And now, here's the back story

The Feb. 21 Acorn featured a story about Christopher Leps' new film "Ed & Vern's Rock Store." The film extols the nearly 100-year-old property as a mecca for local history as everything from a stagecoach stop to a celebrity motorcycle bar.

But wait, why would there be a stagecoach stop or a store of a bar in a remote Santa Monica Mountain (steep) location? Why would a stage climb up into the mountains when the easy rise to the Conejo Grade lies in the Conejo Valley below?

Right across Mullholland Highway from the Rock Store you find the answer to these riddles. The magic draw of the location is now hidden behind the gates of a lackluster mobile home park whose entrance is 50 feet from the front door of the Rock House.

Bubbling up from the underground is pure, hot alkaline mineral water that once fed a busy Seminole Hot Springs Resort, where for years for just a few dollars you could get a hot soak, loll in the sunshine and breathe in the fresh mountain air.

The stage brought folks from far and wide to "take the waters." The Rock Store was a busy day destination for the first half of the 20th century.

Only when Seminole Hot Springs sold to the mobile home developer did the Rock Store decline. Its "new" incarnation does not pay homage to the past. Too bad Leps didn't expose the Rock Store's pedigree in serving the only mountain hot springs in Southern California. George Slotnick Valley Village