Roundup: April 12 2023

Roundup Synopsis

Will be posted once the next Branding Iron is Published!

Photos from the Roundup

Roundup: March 8 2023

Roundup Synopsis

Will be posted when the next version of the Branding Iron is posted!

Photos from the Roundup

Roundup: February 8 2023

Roundup Synopsis

Taken From Branding Iron 309 Winter 2023. 

Firearms history through the lens of multiple generations of shooting Dillons. That was our treat in February, as the L.A. Corral’s own Dr. Brian Dillon regaled attendees with a swift, yet detailed, overview of the “shootin’ irons” of Western American history. From the smooth-bore matchlocks of Spanish first contact, to the modern, rifled auto-loaders of the 20th century, the guns that won the West ranged far beyond just the famed 1873 Winchester. We were pleasantly reminded of this fact by the variety of arms, and the folks who wielded them, presented by our eminently qualified former sheriff, and firearms instructor, Brian Dillon.
The aforementioned matchlocks may have been the first firearms present on the continent, but as Spain decided to leave, and stay gone, for a few centuries after their initial introduction in the North, these early irons had no impact on the history of the American West. Rather it was the muskets and rifles of the late 18th and early 19th centuries that first ventured into the West. Lewis and Clark’s expedition made use of later flintlock technology on their epic foray into the new American frontier; the first significant use of firearms west of the Mississippi.
Intrepid trappers, late of the old frontiers in what we now call the Southeast, were among the first to put long irons to use in the further reaches of the West. American adventurers in these early days preferred Pennsylvania rifles, while Canadians pushing west were more known for their use of smooth-bore muskets. The newly-invented percussion cap was too expensive and scarce to be of much utility in the unsettled country, and flintlocks remained in significant use by self-reliant types well into the middle of the 19th century.
The Gold Rush created a huge demand for iron in California, particularly of the defensive variety (after all, nobody will protect your claim but you). Use of the percussion cap quickly made revolvers the standard sidearm of every hunter, trapper, and miner in the rough new country. Perhaps the most iconic arm of the Gold Rush was the 1851 Colt Navy revolver. Six shots ready at the hip were invaluable in this lawless land.
The next major development in firearms was the metallic cartridge. Waterproof and durable, it made reloading a snap, and allowed for reliable mechanisms beyond the revolving cylinder to be used in chambering rounds. One such mechanism was the unforgettable lever action. Patented in 1854 by the Volcanic Repeating Arms Co., it evolved into the action used in the Winchester Model 1873, fabled as “The Gun that Won the West.”
Smokeless powder followed as the next significant leap in the technology of shooting irons, and its introduction heralded the end of the Old West. The Krag-Jorgensen was the first gun adopted by the U.S. military to utilize smokeless powder. There was no turning back from here, and on came the 1903 Springfield of WWI fame, followed by the Colt M1911. A thoroughly modern selfloading pistol, the 1911 represented the end of Old West arms, as by the time of its adoption, the West had largely been won.
The history of the American West can be described fairly thoroughly by telling the history of its weapons. Likewise, the history of American firearms can be largely understood through examination of our country’s westward expansion. And to have those descriptions provided by a compatriot whose ancestors were present on both avenues of that historical journey is a privilege we Westerners should relish. Many thanks to Brian for this presentation.
— Alan Griffin

Photos from the Roundup

Roundup: January 11 2023

Roundup Synopsis

Taken From Branding Iron 309 Winter 2023. 

