Living history




FEW AMENITIES--This photograph depicts the original 1885 Stunt Ranch homestead, which was destroyed by a fire a decade ago.

FEW AMENITIES–This photograph depicts the original 1885 Stunt Ranch homestead, which was destroyed by a fire a decade ago.


The Stunt Brothers—Harry, Walter, Ernest and their cousin, Sydney—came to America in the late 1800s from Kensington, England. Harry and Walter homesteaded four quarter-sections (160 acres each) in the Cold Creek area of the Santa Monica Mountains.


Harry and Walter built a cabin on their property in about 1885 and the building stood until it was destoyed in the 1993 Topanga/Malibu fire. The cabin is believed to have been the first building in the Cold Creek area.


President Grover Cleveland approved the Stunt homestead in 1889. Another cabin was built in 1919, but the fire destroyed that one as well.


Stunt Ranch, as it came to be known, was a "ranch" in name only, but some of the pear, fig, apple, lemon and olive trees that were planted remain today.


The hospitable "Uncle Harry," who worked during the week for Warner Brothers Studios, often invited city children to visit his ranch on weekends, including groups of Boy Scouts who would spend the night on his porch. He showed them how to use a magnifying glass to burn their names into shingles, which he then mounted upon the rafters of the porch of the 1919 cabin.


The Stunt brothers also had a sister, Ethel, for whom the original oak tree on the property is named. Said to be the site of many Chumash ceremonies, the tree is at least several hundred years old.


Members of the Stunt family are buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Chatsworth.


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