Lake Is Gone, but Jazz and Scenery Keep Crowd Cool

The lake has been dry since 1969.

But the more than 900 people who gathered Sunday at the Peter Strauss Ranch-Lake Enchanto atop the Santa Monica Mountains in Agoura didn’t seem to mind. The cool sounds of a jazz quartet, the rustic setting and a sculpture exhibit appeared to be good substitutes for the lake many had expected to find.

“It doesn’t matter that there’s no lake here now,” said park ranger Alice Allen, who explained over and over to individuals who asked that the dam that formed the lake was swept away in a 1969 flood and was not rebuilt. “People come here and they just fall in love with the place.”

The event, featuring the Gildo Mahones jazz group, was one of a series of free concerts that the National Park Service, the Los Angeles Music Center, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and the Friends of the Peter Strauss Ranch are sponsoring this summer at the former Lake Enchanto resort at 30000 Mulholland Highway. Other events, including a Nigerian dance troupe and a folk music review, will be held at 2 p.m. on July 21 and Aug. 4 and 18.

First Visit

About three-quarters of the concert-goers at Sunday’s event raised their hands when asked if this was their first visit to the site. Several, including Donna Larkin of Agoura, said she was surprised to find no lake.

“It was on the map,” she said. “That’s why I came up here. The place is so lovely, though, I will come back. I hope too many more people don’t find out about it.”

“I came to hear the jazz,” said Leuta Kraus of Thousand Oaks. “The performers are pretty good too.” She said the exhibit of various Los Angeles-area sculptors was “a bonus.”

Popular Weekend Resort

Lake Enchanto was a popular picnic ground and weekend resort for Los Angeles area residents from the 1930s until the 1969 flood. Visitors would, among other things, sit on the terraced grounds and listen to music performed in the natural amphitheater, Allen said.

The resort also featured lake-side cabanas for overnight guests, a bungalow-style house, a petting zoo, an aviary and a huge pool billed as the largest west of the Rockies.

Actor Peter Strauss, perhaps best known for his role as the “good” brother Rudy Jordache in the television miniseries “Rich Man, Poor Man,” owned the property from 1970 until 1977, when he sold it to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. The conservancy is holding the land until the National Park Service acquires funds to purchase it, Allen said.