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum is located on a steep hill through the Santa Susana Pass in beautiful Simi Valley, California. It began its mission in 1991 to preserve all of Ronald Reagan’s presidential and personal belongings. The Reagan Library and Museum’s claim to fame is the Air Force One Boeing 707 that former President Reagan himself flew on. The speaker at the Westerners’ January 2023 Roundup, Supervisory Archivist Ira Pemstein, provided a unique insiders’ perspective into the workings of this remarkable institution.
The presidential library system developed gradually over time. Initially, presidential records were a former president’s personal property after his tenure of office, unless voluntarily given to the government as a deed of gift. The handling of records became more formalized with the Presidential Libraries Act of 1955. This act meant that once a president constructed his own building, the National Archives could donate the former president’s work to the library. The second law which came in 1978 was the Presidential Records Act, which specifically required all of former President Richard Nixon’s records to remain in Washington D.C., and not be taken anywhere outside of fifty miles from the capital. The Presidential Records Act also transferred ownership of all documents acquired or created during a presidential term to the federal government, to be managed by the National Archives. Ronald Reagan was the first president to be affected by this law, and all the libraries since Reagan have fallen under the Presidential Records Act.
The Freedom of Information Act allows the public to request specific documents from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Most of the records predate the internet and are paper-based, and have yet to be digitized. Some of the archives are preserved in airtight containers and folders, or are refrigerated. Everything mentioned about the president by the three major broadcasting networks were recorded by the White House, including all the debates, campaign events, and Bob Hope specials. The Audio-Visual Archivist oversees photographs, film reels, and audio and video cassettes. The original formats can be viewed on VHS players and film projectors, which are preserved just as carefully as the forty-year-old media that they play.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library has 65 million pages of documents that cover Reagan’s entire life, as well as two-thirds of his career in Hollywood and his term as the Governor of California. The family-operated Ronald Reagan Foundation supplements areas that the federal government cannot, because the material from before and after his presidency does not belong to the federal government. Here is where the Reagan Foundation and the federal government come together. The Reagan family has custody and ownership of the pre- and post-presidential items that are housed at the Ronald Reagan Library and the federal government serves them to the public with the family’s permission.
— Darran Davis

Roundup: December 14, 2022

Roundup Synopsis

Taken From Branding Iron 309 Winter 2023. 

December’s Roundup saw the L.A. Corral welcome guest speaker Steve Lech as he took us back almost a hundred years before tens of thousands of people flocked to the Coachella Valley for the biggest music festival in the world. Mr. Lech introduced us to a woman named Susie Keef Smith (1900- 1988), who created photographic postcards of this majestic California desert landscape.
Susie’s love for photography began as a child when she contracted polio at the age of twelve. Her uncle gifted her a large format camera to use while she was confined to a wheelchair. Through perseverance and to doctors’ amazement, she began to walk again. In 1926 with encouragement from her father, Susie became the postmaster of Mecca, California. During the 1920s many Americans had an image of the California deserts as desolate wastelands with no vegetation. This is why they were commonly known as the “Devil’s Garden.” Most people were unaware of the attractions of the Joshua trees, or the dazzling Salton Sea. Susie began to take photographs of the desert landscape which propelled her to the forefront of the golden age of postcards.
During this era Susie encouraged people to travel out west to see the California Desert for themselves. Susie captured photos for postcards by traveling through the desert on a Ford Model T Truck, that was given to Susie by her father on one condition: that she disassemble the vehicle and put it back together again. This she accomplished, and it started on the first crank, proving her skills as a motorist.
Photographic postcards were great for advertising the land and for people to write to each other. This form of postcards created a medium that encouraged people to venture out to the California desert. The routes Susie chose to photograph were attractive to travelers because this was during the time the Colorado River Aqueduct was being built. The aqueduct channeled water through the desert thus enabling desert communities to become popular vacation destinations. The best-known example was Palm Springs. Smith took pictures of the aqueduct construction workers and their equipment. Susie’s photos allowed people to visually grasp the mystic beauties of the desert landscape. A large number of the locations Susie photographed are now part of the Coachella
Valley Preserve.
— Darran Davis

Photos from the Roundup

Roundup: November 9 2022

Roundup Synopsis

Taken From Branding Iron 308 Fall 2022.

