Fourteen hectares of pine, granite and running water, held quietly in the San Bernardino Mountains for more than a century.
Walk the ground
The Land
The property lies in the forest that surrounds Lake Arrowhead, nestled between the communities of Blue Jay and Agua Fria. It runs to 14.16 hectares - a little under thirty-five acres - of mature timber, needle floor and seasonal streams that fall away through the trees and are louder in the spring than you expect them to be.
It is unhurried ground. Incense cedar and Jeffrey pine have had the better part of a hundred years to close over what people once built here, and they have largely succeeded. What remains is a clearing, a few good stands of old growth, the water, and the stone.
Approximately 35 acres of forested mountain land.
The first recorded season of settlement in these woods.
The date of the earliest photograph of the stonework, which stands today.
In the Trees
No road runs through the middle of it. The canopy closes overhead, the light comes down in pieces, and the wall sits where it was laid - a little mossed, entirely sound, holding the same line it held when the first photograph was taken of it.
Water is the constant. The name comes from the Latin rivosus - full of streams - and in a wet year you can follow the sound of it from one end of the property to the other.
The Stonework
The masonry is the oldest thing on the property that people made. River granite, set without mortar showing, in a low wall with squared pillars, a stepped entry and a chimney at the centre. It was already a landmark when the photograph below was taken, and the buildings it once framed are long gone. The stone did not go anywhere.
The Record
The Pacific Electric Railway - the Red Cars that stitched together Southern California - kept a mountain camp in these woods. For twenty-six seasons the clearing filled each summer and emptied each autumn. The stone wall, the pillars and the chimney date from this period; the earliest photograph of them was taken in 1917. The camp closed in 1941.
After three quiet years the property opened again, this time as the Pine View Lodge. Thirty years of guests came up the mountain to it, past the same wall, under the same trees - which by then were considerably taller. The lodge closed its doors in 1974.
For half a century the woods have had the place largely to themselves. Duff has built up over the old drives, seedlings have become timber, and the streams have run without an audience. The century-old stonework still stands - the one clear line left in the clearing, and the reason anyone looking at this land looks twice.
The buildings came and went. The stone stayed put. Rivosus Ranch
Bearings
Region
San Bernardino Mountains
Setting
The forest surrounding Lake Arrowhead
Extent
14.16 hectares · 35 acres
County
San Bernardino, California
The Archive
Photographs of the camp and the lodge, alongside the clearing as it stands today. Select any plate to enlarge it.
Enquiries
The ranch is private ground and is not open to visitors. Questions about its history, its stonework or its stewardship may be sent to the address below.
Please do not enter the property. It is unimproved forest land with unmaintained grade, standing masonry and seasonal water.