Antelope Valley’s Lone Ranger Rides Herd on Five Parks

Robert McAdams is the only full-time ranger assigned to five state parks in Northern Los Angeles County’s Antelope Valley.

“I’m about as spread thin as a ranger can get,” laughed McAdams, 49, a state park ranger for 22 years, with 15 years at his present assignment.

He is the ranger for Saddleback Butte, Piute Butte, the Antelope Valley Indian Museum, the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve and the newly acquired Arthur Ripley unit.

McAdams leaves his home in Lancaster early each morning, and by the time his workday is finished he has visited each park. He drives 120 miles in his Department of Parks and Recreation pickup from one park to another.

“A lot of my time is spent answering visitors’ questions,” McAdams said. “I drive into a park. People spot me in my ranger uniform and pickup. Almost always they ask: ‘Where have you been? We’ve been looking all over for you.’

“I apologize and explain I’m the only ranger for five parks. Then I answer their inquiries.”

At Saddleback Butte, McAdams answers questions about buttes (Antelope Valley has a cluster of the small mountains), about camping (there are 50 campsites at Saddleback), about trails (five miles of trails here), about desert animals, plants, birds and trees.

At Piute Butte, McAdams gets questions about the geology of the spectacular solid granite outcroppings that form the tiny mountain. The butte is actually on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property, but it is administered by the state Parks and Recreation Department.

McAdams becomes an expert on Southern California Indians when he stops by the Antelope Valley Indian Museum, a private museum from 1928 until the state bought it in 1979.

The museum, which is filled with fascinating Indian artifacts and covered inside and out with striking Indian paintings, has walls formed by gigantic boulders. The museum has a curator, Edna Moore, and staff assistants. But McAdams is the only ranger assigned to it.

During spring, when the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve is a vivid sea of orange, four-petaled, nodding California poppies, McAdams informs visitors all about the state flower.

“I tell them how Adelbert von Chamisso, the renowned German author, poet, lyricist and botanist, in 1816 gave the plant its scientific name Eschscholzia californica ,” the ranger explained.

Von Chamisso was on a three-year global voyage aboard the scientific ship Rurik when he went ashore in California and identified the poppy as a new species. He named the plant after his good friend Johann Frederick Eschscholzia, the Rurik’s surgeon.

McAdams also tells visitors to the poppy reserve that it was nickels, dimes, quarters and dollars contributed by schoolchildren throughout California that paid for the 1,745-acre reserve in 1976 and its interpretive center. The interpretive center is open only when the poppies are in bloom, from mid-March to mid- or late May.

The rest of the year visitors to the park hike along its eight miles of trails and enjoy the desert landscape.

McAdams’ latest responsibility is 565 acres of Joshua and juniper forest that were willed to the state for use as a park by turkey farmer Arthur Ripley, who died last year.

“The gift came as a total surprise. The land is five miles west of the poppy reserve. Perhaps he was impressed with the way we managed the land there,” the ranger said of Ripley.

McAdams patrols all five parks each day looking for signs of vandalism and theft of desert trees and plants. He answers the phones in the ranger stations if he is there when they ring. He makes out reports. He collects camping and visitor fees. He has numerous other responsibilities.

“When I first came here 15 years ago there was just one park, Saddleback Butte. I could spend time patroling the trails on foot, see how the birds, animal and plant life were doing, devote more time to park visitors. Now just about all I see is from the windows of my truck,” McAdams sighed.

Budget constraints, he said, have prevented the hiring of more rangers. So he does it all himself.