Michael Johnson didn’t have a clever hat when he showed up at the Roundup in November. Thankfully for us, though, he did have a clever head under his usual cowboy hat. Mike used that clever head to edify those of us in attendance on the subject of the Overland Mail Company. The company was, as its name implied, a mail route which ran over land, particularly the southwestern parts of our land from 1858 to 1861, carrying mail between San Francisco in the West and both St. Louis and Memphis in the East.
The Overland Mail Company was founded by John Warren Butterfield (1801- 1869) and, as such, is sometimes referred to as the Butterfield Overland Mail. The company’s founding was the result of Butterfield winning a bid for a contract offered by the federal government to carry mail to the West. John Butterfield had a background in transportation. Having cut his teeth driving coaches in New York, he progressed to ownership of forty coach lines in Utica, as well as successful ventures into steamboats on lake Erie and trains on the rails of western New York. In 1850 John’s stagecoach interests, under the Butterfield Wesson Company, were merged with the express companies of Wells & Co., and Livingston, Fargo & Co., to create The American Express Company. However, it was Butterfield, under his own name, who won the contract for the route to be run by what became the Overland Mail Company.
The route chosen by Butterfield was the longest overland mail route in the world, and was sometimes known as the Oxbow Route because of the way it curved through the southwestern territories, recently claimed by the U.S. from Mexico. The route, though long, had the advantage of being free of snow, which perhaps gave it an advantage over the Central Route which made its way across the prairie towards Utah.
Although Butterfield adamantly stated, in the rulebook he published for his employees, that no cash was to be carried by the company along the route, one story—a set of rumors shrouded by the veil of time—persists. The consistent threads of its narrative are two men, the sum of $60,000, and the settings of the Vallecito and Carrizo stations. One story has $60,000 being taken in gold, by two men, from a coach at the Carrizo station, then sees the two robbers shooting it out at the Vallecito station. Another tells a tale of two brothers arguing and killing each other at the Vallecito station. A third has a driver leaving Yuma with a $60,000 payload and no shotgun rider. Indians, after waylaying the solo driver, purportedly buried the coach near the Carrizo station, being interested only in the horses. Though, as Mike pointed out, it’s a bit hard to imagine the thieves going to the trouble of burying the stagecoach when they could much more easily have burned or left it. Was the Butterfield stage robbed? It’s unlikely we’ll ever know, but it’s not a bad bet.
All good things come to an end, however, and the wild days of the southern stage coach are no exception. The secession of the South and the outbreak of the Civil War saw operations along the Oxbow Route halted, its four-year flash-in-the-pan burnt out. After the war, the new railroad superseded the overland routes, and closed a significant chapter in the history of the West.
— Alan Griffin

Photos from the Roundup

To be posted soon!

Roundup: September 14 2022

Roundup Synopsis

Taken From Branding Iron 308 Fall 2022.

September’s Roundup saw the L.A. Corral welcome guest speaker George Geary as he cooked up a delectable feast for the palette of our nostalgia, guiding us on a trip down one of California’s best memory lanes. A celebrity chef with experience ranging from the kitchens of Disneyland to sets of “The Golden Girls”, Mr. Geary talked us through some of the highlights of his book, Made in California: the California-Born Burger Joints, Diners, Fast Food & Restaurants that Changed America. The book, available on Amazon (ISBN: 1945551917), features a plethora of California’s culinary quick-stop favorites, ranging from Bob’s Big Boy to Peet’s Coffee.
The theme of Mr. Geary’s lecture centered on the evolution, including name and location changes, of some of California’s most beloved casual eateries. One notable example was his charming anecdote about the early days of the McDonald’s restaurant. The McDonald brothers cut their teeth in the movie industry, and after not having much success in film, decided to purchase a theater in Glendora. When that venture went belly up, the brothers were left with a load of usherette uniforms. Rather than see their stock go to waste, they started a drive-in restaurant and clad some lovely carhops in the surplus duds. However, as Mr. Geary put it, “The boys liked the carhops too much… so they made the guys get out of their cars and order the food from the window.” Thus McDonald’s, originally called McDonald Brothers BBQ, was born.
Perhaps of particular interest to those of us familiar with the hot rods that descend on Burbank each week to show off their chrome at Bob’s Big Boy, is the somewhat unique story of that establishment’s early franchise model. Bob’s Pantry, as it was originally known, did not franchise its restaurants directly, but rather, it franchised the rights to its burger recipe. So, anyone among us familiar with the Eastern U.S. chains of Shoney’s or Frisch’s Big Boy now know why the burgers slung in those joints are so similar to those served at our beloved Burbank, California Bob’s… they’re actually cousins! George also told us about a similar situation with Dinah’s Family Restaurant near LAX. Apparently, Kentucky Fried Chicken once employed a similar model in franchising their product, and that’s why, long ago, Dinah’s had to pay the Colonel 4¢ for every chicken they sold.
George Geary deserves our thanks for his guided tour of California’s culinary heritage. His talk reminds us that these tasty treasures are fading fast from our California landscape. A fortunate few have been turned into landmarks and historic sites, but far too many are wasting away, awaiting the wrecking ball of progress. There are few things able to so viscerally connect us to our past as the old haunts of our youth. So, grab a copy of Made in California, call up your favorite guy or gal, hop in the old lead sled, and get out there to see these pieces of history before they’re all gone. Bon Appetit!
— Alan Griffin

Photos from the Roundup

To be posted soon!

Roundup: August 10 2022

Roundup Synopsis

Taken From Branding Iron 307 Summer 2022. 

