Look for the One With the Signs in Front : Private Highway Rest Stop Serves 2 Men--and Plenty of Friends

You can’t miss Ed and Junior’s half acre 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles on U.S. 395 in this old mining town.

It’s the fence of highway signs that catches your eye--a Speed Limit 50 sign is one of the gates.

Icy, Dips, Yield, Watch Out For Cattle, Right Lane Closed Ahead, Thru Traffic Merge Left and School Bus Stop 400 Feet are but a few of the nearly 100 road warnings that line the fence.

A Caltrans official stopped one day wanting to know where the signs came from. “He thought we stole them. I explained we bought them from a salvage yard. I showed him the receipts,” said Ed Smith, 67.

Motorists and tour buses stop out of curiosity when they spot the fence and the incredible clutter littering the half acre.

A Welcome sign hangs out front.

There are Caltrans rest stops along the freeways. Then there’s Ed and Junior’s place.

David (Junior) McLarnon, 67, and Smith are pack rats. They collect everything. Using a metal detector, McLarnon collects memorabilia from old mining camps in the area.

Smith comes from a long line of pack rats. He has cans and packages of food and medicine, toys, dolls, buttons, hats, tools, kitchen utensils, furniture and much much more that he, his father and grandfather before him collected.

He picks up an old razor blade sharpener and says: “Things like this most people never saw before.”

“We get folks from around the world dropping in on us. Even a man from France was here. People stop, stretch their legs, spend a couple of hours looking at our stuff and visiting, then go on their way.”

Hunting and fishing friends heading north or south overnight at Ed and Junior’s. So do truck drivers passing through. They sleep in their campers and trucks in a parking lot on the half acre or under the stars on a row of beds on the roof of Smith and McLarnon’s house.

“We enjoy visitors. We don’t charge anybody. A lot of them would like to buy some of the stuff. We don’t sell anything,” said McLarnon.

The two men have been hunting and fishing buddies for 40 years. Smith paid $760 for the half acre and a 1902 mining shack in 1974.

For the first few years they stayed overnight in the shack on their trips to and from the High Sierra. Smith lives in Orange, McLarnon in Chula Vista. They’re both married with children and grandchildren.

McLarnon retired in 1979. Smith retired five years ago. McLarnon spends 90% of his time here, Smith 60%. Neither of their wives ever comes to Red Mountain.

The two men added several rooms and patios to the mining shack, all constructed of scrap material. The patios, rooms and the rest of the property are filled with what they call “PPJ”--pre-plastic junk.

In his collection McLarnon has three dozen turn-of-the-century watches thrown away by miners when the watches stopped running. He has mining equipment, rusted silverware, coins, porcelain pots and pans and dozens of skillets. Old iron bedposts serve as borders for plants and trees.

A mining camp outhouse has carpet on the floor, walls and ceiling. A highway sign on the outhouse door proclaims: “No Parking 8 a.m. to 12 Noon.” Smith has 10,000 sea shells he collected in the South Pacific when he was in the Navy in World War II.

Many who visit the two men are regulars who drop in and say hello whenever driving by Ed and Junior’s private rest stop. It’s a stop no one ever forgets.