The community center of the defunct, WWI-era utopian Little Landers society is now a museum dedicated to its history.

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 23, 1971

Merry Christmas everyone! Since I’ve already highlighted the most obvious Xmas-related LA site on the National Register of Historic Places (Christmas Tree Lane, post 27), here’s a video I shot of the Randy Van Horne Singers performing “My Favorite Things” at their December 11 holiday concert at the historic Bolton Hall in Tujunga:

The history of LA is full of utopians, drawn to the land’s wide open spaces to try and make a go at turning a philosophy or faith into a sustainable community. Such was the case with the “Little Landers,” a colony of some 200 families who traveled to a sun-parched corner of the San Fernando Valley starting in 1913 for a better life. Bolton Hall was their community center. 

The Little Landers were inspired by the ideas of W.E. Smythe, a wealthy easterner turned progressive-minded reporter who spent decades evangelizing the importance of widespread irrigation. Smythe abhorred the materialism of the industrial age, and the privatization of natural resources that came with it. Smythe believed that humans were better off working cooperatively on land that they owned. As he put it, “A little land and a living, surely, is better than a desperate struggle and great wealth, possibly.”

Smythe had some success establishing an early colony in New Plymouth, Idaho and the first official Little Landers colony in San Ysidro, CA, just north of the Mexican border. In 1913 he and developer Marshall Valentine Hartranft started their new colony in the Tujunga Valley, promising ¼ acre lots for $250, water aplenty and rich soil for agriculture:

“WOULDN’T you like to be YOUR OWN BOSS, while you are building up a competency for yourself and your loved one? OF COURSE you would and the Little Landers of Los Angeles are showing just how it can be done, how it IS BEING DONE.”

July, 1913 ad placed in the LA Times (as quoted by KCET)

The vision of the Little Landers attracted some 200 families to Tujunga in its first year. Its center was Bolton Hall, named after the eponymous American activist who founded the back-to-the-land movement. More than just a community center, Bolton Hall embedded the values of the Little Landers in its very structure. It was constructed by “nature builder” George Harris, who built the thing out of uncut granite and rocks he found nearby, and deliberately packed them as close as possible to minimize the appearance of mortar and other human intervention. I’ve read accounts that Harris determined the arrangement of the rocks in the central fireplace by rolling them all downhill, and seeing how they landed. Harris carved the 14-foot mantle out of a single eucalyptus tree, and inscribed the phrase “To the Spiritual Life of the Soil” just underneath it. Many of Harris’s original tools are still on display.

The Little Landers only used Bolton Hall for about a decade. The soil simply wasn’t rich enough to support farming, the abundant water never arrived, and most of the original settlers had left by 1925 or sold off their parcels of land.

In the 30+ years after, Bolton Hall took on many guises. It was an American Legion hall, Tujunga City Hall, a jail, a public library. It was shuttered in 1957 and slated for demolition; in 1959 some strong-willed locals formed the Little Landers Historical Society to preserve it, and managed to stave off the wrecking ball. A park was created around the still-abandoned building, and in 1980, after many public hearings and rounds of fundraising, the Hall was finally renovated and reopened as a museum dedicated to the history of the Little Landers. 

I had no idea that there was going to be a holiday gathering when I visited Bolton Hall. While it meant that I wasn’t able to tour the charming museum or see the intricacies of the fireplace, it also felt just right – I got to see the Hall in use as a gathering place, just as it was for the Little Landers. Their utopian ideals may never have been realized, but their spirit is well preserved in this building.

Recommended Reading

+Bolton Hall @ NRHP website

+Bolton Hall: The Little Landers of Tujunga and the Boom and Bust of a Utopian Garden City (KCET)

+Bolton Hall website (home of the Little Landers Historical Society)

+Video walkthrough of Bolton Hall (Sharon Hales)

+Watch Bolton Hall’s full 2020 “Swingin’ the Holidays” Concert with Franny McCartney & Lynn Keller