Four miles up Encinal Canyon, away from the noisiness of PCH, lies more than 500 acres of wilderness in the Santa Monica Mountains, where, on a sunny afternoon, the only sounds heard are made by the birds and the bees.
This is Charmlee Wilderness Park.
“Generally, I think people are not that well-aware of what Malibu has,” said historian Glen Howell, a docent at Charmlee. “[Charmlee is] rare in the sense that it’s been set aside as a wilderness area. It lets people know that, regardless of how Malibu moves in terms of development, Charmlee will always be there.”
In its history, the park land has been subject to several disputes, including how it could be used to serve the public–as a passive recreational area, meaning no camping, no organized sports, etc., or as an active recreational area, where sport fields could be placed or Girl and Boy Scouts could camp. Hiking is about the only activity allowed at the park.
Before it was known as Charmlee, the property was a ranch of an accumulated 300 acres owned and operated by Frederick and May Rindge.
Their surrounding neighbors were unhappy because the Rindges would not allow a public access road to be built through their property. To quiet the complaints, the Rindges simply bought out everyone. All except for one: the property that belonged to Ernest Decker, which sat at the end of a road that would later be known as Decker Canyon.
In 1903, the Rindge home was destroyed in a fire. The family moved to their townhouse in Santa Monica, on the corner of Ocean Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard, across the street from what is now the Fairmont Miramar Hotel.
Sometime in the 1940s, May Rindge and her Marblehead Land Company went bankrupt.
There was a long succession of Charmlee owners after that. One of the owners was the legacy of the park’s name-a woman by the name of Charmian and her husband Leon Schwartz, both part-time actors, part-time real estate investors. The couple went by the nicknames of Charm and Lee and, by combining the two names, came up with the title for their ranch.
After the Schwartz’s lost their home in the infamous Christmas fire of 1956 they relocated, selling Charmlee Ranch to a developer with the Sky Company. The new owner wanted to turn Charmlee into a golf course and a residential area, but he ran into problems with regards to easements and costs. Lack of water and limited partnership prompted him to sell. In the 1960s, 10 years after the Schwartz’s had left, the county of Los Angeles bought Charmlee.
The county solved the easement problem by purchasing the three large parcels of land around Charmlee, which would be enough to hook the property to the main road. When the county put the properties together to create a park, it chose to keep the name of Charmlee.
The county’s intentions were to turn Charmlee into an active recreation park, complete with a golf course, overnight camping and a variety of other activities.
Its efforts were thwarted by geology. In the mid-70s, county engineer John Lambie detected an ancient landslide in the meadow area and felt that, in terms of putting a golf course there, it would risk reactivating the landslide. Too much water would be needed to maintain the golf course therefore, over-lubricating the hills.
“[Lambie] made a very strong case,” said Gifford Hitz, director of The Charmlee Foundation. “He said that there were areas that were very good and areas that were very bad. He would not support going ahead with the golf course program, but said that [Charmlee] would be good to have as a natural area.”
No development would take place. Nearly two decades later, in 1991, Malibu became a city. The county agreed to lease out Charmlee to Malibu a few years after that.
“Then, in 1998, the county was going through a budget crunch,” said city Councilmember Tom Hasse, “or they wanted to unload some of their property.”
There was a difference of opinion among the then city councilmembers as to how to use the property. “It was the old dynamic between usefulness and beauty,” said Howell.
Some of the members felt the need to get some use out of the property, while others felt it was unique and should be kept natural. Hasse was of the latter opinion.
“I voted to [keep Charmlee] passive because I respected the wishes of the neighbors in that area,” he said.
Two of those neighbors, Paul and Sandy Russell, were very active in the community and lived just above Charmlee, in Lechusa Highlands. They spent time with the City Council and with lawyer Frank Angel, proposing that Charmlee stay passively recreational.
“They were well-known in the city government,” said Howell. “They had a lot of clout.”
Many people feel, for better or for worse, the Russell couple is responsible for the deed that protects the park from ever becoming actively recreational. Paul remained very active politically in terms of legal matters. Sandy was a naturalist who was in charge of the park’s docent-training program.
However, not everyone is pleased with the results brought about by the Russells and Frank Angel.
“To think,” said Laurene Sills, a commissioner for Malibu Parks and Recreation, “that a lawyer can come into Malibu and make it so that the only park the city owns has handcuffs on it, is disturbing and disgusting to me.”
Being a passive recreation park, Charmlee’s rules do not permit biking, camping or too many other physical activities that go beyond walking.
“They couldn’t even put a hoop up there,” said Sills.
While Sills feels, as a parent, her three children should be able to use Charmlee actively, Hasse strongly disagrees.
“I don’t think Charmlee Park is a prime location for sports fields,” he stated, “given its remote location in far western Malibu. I think that active recreation, specifically sports fields, have to be more centrally located.”
While people may never agree on how Charmlee Park should be used (or not used), it is, for the time being, a wilderness park where hikers can visit the ruins of the Charmlee ranch house and the grave of Leon Schwartz, whose son, Lee Jr., sprinkled his ashes on the foundation.
Nearing the end of the trek, hikers can find Charmlee’s 70-year-old fireproof Ping-Pong table, nestled in the midst of ancient oaks.
“Charmlee is one of the few places left where you can have this peace and quiet and natural beauty,” said Howell.