The Inn Crowd

William White has been practicing medicine and listening to his patients’ stories for 33 years in Sierra Madre. And he’s worried that those stories, which tie yesterday’s characters to today’s tiny foothill town, are “disappearing as the people disappear.”

“There’s such a wonderful history that we will lose unless we record it,” he says.

The best way to do it, White figures, is to save a place that seems to be home to so many tales.

So a year ago, with the support of Sierra Madre’s active Historical Preservation Society, he created a band of 250 volunteers to restore a small, wooden, flimsy-walled building that housed a restaurant called Lizzie’s Trail Inn at the base of the Mt. Wilson Trail. Making a museum out of the turn-of-the-century inn, which closed for good in the mid-1940s, may take another four years. White figures it’s worth it.

“If you use Lizzie’s, you can focus in on all kinds of history into the town,” he said. “It leads you into the mountains, into how the early settlers started, how the town really began.”

Lizzie’s began in the early 1900s as the Douglas Lunch Stand at the start of the 7 1/2-mile Mt. Wilson Trail, providing hikers with refreshments as they returned from their trek to the Mt. Wilson Observatory.

The lunch stand grew more popular as several resorts opened along narrow trails in the San Gabriel Mountains. You either hiked or took pack animals.

“The big attraction at the time was to rent your donkey for a dollar, send up your supplies with it, and go up to the resorts for a little vacation,” White said.

In 1925, a woman named Lizzie Stoppel McElwain bought the stand, and Lizzie’s Trail Inn was born. In the 10 years that she owned it, McElwain’s restaurant was a popular stop. She lived next door, in the Richardson home, which was built in 1864 and is the oldest home in Sierra Madre.

McElwain “was not only a good businesswoman, she was also well liked,” said Phyllis Chapman, a local historian.

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Part of what made the inn so popular was McElwain’s simple, unchanging menu: fried chicken, ravioli, potato salad, cole slaw and baked beans, for 65 cents.

“John Wayne came to Lizzie’s when he was just starting out in those cheap westerns, before he became real popular,” recalled Jim Heasley, an 80-year-old Sierra Madre resident.

Heasley, who worked as a packer on the trails, swears he has yet to taste better. “Everyone tried to copy her cooking, but they could never get the flavor right,” he said.

Lizzie’s was also known for the still McElwain operated in the northwest room of the Richardson home. During Prohibition she’d frequently be raided, but it never stopped her.

“She’d go pay her fine of two or three hundred dollars and come back and do the same thing,” Chapman said.

McElwain gave up the restaurant shortly before she died of breast cancer. The Orme family ran it for another decade, keeping the same name and menu.

Historians already knew that the Richardson home had hiding spaces under the floor for liquor, and that slot machines had been hidden throughout the home. During the restoration project, somebody told White about Maurice Orme, who’d lived in the house as a boy.

Orme, 65, now an Arcadia real estate agent, told White he remembered discovering the slots while sweeping. “I’d make two or three dollars every morning in spending money from coins people dropped,” Orme told a reporter.

Those slivers of history are just a few of the unexpected rewards White has come across since embarking on the restoration.

The historical society had partially restored the inn two decades ago, trying to save it from being torn down, but a succession of earthquakes stymied that plan.

Under White, $10,000 in private donations has been raised to rebuild the inn, and volunteers with skills ranging from architecture to interior design have been recruited.

Historical information and photos have poured in, like the one of Jim Heasley eating a plate of his beloved fried chicken at Lizzie’s.

“Whatever we needed, we just got on the phone and asked around,” White said. “ ‘Who’s the best roofer? Plumber?’ This is a small town and if you need someone’s help, they’ll usually donate whatever they can.”

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So far, workers have repaired the inn’s foundation, have done some interior redecorating and have collected donations of period furniture. On Oct. 26, the restorers will host a hike up to Orchard Camp, complete with pack animals, starting from Lizzie’s.

Heasley would love to be packing one of those mules, but age has conspired against him.

“Through my whole life, what I learned while packing mules has come in handy,” he said. “We used to bring everything you can think of up to those camps--everything from Hershey bars to bathtubs--and it all either had to go on the back of a man or a mule.”