ROLLING HILLS ESTATES : Gravel Magnate Linden Chandler Dies at 95

Gravel magnate Linden H. Chandler, who started out in the cement business by shoveling five truckloads of gravel a day, died last week. He was 95.

Chandler, a Rolling Hills Estates resident, died at his Northern California beach home in Cayucos, said his estate trustee, George Kamps.

Chandler started a one-man trucking company in 1939, driving to a Rolling Hills Estates gravel pit owned by Southwest Portland Cement five times a day and loading his truck with a shovel.

Chandler eventually bought the gravel deposit and 600 surrounding acres for $1 million in 1945.

As soldiers returned from World War II, construction boomed and Chandler began to make his fortune. He paid off the $1 million in 10 years.

The family-run Chandler’s Palos Verdes Sand and Gravel, a multimillion-dollar company, now owns 45,000 acres throughout Southern California, Kamps said.

Chandler’s grandchildren recently donated 20 acres to the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy and sold to Rolling Hills Estates an adjacent eight-acre parcel to form the Linden H. Chandler Preserve.

Chandler was an excellent horseman, Kamps said, and continued riding until age 85. Chandler then took up riding mules, which are less prone to throwing riders, and continued until he was 92.

“He was a 5-foot, 7-inch John Wayne,” Kamps said. “He was one tough hombre.”

Services and burial for Chandler were to be held Wednesday.

Chandler is survived by his wife, Helen; daughters Vivian Robertson, Muriel Berry and Karen Gavin; four stepchildren, nine grandchildren, 14 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandson.