Ranger Family Finds Trade Offs Worth Price

The ancient Gabrielino Trail that Indians once trod is the front yard for Will and Ginger Shaw, and a mountainside where early settlers built their summer retreats is their backyard playground.

They live in one of the many canyons that etch the San Gabriel Mountain foothills, a little-known nook that Will Shaw calls “one of the little crevices that society leaves behind.”

To get there, you must walk more than a mile past a gate that stops private auto traffic at Windsor Avenue and Ventura Street in Altadena.

To live there, you must be a forest ranger, as Shaw is.

His is one of about 20 families who occupy government-owned houses in the Arroyo Seco District of the Angeles National Forest, an offering of the U.S. Forest Service that suits people like the Shaws who will trade off less than ideal housing for idyllic surroundings.

The government long ago stopped building housing for ranger families who work close to civilization. Many of the houses that remain, like the one the Shaws occupy in the Arroyo Seco northeast of Devil’s Gate Reservoir, were built by the WPA (Works Projects Administration) during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is one in a cluster where two other rangers also live.

The traffic past their door is a few hundred hikers, joggers and campers every week, several equestrians, some fishermen and picknickers. To get from public streets to the trail, visitors must travel on foot or horseback (or Forest Service vehicle) for more than a mile beyond the gate at a Jet Propulsion Laboratory parking lot on Windsor Avenue.

“It isn’t like we’re alone, but when the sun goes down it’s mighty quiet in our canyon,” Shaw said. “But we’re five minutes from the store and 30 minutes from downtown Los Angeles.

“It’s the best of two worlds, said Ginger Shaw, who works as a recreation technician in the neighboring Tujunga Ranger District. Their sons, Dustin, 16, and James, 13, attend La Canada High School.

The Gabrielino Trail begins where the pavement ends and mountains loom in the Arroyo Seco. It winds along the stream that feeds into Devil’s Gate Reservoir and Pasadena water supply, and it ends 10 miles north at Red Box, high in the mountains. Along the way, it passes Gould Mesa, a well-equipped park with barbecues and restrooms.

Here, the Gabrielino Indians found food, water and shelter for centuries. Then the San Gabriel Valley’s earliest white settlers built vacation retreats in the canyons, beginning around the turn of the century.

Traces of the Indians have all but disappeared and the only signs of the old vacation cottages are a few stone foundations and some hardy perennials, such as ivy, that were transplanted from civilized gardens in the cities below. The Pasadena Hunt and Gun Club left a stone monument to itself on one side of the canyon. There are bridges that lead to nowhere, the stream having changed its course often during decades of storms and floods.

Will Shaw owns horses and dogs, and says he catches the same big trout every year and tosses it back into the deep pool from whence it came.

He also works as a fire prevention officer, a law enforcement officer and a preservationist.

“I’ve been a ranger in my heart all my life,” he said. “I don’t just make widgets. I’m protecting a piece of America. I provide a service to the public that will last for future generations and protect our natural resources.”

But there are drawbacks. “It’s pretty disgusting to always be picking up diapers and broken bottles,” he said. “Man is the only animal that wraps everything in paper and then drops it.”