L.A. Scene / Then and Now

The Happy Bottom Riding Club--a dude ranch complete with a landing strip, two bars, a dance hall and a motel--once occupied 380 acres east of Rosamond in the Antelope Valley.

Owned by legendary flier Pancho Barnes, the recreational ranch also featured a restaurant, rodeo corral and civilian pilot-training school.

The tough-talking Barnes worked hard to make the club an oasis for the servicemen at nearby Muroc Army Air Base (now Edwards Air Force Base). She hired women to dance with the airmen, and the club had as many as 400 guests for Wednesday night dances during its prime in the late 1940s and early ‘50s.

There were even underwater ballets in the club’s pool featuring nude women. A “Notice of Non-Responsibility” was posted at the club that read: “We’re not responsible for the bustling and hustling that may go on here. Lots of people bustle, and some hustle. . . . But that’s their business, and a very old one.”

The Air Force tried to prove that Barnes’ popular hostesses were prostitutes and that she was guilty of undermining the morals of the men on the base.

But the Air Force could not prove the allegations, and the case was thrown out of court. Barnes then filed a $1-million suit against the Air Force, claiming it had insulted her by calling her a madam. She won an out-of-court settlement of about $400,000.

The club became a flyboy hangout, and Gen. Jimmy Doolittle and ace pilot Chuck Yeager were its first official members when Barnes made it private in an attempt to control membership. Doolittle is credited with coming up with the club’s name after a long ride on a fresh horse. He said the ride gave him “a happy bottom.”

It was the beginning of the end for the hangout when the Air Force decided it needed the middle of Barnes’ ranch for a runway. But before the legal battle could be settled, the buildings on the ranch mysteriously burned down in 1953. The runway was never built.

Barnes’ family would never have predicted that her life would turn out as it did. She was born Florence Leontine Lowe at the turn of the century in San Marino. Her grandfather was Thaddeus S.C. Lowe--for whom Mt. Lowe above Pasadena was named.

Her first marriage was to the Rev. Rankin Barnes, but her mother’s hopes that the clergyman’s dignity would turn her into a pious lady were never realized. The couple had a son, Billy, who was killed in his 30s while flying in an air show. Pancho claimed that her husband slept with her only once, and that was when Billy was conceived.

Pancho acquired her nickname in 1927 when, disguised as a man, she served on the crew of a banana boat that was running guns to Mexican revolutionaries.

When she took up flying in 1928, she signaled her rejection of her marriage and high society by buzzing the Episcopal church in Pasadena during her husband’s Sunday sermons. Though officially married to the preacher until 1942, she declared herself a free woman when she learned to fly. She once said flying made her feel like a “sex maniac in a whorehouse with a credit card.”

There were three more marriages: to a flight student, which lasted a couple of weeks; to a magician, for less than a year, and to her ranch foreman, Eugene (Mac) McKendry, for about 15 years.

Yeager, who was the first pilot to break the sound barrier, gave Barnes away when she wed McKendry, before 1,500 tipsy airmen and others. The crowd witnessed her wearing a dress for the first time in years.

Barnes flew in many air-adventure movies of the 1930s, including Howard Hughes’ “Hell’s Angels.” In 1930 she beat Amelia Earhart’s air-speed record by flying at 196.19 m.p.h.

She had a foul mouth and a disregard for the conventions of the day. She was seldom seen in anything but breeches and cowboy boots and, according to Yeager’s wife, Glennis, had a face “like a mud fence.”

Almost broke by 1933, she sold an old apartment building in Los Angeles and her 30-room mansion in San Marino and bought 80 acres of desert farmland, which she parlayed into 380 acres by 1947. The Happy Bottom Riding Club thrived.

Barnes died of cancer in 1975. Her body was not found for about a week, and most of her 55 dogs were found dead with her.

Every September for the past 11 years, thousands of people have attended the Pancho Barnes Memorial Barbecue. A band plays on the foundation of what was the clubhouse. Proceeds fund a Flight Test Center Museum at Edwards, where relics from Barnes’ life will be on display.