In Prejudiced Era, Ranch Welcomed Dudes of All Colors

In the 1920s and ‘30s, the cowboy was the classic American hero. On radio and in the movies, he rode dashing horses, sang simple Western songs and always managed to lasso a happy ending. Americans eager to emulate the clean-living hero flocked to a new kind of place for grown-up recreation, the dude ranch.

But that way of living was closed to African Americans, who encountered segregation even on vacation.

Murray’s Dude Ranch changed that. The 35-acre resort in Apple Valley was not far from where cowpoke couple Dale Evans and Roy Rogers would buy a ranch, but Nolie and Lela Murray beat them to the high desert by nearly 30 years.

The ranch, later owned by actress-singer Pearl Bailey, is gone now. But mention Murray’s Dude Ranch to its “alumni” and they remember: Southern fried chicken, moonlight horseback rides, tennis and baseball games, dancing, hay rides and a strong chlorine smell in the pool.

The locals used to swim at the ranch -- and sometimes sneak in without paying. Among them was Felix Diaz, now 69, a former Victorville city councilman.

“I used to ride my bike there with my buddies, and later we drove our jalopies out to Murray’s, where we’d swim for 25 cents,” Diaz said. “When I saw Murray, who was always eating peanuts out of his overall pockets, I’d say, ‘Hey, Mr. Murray, when are you going to clean this pool? It’s filthy.’ ”

“You come swimming on Sunday, and I’ll clean it on Monday,” he’d respond.

Murray knew what was going on, but still, “he’d toss me a quarter

With the quarter Diaz saved on admission and the quarter Murray gave him, Diaz always bought a chicken-fried steak sandwich for 50 cents.

The ranch was open to all who could afford the $30 a week for bed, board and rides. Lena Horne, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and boxing champions Joe Louis and “Hammering Henry” Armstrong were among its clientele, as were white celebrities such as Kate Smith and Hedda Hopper.

Murray’s got a real boost in 1938, when singing cowboy Herb Jeffries, black America’s answer to Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, starred in two black musical westerns filmed at the ranch.

But the real heroes were the Murrays, city slickers from Los Angeles who started their enterprise as a retreat for underprivileged and troubled urban children. Eventually it would attract thousands of guests and become one of the first integrated dude ranches in the nation.

In 1913, Lela, a plump nurse who stood less than 5 feet tall, met Nolie, a 6-foot businessman, at a Los Angeles church. The couple soon married, and the following year Nolie opened Murray’s Pocket Billiard Emporium & Cigar Store on East 9th Street. But as the business succeeded, Lela’s health began to fail. Her colds and lung ailments persuaded the couple that the desert would be better for her.

In 1922, the Murrays paid $100 for 35 acres of desert plateau, bisected by Route 66.

They envisioned turning a landscape of Joshua trees, yucca and mesquite into a haven for youngsters and a prosperous dude ranch.

For a time, commercial apple growers did well in this place 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles, on the desert side of the San Bernardino Mountains. But in the early 1930s, the orchards withered in the face of the Depression and rising water costs.

The Murrays prospered, however. They had dug a 250-foot well and built cottages, a barn, a windmill and a water tower. The childless couple were ready for the first dozen street urchins who had been caught up in minor mischief and sent to the ranch by the courts.

Clyde, a young black boy, was always picking fights with white children. One day Lela sat him down and said: “You like flowers, don’t you?”

He nodded.

“You don’t like just pink roses? You like white, yellow and red roses because they are all beautiful, right?”

Again, Clyde nodded.

“Why then should you like only Negro children?” Lela asked. “People are people, just as flowers are flowers, whether they are white, yellow or black.” It made sense to Clyde, who behaved for the rest of his seven-year stint at the ranch.

Beginning in 1934, the Victorville Chamber of Commerce sponsored annual rodeos to promote the town.

By 1937, Hollywood celebrities had begun showing up. They included actress Clara Bow, the “It Girl,” and her husband, Rex Bell, along with singing cowboys Tex Ritter and Hopalong Cassidy.

But the crowd’s favorite was heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, who held court for thousands of visitors at Murray’s ranch over the years.

After Life magazine published several photographs of Louis relaxing at the ranch in 1937, letters arrived from across the country inquiring about the cost of a stay.

Business boomed. City slickers saddled their own horses, milked the cows, fed the chickens, gathered the eggs, dried the dishes and never had to dress up for dinner.

In 1938 Jeffries -- the first black singing cowboy, sometimes billed as Jeffrey -- showed up to film “The Bronze Buckaroo” and “Harlem Rides the Range.”

Bell Mountain, behind the Murrays’ ranch, appears in “Buckaroo,” along with the corrals, barns, water tower, windmill and red-roofed cottages.

In the late 1930s, African American architect Paul Williams often stayed at the ranch. He was working on plans for a new Arrowhead Springs Hotel after a wildfire destroyed the old one in 1938.

Louis returned to the ranch in 1939 to train before his April 17 title bout with Jack Roper at Los Angeles’ Wrigley Field. Louis defended his title for the sixth time, knocking his opponent out in the first round.

In 1941, Louis went back to the high desert to prep for his match with light-heavyweight Billy Conn, whom he knocked out in the 13th round.

As helpful as the celebrity trade was, Murray handled his own advertising. At the ranch entrance on Route 66, he parked an old truck and put a sign on it reading: “There are only two places in the world to go, Murray’s Dude Ranch and Paris, France.”

During World War II, celebrities performed at the Victorville USO, which was open only to white soldiers.

When an African American National Guard unit came to town, “White Trade Only” signs appeared in the windows of local businesses. Lela, a member of the Chamber of Commerce board, complained bitterly, but to no avail.

“There was nothing we could do. So we threw our own doors open to all soldiers, regardless of color,” Lela said in a 1947 Ebony magazine interview. “And we promptly killed business at the USO.”

Bailey, the actress and singer with the sexy, throaty drawl and droll sense of humor, would one day become a delegate to the United Nations known as America’s “ambassador of love.”

In 1943, she showed up at Murray’s with a USO troupe. In her autobiography, “The Raw Pearl,” she recalled how much she enjoyed it.

On the April day in 1945 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt died, a writer staying at another nearby resort went walking in the desert to deal with her grief. She happened upon Murray’s ranch. Seeing white children sleeping alongside black children, she was struck by a thought: This is something FDR would have liked.

When her story about the ranch appeared in the Daily People’s World, the official newspaper of the Communist Party U.S.A., the Murrays again got letters from all over the nation inquiring about rates.

“I could tell by their names,” Lela recalled, that the letters were from “white folks.” She wrote back, telling them that they had made a mistake, that the ranch was “owned and operated by Negros.”

She was tickled when the same people responded “that was fine with them; when could they come?”

Lela died in 1949, at 70, and was buried at Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles. Her grave is near that of Biddy Mason, a former slave who became a formidable L.A. businesswoman.

Murray remarried in the 1950s to a local schoolteacher. By 1955, they had sold the ranch to Bailey and her husband Louis Bellson for $65,000.

Bailey renamed it the Lazy B.

She said that “people would pass by and look at this huge ranch and say to themselves, ‘There are actors in there leading a glamorous life. I wonder what those Lazy Bs are doing there.’ ”

Nearly a decade later, they sold the property.

Too many Hollywood “freeloaders” were coming too often and staying too long, Bailey said.