Horses to Be Evicted at State Park

Worried that descendants of Will Rogers may try to reclaim the 180-acre state park in Pacific Palisades that bears the late humorist’s name, officials said Wednesday they are suspending equestrian activities there to halt “continuing environmental damage” caused by horses.

Forty-five horses boarded by renters in stables built 77 years ago by Rogers will be evicted in January. Officials will decide in the future whether polo matches that have been staged there since Rogers introduced the sport to the ranch (and inspired the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel) in the 1920s will be allowed to continue next year.

The decision angered horse owners, who said it will be difficult to find nearby places to board their animals on short notice. They contend that the eviction is an affront to the memory of Rogers, a cowboy-comic whose homespun tales and jokes were a staple of early radio in the United States until his death in a plane crash in 1935.

“If Will Rogers wasn’t dead, he’d keel over to hear that there won’t be horses here anymore,” said Julia Spencer, a horse trainer and groom who was working with a mare named Lynntez on Wednesday in Rogers’ main barn, a rambling wooden structure with an unusual enclosed riding ring at its center.

Out front are the graves of Rogers’ favorite polo pony and roping horse, Bootlegger and Soapsuds. Inside is a huge blowup of a 1920s photograph of Rogers and his riding buddies standing in front of the newly built structure. “Here’s the barn that jokes built,” is the inscription in Rogers’ handwriting across the bottom of the picture.

Next to it is printed another saying ascribed to the humorist: “There’s something the matter with a man who doesn’t like horses.”

State parks officials said they like horses, but they are worried about the damage the animals are causing to the historic barn and grounds on the ranch above Sunset Boulevard, and about the runoff of manure into a local creek. Also, they face complaints that the state is subsidizing the elite by renting out the horse stalls.

Rusty Areias, director of the state parks system, said horse owners will be given 90 days to find new homes for their mounts. He indicated that some equestrian usage of Will Rogers State Historic Park will resume in the future if its current “serious problems” are solved.

“We are in violation of state environmental regulations and our own general plan for the management of Will Rogers State Historical Park. Unfortunately, many of these problems are related to the way horses are currently managed and housed at the park,” Areias said Wednesday.

At the same time, he said, the state will launch a $2-million historic renovation of the grounds. Advice will be sought from the public, horse owners and the Rogers family, he added.

The family’s approval of maintenance and operation of the park is key to its survival, other officials said Wednesday. Rogers’ widow, Betty, donated the ranch to the state in 1944, with a provision that the property would be returned to the family if it was not properly maintained and utilized.

Parks administrators say they were contacted in July by Chuck Rogers, a grandson of Will Rogers, on behalf of the family.

“He expressed deep concern that the [ranch] was not being adequately maintained as a historic park, as stipulated in the gift grant,” says a state report released Wednesday. Rogers “notified the department that the family was considering a lawsuit.”

Rogers, an Arizona resident, could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But an assessment of the ranch by a team that included state architects, historians and archeologists found a variety of problems, including pollution runoff from the stables into nearby Rustic Canyon Creek and damage the horses were causing to Rogers’ barn.

The boarding operation itself, run by a concessionaire under a state contract, was being perceived by some as “an exclusive operation of the rich” that excluded the public, the team’s report said.

Horse owners dispute that. Spencer, who cares for five animals boarded there, said damage caused by horses gnawing on barn doors could be easily repaired--except that die-hard preservationists are opposed to replacing “a single original plank and nail” in the old structure.

Although such celebrities as Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger keep horses there, most owners are “not wealthy, famous people,” Spencer said.

Edwina Williams, who boards two horses at Will Rogers, said people may have to travel as far as San Juan Capistrano to find similar accommodations. Some local stables have waits of a year or more for openings.

“I was so shocked and mind-boggled and stunned at this,” said Williams, of Beverly Hills. She pays $1,000 a month to board her two horses and visits them daily.

“They’re going to have a ghost town here. Tourists are going to come to Will Rogers’ home and not see any horses,” she said. “It’s going to be a sad place.”