Old Trapper's Lodge

John Ehn ran a motel by Burbank Airport and spent thirty years filling its front yard with painted concrete figures, using his own family as the models: trappers, saloon girls, a totem pole and a mock Boot Hill of forty-five headstones. He started in 1951 and worked until he died in 1981. The airport authority voted to buy the land in 1987 for a longer runway, and Pierce College took the sculptures the following year. One tableau shows a trapper knifing a Native chief. Students objected, and the display has been closed since 2022.

What the plaque says

Old Trapper's Lodge is one of California's remarkable twentieth century folk art environments. It represents the life work of John Ehn (1897-1981), a self-taught artist who wished to pass on a sense of the Old West, derived from personal experiences, myths, and tall tales. From 1951 to 1981, using his family as models, and incorporating memorabilia, the "Old Trapper" followed his dreams and visions to create the Lodge and its "Boot Hill." California Registered Historical Landmark No. 939 Plaque placed by the State Department of Parks and Recreation in cooperation with Saving and Preservation Arts and Cultural Environments, a non-profit educational corporation, March 25, 1985.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Leonis Adobe — 3.8 mi
  Miguel Leonis left his estate to relatives in France and called Espíritu Chijulla his housekeeper; she spent sixteen years proving in court that she was his wife.
• Los Encinos State Historic Park — 5.1 mi
  A spring that never stopped running, the village it fed for thousands of years, and the rancho that took the ground away.
• Mission San Fernando Rey de España — 9.3 mi
  The seventeenth Alta California mission, founded at the Tataviam village of Achoicominga, with the largest adobe building in the state standing beside it.
• The Cascades — 11 mi
  The concrete chute where the Los Angeles Aqueduct arrives, and where forty thousand people watched the Owens Valley come south in 1913.

More markers nearby

• Plummer Park and Oldest House in Hollywood — 3.7 mi
• Chatsworth Calera Site — 3.9 mi
• Los Encinos State Historic Park — 5.1 mi
• Rómulo Pico Adobe (Ranchito Rómulo) — 8.9 mi