Ronald Louis Rindge, who died last month at the age of 83, is being remembered as a chronicler of Old Malibu and one of its most important historians. Rindge—a scion of one of the founding families of Malibu—passed away on Oct. 22. He was buried near his home in Cayucos, Calif. Now, there are plans in the works to memorialize Ronald and his family, potentially funded by the City of Malibu through the Cultural Arts Commission.
As the youngest grandson of Frederick Hastings Rindge and May Knight Rindge, Ronald Rindge became a founding member of the Malibu Historical Society. He fought for years to save the historic Adamson House that has come to be known as Malibu’s treasured “jewel on the coast.”
The grand Spanish Colonial Revival home located in the Malibu Lagoon next to Surfrider Beach was built in 1929 by Rindge’s grandmother for her daughter Rhoda Rindge and her son-in-law Merritt Adamson. In 1968, the California Department of Parks and Recreation, as owners of the 13-acre spread, was preparing to bulldoze the site to make way for a beach parking lot.
In an effort to save his family’s historic property, Rindge successfully argued that the architecturally significant building, designed by well-known architect Clement O. Stiles, be saved from demolition. The home contains a premier collection of Malibu Pottery Tiles. The artistic tiles were produced in Malibu in a factory near the pier in the late 1920s by Rindge’s grandmother’s company, which burned down in 1931 and was never rebuilt. With Rindge’s help, the Adamson House was named a National Historic Monument. As a preservationist, he also helped secure an historic interest designation for the Malibu Pier and got Point Dume registered as a California historic landmark in 1988.
It was Rindge’s work as an historian that posited the theory that Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo in 1542 visited the site of a Chumash village at the Malibu Lagoon after poring over Cabrillo’s ship’s logs, now 475 years old.
It is this landing that Malibu City Council is discussing memorializing in Rindge’s honor, with Mayor Pro Tem Rick Mullen putting forth the idea of a mural depicting the events as part of a “permanent display.”
“We could possibly invite some of the remaining family members down here and that could be an appropriate level of commemoration,” Mullen suggested at a council meeting on Monday.
Rindge wrote two books on Malibu Pottery Tiles. He also wrote books on the history of Malibu from its earliest beginnings with its discovery by Cabrillo and his first-hand recollections of living in Malibu during World War II and the U.S. Coast Guard’s Beach Patrol during that period. He then delved into more local history with his publication of “Malibu Rails and Roads: A Photographic Journey Across Rancho Topanga-Malibu-Sequit.” He also wrote about the history of the original settlers of the area—the Chumash Indians. One of his last projects was a fourth edition of his grandfather Fredrick Hastings Rindge’s 1898 book, “Happy Days in Southern California.”
Malibu City Council Member and Malibu Pier concessionaire Jefferson Wagner visited Rindge at his home in Cayucos at least three times in recent years where the two discussed the recent reconstruction of the Malibu Pier.
“He had the actual paid ledgers from the Rindge Ranch and loaned those to me so I could document that the pier was built in 1905. Prior to that everybody thought it was 1908. He proved it with the actual pay registers,” Wagner described fondly.
“The photos you see around City Hall and the Library—a lot of those are his. He was the curator of them and he loaned them out to us,” Wagner shared. “He was very generous with information about the Rindge Ranch. He was generous with his time when it concerned history. If you were ready to talk about Malibu and you had a little bit of knowledge, he was ready to tell it to you. He was a great asset.”
