Folk-Art Statues Find Home at Pierce College

Los Angeles Pierce College will become the new home of 20 folk-art statues displayed at Sun Valley’s Old Trappers Lodge, to be demolished later this summer for expansion of Burbank Airport.

Heirs to John Ehn, a former Michigan trapper who created the concrete statues, had been searching for a new location since they decided to sell the property last year.

Declared a California historical landmark in 1981, the concrete statues of Old West characters are one of 10 folk-art environments in the state. Ehn, who owned the lodge from 1941 until he died in 1981, modeled several of the statues after family members.

“I’m elated,” said Rosemary Farish, one of Ehn’s daughters who now manages the 47-year-old bungalow and motel complex where the statues are displayed. “The setting is something I think my father would have approved of.”

Unanimous Vote

The Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees voted unanimously July 6 to accept the Ehn family’s gift. The statues will be assembled July 25 in grassy Cleveland Park, a small hillside area, said Richard Moyer, assistant dean of academic affairs. Moyer said the park is visited by hundreds of children each year.

“He liked kids,” Moyer said of Ehn. “He wanted the statues to be protected, but he wanted them to be enjoyed.”

The college will formally dedicate the statues this fall, Moyer said.

The 2.6-acre lodge site was purchased for $2.3 million by the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority. Buildings on the property, near the northern end of the airport, will be demolished as soon as all the tenants of rental units there relocate, said Richard M. Vacar, airport authority manager.

The site was home to about 350 tenants, most of them poor families, Farish said. About 15 of the lodge’s 90 rental units are still occupied, but the tenants will be out by the end of this month, she said.

Tenants are receiving federal relocation allowances of from $2,000 to $15,000 each.

The airport has no definite plans for the property, which could become a storage area for jet fuel or a hangar site.