JAUNTS : Peter Strauss Ranch Going Back in Time With Beatles Music : Free concert is billed as a Mother’s Day special. Visitors can learn about the site’s colorful history with a docent-led tour.

The lake is gone, and the vast swimming pool that once held 3,000 swimmers is anempty pit, but the Peter Strauss Ranch--called Lake Enchanto in its heyday--will be rocking Sunday.

The National Park Service, now owner of the ranch, is offering a free concert of Beatles music--billed as a Mother’s Day special--on the grounds. The two-hour Beatles nostalgia trip will be performed by John Wood’s group, J. P. Nightingale.

Whether you dig the Beatles or not, the ranch--nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains near Agoura--is a nice Mother’s Day getaway for mom and others. The best way to see it and learn more about its colorful history is to take a docent-led tour Sunday.

The two-hour tour includes a one-mile hike over a well-groomed trail along the hillside overlooking the ranch. Canopied by sprawling oak trees, the trail is a good one for novice or young hikers. Keep an eye out for peacocks skittering through the brush.

The tour takes you back to 1923 when auto designer Harry Miller, famous for patenting the carburetor, built the white-trimmed stone ranch house along Triunfo Creek. It was a weekend retreat for Miller and his wife, who also built an aviary and collected wild animals like bear, mountain lion, deer, and even parrots and monkeys.

The Depression wiped out Miller, according to the National Park Service, and, in the early 1930s, the ranch was purchased by Warren Shobert and Arthur Edeson, two Malibu Lake residents. They opened the secluded ranch to the public and marketed it as a “fairyland of charm and paradise.”

Charles Hinman, a wealthy real estate speculator and lawyer, bought it in the late 1930s and marketed it as Lake Enchanto--so named for the small lake he created by constructing a dam on Triunfo Creek. By the 1950s, the place was buzzing with amusement rides, children’s summer camps, parties, picnics under eucalyptus trees, fishing, swimming, boating, dancing, concerts in a stone-terraced amphitheater and overnight cabanas.

Sometimes as many as 5,000 Southlanders would flock to the ranch, drawn by the giant swimming pool, which was touted as the largest west of the Rockies. Visitors listened to big band music and danced on a classy patio laid with imported Italian terrazzo tile.

When Hinman left the area for several years, his Lake Enchanto languished and his later plans to rebuild it into a new park with miniaturized world sites fizzled. By then, the lake was gone--washed away by flooding on the creek.

Then along came actor Peter Strauss, who saw the ranch when he was filming the television miniseries “Rich Man, Poor Man” near Malibu Lake in 1976. (Strauss was the “good” brother, Rudy Jordache, in the series.)

Despite its run-down condition, Strauss bought the place as a home in 1977 for $200,000. He fixed it up, rebuilding the house and improving the grounds. It was his idea to plant the big cactus garden you see in the driveway.

“He collected the cactus for the garden, and he comes back sometimes to check on it,” said docent Daphne Elliott, who will lead the Sunday tour. (Strauss, who now lives in Ojai, starred last week in the television remake of the movie “The Yearling,” based on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ novel.)

Busy with his career, Strauss sold the ranch to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in 1983, and the National Park Service picked it up in 1987, adding it to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

It’s now an idyllic retreat, a far cry from the hustle and bustle of an earlier time. But on her tours, Elliott continually comes across people who visited the ranch during its heyday. “Some of them say they learned to swim there,” she said.

Details

* WHAT: Beatles music concert and tour of Peter Strauss Ranch.

* WHEN: Sunday; walking tour at 10 a.m. and concert at 2 p.m.

* WHERE: Ranch is at 30000 Mulholland Highway, Agoura. Take the Kanan Road exit off the Ventura Freeway and drive south 2.8 miles. Turn left on Troutdale Road for a quarter of a mile. Turn left at Mulholland and immediately right into the parking lot.

* PHONE: (818) 597-9192.

* FYI: Picnic tables are set up on the property near the creek. Free concert is the first in a series to be presented at the ranch, which is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.