Although rodeo stunts were introduced to the Cooper brothers’ ranch by Helen Gibson in 1921, and the first official rodeo was thrown there in honor of Sheriff William Traeger in 1922, the…
The Way We Were
The development of Topanga Beach happened quickly after a public campsite was created there in 1919 by two brothers, manager Miller Cooper and Deputy Sheriff Archie Cooper. Dancing was popular at Cooper’s…
Topanga Beach was also the setting for early movies, most notably a 15-minute, single-reel film, Crossing the American Prairies in the Early Fifties, that was directed through a megaphone by D. W.…
The LA County Prison chain gang had been in Topanga on and off as early as 1898, when they worked on the first Canyon road. A stockade built near the beach in…
About 40 years after the last Native Americans departed Topanga Beach, the land was given by Mexico to Ysidro Reyes (1813-1861) and Francisco Marquez (1798-1850) as part of a 6,656-acre grant in…
Colonel William W. Coolbaugh was 70 years old in 1909 when he bought Jack Rabbit Lodge from a fisherman named Harry Johnson. It was the only residence at Topanga Beach. For years,…
For decades, it has been known that a number of Indian bones were buried all along the bluffs by the sea. Occasionally after a high tide, relics… are to be seen, the…
On October 8, Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles celebrated the first annual Indigenous Peoples Day. In 2017, the city and county voted to transform Columbus Day into a…
For more than a hundred years Topanga has been a destination for summer visitors. In 1905, the Los Angeles Herald proclaimed Topanga Canyon, “One of the most picturesque and best known mountain…