Freedom of Frontier Is Preserved at Will Rogers Ranch in Palisades

You can still find the myth of the American West high in the Pacific Palisades hills. There the image of wide open spaces, easy living and limitless opportunity is preserved, guarded by the state parks department and visited by thousands of people every day. The last resting place of that myth is the Will Rogers ranch, the onetime home of the quintessential Western everyman. This is no pristine shrine or grand palace, but a rambling, comfortable, ah-shucks kind of place that reminds us of what life in Southern California could be like.

Rogers bought the ranch in 1928 at the peak of his career, when he was one of the largest box office stars in Hollywood and a popular columnist. For a time, he maintained another house in Beverly Hills, and on weekends he would take the dirt road that was Sunset Boulevard to a little gabled cottage that he had bought along with the extensive ranchero of Boca de Santa Monica. He began renovating and enlarging the house to suit both the myth of Will Rogers as the personification of the cowboy and his love of entertaining. At the time of his death in 1935, the ranch had five guest bedrooms and four family bedrooms, a baronial, two-story living room and a collection of artifacts from as far afield as India.

But all of this size was camouflaged by the rough-hewn character of the house. Rogers went through five architects, but the main imprint on the house is his. Most of the walls are covered with knotty pine; rafters and beams are exposed everywhere, and all of the furniture looks as if it were gathered from the attics of relatives.

The outside of the house is similarly low-key. It is made up of two main pieces. To the south is the enlarged original house, where guests stayed in a second floor overlooking a room with the ceiling raised enough for Rogers to do rope tricks. The north building contained the private quarters. The two pieces are separated by an outdoor courtyard, where Rogers fired up his barbecue, and are connected by a long veranda that was once the only pathway between the two structures.

Seen from the outside, the Rogers ranch looks like an ambling and amiable mess that commands the sloping hillside overlooking the ocean with a sense of ease and comfort, rather than crowning it with grandeur. Inside, bits of Western Americana are crammed into the barn-like rooms, almost suffocating the viewer with their insistent statement of Rogers’ roots. Yet the interiors, like the outside, are natural and comfortable.

Will Rogers was probably one of the last stars in whom Americans could really believe. His modesty, wit and compassion seemed completely natural, and the ranch reflects those qualities. Yet, even this ranch was a myth. It was, after all, the home of a Hollywood star uprooted from his native Oklahoma, here re-creating the vanished freedom of the frontier.

In 1942, the Rogers family donated a portion of the 300-acre ranch to the state. It is now part of the 186-acre Will Rogers State Historic Park run by the state Department of Parks and Recreation.

Aaron Betsky teaches and writes about architecture.

Will Rogers Home, Will Rogers State Park,

14235 Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades

Open daylight hours. There is a $5 parking fee. Self-guided audio tours are available. In addition, guided tours of the house are given. For information, call (213) 454-8212.