Will Rogers park to reopen after being ravaged in Palisades fire

Actor's historic home was destroyed, but a public oasis will persevere

- BY HAILEY BRANSON-POTTS

HORSE GROOMER Juan Lopez walks through a temporary horse barn at Will Rogers park Friday. The original barn was lost to fire.

GENARO MOLINA Los Angeles Times

Will Rogers State Historic Park, which has been closed since the Palisades fire ripped through it 10 months ago, will reopen to the public on Saturday, providing a sprawling green oasis in the devastated community.

About half of the park's nine miles of hiking and equestrian hiking trails will open, as will the 99-year-old polo field, lawns and picnic spaces, according to California State Parks.

"The fire had an extraordinarily horrific impact... but this fire did not extinguish the spirit of either the community or the park," California State Parks Director Armando Quintero told reporters at the park Friday. "This is central to the community."

The wooded, 186-acre park was originally cowboy-humorist Will Rogers' ranch, where he lived with his wife and children in what was then the nascent community of Pacific Palisades until his death in 1935.

Rogers' widow, Betty, deeded the ranch to the state just before her own death in 1944.

The Palisades fire incinerated Rogers' century-old wooden ranch house — a place filled with Navajo rugs; custom, Western-style Monterey couches and chairs; and a vast book collection that included signed first editions by Helen Keller, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Houdini. Flames also tore through Rogers' white-and-green horse stable, which had an elegant central rotunda.

In the surrounding park, around 300 trees many of them planted in the 1920s and ’30s at Rogers’ behest — were so badly charred that they had to be removed, said Barbara Tejada, a State Parks cultural resources program supervisor.