In August, the Westerners welcomed Jillian Moore to the Corral. The Wyoming native, and Ph.D. candidate in English at Duquesne University, spoke of subjects related to her forthcoming dissertation. Her talk, entitled “Selling the Image of ‘The West’: Frontier Economies,” challenged us to take stock of what we enjoy about the American West, to ponder the reasons for our interest, and to take care to be appreciative of the history and culture of its Native inhabitants, rather than appropriative. Speaking on such topics in front of a body founded almost solely on appreciation of the West posed some danger, but Ms. Moore rather deftly navigated those choppy waters to enlighten where others may have admonished. If we were to distill the thesis of her discussion into a single phrase, perhaps the most apt would be, “Give credit where credit is due.”
Perhaps the most impactful section of the presentation featured a historic, Blackfoot-made capote, juxtaposed against a modern, Native-”inspired” coat from the Pendleton company. Ms. Moore highlighted the specific elements of the historic garment, illustrating its connection to a specific time, place, and ethnic group. No such specificity was present in the Pendleton coat, as it was simply a mishmash of Native-like designs in a stereotypically Southwestern color scheme. This comparison served to drive home the point that we should be wary of objects and ideas formed from disparate bits of the art and history of marginalized groups, like America’s indigenous communities, and forcing them through a cultural meat-grinder to arrive at something more readily digestible to consumers unfamiliar with the originals.
In the question-and-answer section following the main presentation, Ms. Moore reiterated that the intention of efforts to mitigate this type of co-option is not to demonize those who occasionally stray from appreciation into appropriation (“Let he who is without sin,” etc.), but rather to properly attribute artifacts and ideas to the cultures that bore them. Most scholars would never use a source in their research without citing it. The same thinking could be applied to consumers in the context of the art and artifacts of our indigenous neighbors. It is possible, and likely preferable, to spend our money on goods made by the people whose culture such products represent. Or, at the very least, we can give credit where credit is due.
— Alan Griffin

Speaker Jillian Moore and Sheriff Pete Fries

Roundup: March 9, 2022

Roundup Synopsis

Taken From Branding Iron 306 Spring 2022. 

In March, the Corral was treated to a talk by Nick Curry. Assuming the style of a fireside chat, Mr. Curry expounded on his research about a historic Angeleno of much importance, if little current recognition, Dan Murphy. Murphy was an early investor in the local economy and, along with men like Edward L. Doheny, helped shape the area into what it is today. In fact, Dan Murphy picked up with oil drilling in the area where Doheny left off, and became fabulously wealthy as a result. The foundation that resulted from the dissemination of his wealth has done much for education and the preservation of local history in Los Angeles.

Dan Murphy was born in 1858 in Pennsylvania, and came to Los Angeles by way of a family homestead in Kansas, which he shared with his parents and seven siblings. Murphy eventually moved out West and immediately formed an affinity for the railroad, working on a spur line that ran down to San Diego. Before long, he met Frank Monaghan, and the two had plans to bridge the Colorado River. Doing just that, they drew the attention of Charlie Crawford who tasked them with building a general store near the new bridge. In so doing, they founded the town of Needles in 1883.

The two men were known for their honesty, a rare commodity in the railroad business, and successfully ran the store until 1911. During their time in Needles, they founded a bank. This led them to invest in a number of mining and oil drilling operations throughout the region. Key to Dan Murphy’s future success was his purchase, sight-unseen, of land which would become the Brea Canyon Oil Company. The well, which continues to produce today, eventually left Murphy in possession of a fantastic mansion and a fortune of $200 million by the time of his death in 1939.

Having no children, Murphy entrusted his fortune to his niece Bernardine. Enter the Catholic church and the Los Angeles diocese. The Murphy family had been closely connected to the church for decades, so much so that Dan had once donated $1 million to the Pope in one lump sum. During her time in Rome, Bernardine, now the executor of the Murphy fortune, was wooed by an Italian prince. Los Angeles churchmen grew concerned that if Bernardine were to marry this man, then she, along with her fortune, would move to Rome and leave the Los Angeles diocese in the lurch. So, the church hatched a plan. A dissatisfied priest was found, released from his vows, and wed to Bernardine. Thus the Murphy fortune remained in Los Angeles. Now known as the Dan Murphy Foundation, it provides more money to Catholic causes today than even the Doheny Foundation.

The Dan Murphy Foundation was crucial to the formation of the archives put together by Westerners Living Legend Msgr. Francis Weber. That archive was, in turn, essential in gathering the information used for the most recent book about Dan Murphy entitled Ice and Oil, by Joseph Francis Ryan, reviewed in Branding Iron 303.
— Alan Griffin

Photos from the Roundup