nancy Jane Brubaker, Couthurst’s granddaughter, resides at the original property he purchased in Big Bear, and we have a taped interview of her uncle Harold (Coulthurst’s son) where he recounts the events of this historic trip he and his father took back in ’10. Couthurst BTW, was a REO, Mercer, and later the first Buick dealer on the West Coast.
He and his brother-in-law purchased Duro-Car, which was an off shoot of the Tourist Car Company, and had the distinction of being the only west coast car manufacturer at that time. A surviving Duro Car is on display at the Murphy Museum in Ventura County, in perfect running order. We have photos taken on the trip of the old dam before the new dam was completed in 1913. By 1911 the construction of our log cabin was underway and the family camped out in tents on the property until it and the other buildings were completed. My Great Grandpa Will did not seek publicity, a newspaper article, or prize money, but he sure sold a ton of Buicks due to his successfull round trip in one, the car spoke for itself and he could not have come up with better adverstizing if had tried! The real reason for the trip however were the fishing reports he had read in the local Whittier paper; he wanted to go try his luck hooking a 5 pounder.
Our family still carries on the tradition and we fish the lake regularly for trout, trolling with Dave Davis trolling spoons/flashers. I maintain the small stock of antique engines and outboards left behind by my ancestors, using them occasionally for a fishing as well as our “new” 1975 Johnson 9.9 HP Sea Hoarse. We also have a wood fired stove/grill that heats it’s own hot water for a built in kitchen and shower, fed my a natural cistern Will hired the Holcomb Valley miners to blast for him up on the ridge above our cabins. Several years ago I rebuilt the original hand pump well out on the front of the property too, restoring it back to operation.
Jay, thanks for your story, its fantastic! Do you have any pictures? If you would like to write up some history, we’d be happy to feature it as a blog post. Thanks for stopping by!