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Image / Swartout Valley Lodge front parking lot, Big Pines Recreation Camp

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Title
Swartout Valley Lodge front parking lot, Big Pines Recreation Camp
Alternative Title
Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection;
Creator
Schultheis, Herman
Contributor
Made accessible through a grant from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation
Date Created and/or Issued
Circa 1938
Contributing Institution
Los Angeles Public Library
Collection
Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection
Rights Information
Images available for reproduction and use. Please see the Ordering & Use page at http://tessa.lapl.org/OrderingUse.html for additional information.
Description
Title supplied by cataloger.; Herman J. Schultheis was born in Aachen, Germany in 1900, and immigrated to the United States in the mid-1920s after obtaining a Ph.D. in mechanical and electrical engineering. He married Ethel Wisloh in 1936, and the pair moved to Los Angeles the following year. He worked in the film industry from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, most notably on the animated features Fantasia and Pinocchio. His detailed notebook, documenting the special effects for Fantasia, is the subject of a 14-minute short-subject included on the film's DVD. In 1949, he started employment with Librascope as a patent engineer. Schultheis was an avid amateur photographer who traveled the world with his cameras. It was on one of these photographic exhibitions in 1955 that he disappeared in the jungles of Guatemala. His remains were discovered 18 months later. The digitized portion of this collection represents the images Schultheis took of Los Angeles and its surrounding communities after he relocated to the area in 1937.
Big Pines Recreation Camp (elevation 6,862) was developed in 1923 by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the Department of Parks and Recreation. It became a year-round resort with crowds of up to 10,000 on many weekends. Big Pines is located four miles west of Wrightwood in the Angeles National Forest. In 1940 Los Angeles County transferred the land to the U.S. Forest Service. Big Pines continues to be a popular recreation area, with three ski resorts, campgrounds and Jackson Lake. The Swartout Valley Lodge opened March 1927 at Big Pines Camp, and contained a store, restaurant, soda fountain, and post office. In later years, the lodge housed offices of the U.S. Forest Service, until 1987 when an arson fire destroyed the building.
Cars pack the front parking lot of the Swartout Valley Lodge nestled in the grassy hills. A corner of the Big Pines Recreation Camp bridge is visible on the left. The towers of this bridge mark the highest point on the San Andreas fault at 6862 feet. Only one tower remains because one was taken out when Highway 2 was widened.
Type
image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;11 x 15 cm.
Photographic prints
Identifier
00099769
Herman J Schultheis Collection; Los Angeles Photographers Collection;
N-008-966.2 8x10
CARL0005107498
http://173.196.26.125/cdm/ref/collection/photos/id/39204
Subject
Swartout Valley Lodge (Big Pines, Calif.)
Mountain resorts--California--Big Pines Camp
Camps--California--Big Pines Camp
Parking lots--California--Big Pines Camp
Automobiles--California--Big Pines Camp
Towers--California--Big Pines Camp
Signs and signboards--California--Big Pines Camp
Pines--California--Big Pines Camp
Lost architecture--California--Big Pines Camp
Mountains--California, Southern
Big Pines Camp (Calif.)
Angeles Crest Highway (Calif.)
Schultheis Collection photographs

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