Big Bear Lake Village
Johnson’s Five Feet
Frank Johnson built the first theatre on my east forty feet, then he wanted a well so he had to have five feet more. I sold it to him but why the extra five feet I could not figure. Maybe some water-witch switched it there for he secured a small flowing stream. Johnson opened the theatre before it was finished as it was quite an event to have the movies. Roofless and no seats, we sat on boxes for the performance.
Castle Rock
Most folks have read the legend of Castle Rock in the High School book edited by Bea Peddar (“Wick-oil”).
In 1917 and 18 the squaws from the desert were camped down the road from Baldwin that the Talmadges used in driving cattle to Old Woman’s Springs. They gathered pinon in the fall, a custom going back years probably. In making questions about early days of them, one of the younger, more intelligent squaws gave me the skeleton of a story of the Rock which I pieced together. Bluff Lake it seems, was much used in the summer by them – as I gathered from this talk.
Money in Real Estate
I must mention one advance in land values. In 1917 a quarter mile, forty acres, was owned by Wilbur Chamblin of Riverside and had cost him one thousand dollars. It touched the highway just east of the Catholic Church; went east to a point behind Cables Camp; then the line went north almost to Lakeview Drive, including Dreamland Park; then one-half mile west near the road from the Church to Lagonita along same to point of beginning.
Camblin refused to go fifty-fifty on cutting it up but offered the whole at ten thousand. He sold it and the different lot sales and values in 1940 were over two hundred thousand.
Big Bear Lake Village
