"Early Businesses"
by Pablo Capra
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| The Rust Family, c. 1928… Front: Ellen Rust Penland, Joanne Simmons, Thais Rust, Ray and Leon Simmons, Ella Rust, Avis Wendell, Fern Rust, Raburn Stedman Rust. Middle: Clayton Rust, Roy Rust, Claude Simmons, Edythe Rust, Fleta Rust, unknown, Ina Rust, Mildred Rust (?). Back: Frank (or Joe?) Rust, Blanche Rust, Art Rust, Archie Rust, Ernest Rust. Photo: Sykes Family. |
Around 1921, Clayton (1886-1974) and Ina Rust (1901-1988) moved to Topanga Beach. Nearly 20 relatives soon followed, making their family the biggest that ever lived in Lower Topanga. They not only influenced the development of that community, but of the local businesses, many of which they owned.
Although Clayton’s first job in the area was driving a Santa Monica school bus, he soon became the operator of the Topanga Service Station at the intersection, where Oasis Imports is today. At first, it was just a shack with a single pump, but it quickly grew. By 1923, he was a distributor for Red Crown and had installed their signature red, white, and blue pumps. He must have done great business when the Elks, which he belonged to, threw their “monster rodeo” that year.
In 1936, a fire caused by bad electrical wiring burned Clayton’s gas station, a garage he’d added, and a car that was parked inside. Topanga Fireman D. F. Hooper was burned on his hand and arm while fighting the blaze. The gas station was wisely rebuilt out of metal by Shell, but Clayton didn’t like it as much, and sold it to neighbors Fred (b.1902) and Ethel Clark (b.1900). In 1949, Fred sold it to neighbors Henry “Van” (b.1910) and Thelma Van Ostrum (b.1912), who sold it to neighbors Roger (b.1930) and Jackie Sweet (b.1929) in 1951. It was demolished in the early 1970s, and rebuilt across the street by Gulf. Today, it’s operated by ARCO.
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| Gas station at Topanga intersection, c. 1920. Photo: Sykes Family. |
Another early business was a small store across the street from the gas station that Clayton and his brother LeRoy “Roy” Rust (1893-1983) bought from Jack Messenger. Little is known about Messenger, but it seems like he was a cowboy from the Elks Rodeo who stayed on at Topanga. He isn't listed in the rodeo program, but the year before, he was touring California with three others who are: Hippy Burmeister (1894-1985), Calgary Jack McDonald, and Sam Howe. A fourth companion, Hank “Deadman”—so nicknamed because he once woke up in the morgue after being thrown from a bronco—was probably Hank Steelman (1902-1939) from the Elks Rodeo.
A store called Brigham Place, run by A. Brigham, also existed in the mid-1920s, but I couldn’t determine if it was at this location.
The Rusts’ store, run by Roy and his wife Blanche (1897-1967), was rebuilt as a narrow two-story building. On the second floor, the Title Insurance and Trust Company had an office.
In 1929, Roy and Blanche sold their store to Charles Potter (1882-1956), who had just moved to Topanga Canyon Lane. Mudslides from the hill in back became a problem, and in 1932 the tall building was pushed into a slant like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Potter rebuilt his store as a sturdier one-story building, but the rains of 1938 created a bigger mudslide that pushed it all the way into the street. He salvaged the lumber and rebuilt his store again, this time on the same side as the gas station, giving it the longer name Potter’s Topanga Trading Post. Later, it became part of the Malibu Feed Bin.
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| Gas Station, Los Angeles Athletic Club Office, Potter's Store, 1933. Photo: Sykes Family. |
Blanche’s parents, Frank (1873-1944) and Myrtle Paxson (1875-1945), owned a hamburger stand called Paxson’s Cafe at the future site of the Chart House and Mastro’s Ocean Club. After they retired in 1939, it was renamed the Tides Cafe. It burned in 1941, and was rebuilt as Marinos’ at The Point (later shortened to The Point) by a Greek family, who caught the restaurant’s fish from long rowboats that they kept on the beach. Since 1933, Harry (b.1881) and Anna Marinos (b.1889) had been operating another Topanga Beach restaurant simply called Marinos’, where the Reel Inn is today.
The Greek fishing community at Topanga Beach can possibly be traced back to “Greek George” Conios, who lived there in 1920. An earlier fish restaurant that was destroyed in the 1926 storm was owned by J. Loomis. I couldn’t tell if he was Greek, but in 1930 a second fish restaurant was owned by two Greeks, Mike Leonis, sometimes spelled Loomis, and Spero Anemo (b.1884), the best friend of Greek fisherman John Foundoukos. Christ Yianulis probably helped catch fish for the restaurant, and another Greek neighbor, Hagis Lambrouse (b.1886), worked there.
The De Long Cafe may have been related to these restaurants. I couldn’t learn much about it except that it was started beside the lagoon in the late 1920s by Jess “Jack” De Long (1888-1953), a former Topanga grocer, and lasted until the 1950s.
On the north side of Clayton’s gas station, Ina opened her own restaurant, called Rust’s Barbecue, for the road workers who came to build the third bridge across the lagoon in the early 1930s.
In 1935, Ina began leasing her restaurant to others, including Louise Steeb (b.1914), who lived on Old Malibu Road and was the daughter of William (1885-1967) and Frances Steeb (b.1892). William was an Elk who had been around since the rodeo days. In 1922, he’d worked as a cowboy on the Topango Ranch. In the mid-1920s, he’d had a restaurant called the Las Tunas Inn that was one of the only buildings on Las Tunas Beach to survive the stormy waves of 1926. Other restaurants he created were the Malibu Trading Post at Trancas Canyon in the early 1930s, and the Big Rock Cafe in the late 1930s.
On the south side of Clayton’s gas station, Edward (1876-1964) and Minnie Shriner (1878-1964) opened Shriner’s Wayside Stand in 1926, in the former Rustle Inn. They sold it in 1937 to Ina’s friend Lucie Loggins (b.1893), who renamed it the Step Inn Cafe.
In 1938, a Swiss cook named Werner Etter (b.1901) sold the Step Inn Cafe to its longest owner, Sue Blackwood (1898-1962), who took it over in the same week that the 1938 flood happened. She endeared herself to the neighborhood by staying open all night to feed the rescue workers. Her brother Cecil Terrill (1902-1972), his wife Montana (b.1904), and their son Steven (b.1924) helped run the restaurant. During World War II, she married Howard Van Wagner (b.1908), another “Van” for short, who also got involved.
The Step Inn Cafe was made famous as the place where Kirk Douglas (1916-2020) breaks the heart of Ruth Roman (1922-1999) in the 1949 film Champion. It burned on July 4, 1958, but was rebuilt as Ted’s Step Inn Cafe by Sidney “Ted” Koskoff (1908-1992) of Ted’s Grill in Santa Monica Canyon. In 1962, a new owner, Irene Girourd, renamed it French’s Wee Nook. It was demolished in the late 1960s.
Besides contributing to the development of Lower Topanga, both Clayton and Ina were connected to some of the region’s early settlers.
Clayton grew up in Stillwater, OK, but spent the best time of his youth leading tour groups on mules into the Grand Canyon. In the early 1910s, he and several others of his family came to Los Angeles.
In 1913, Clayton got a job as a surveyor for the Topanga road that was being rebuilt, and married his first wife May Jennie Daic (1887-1915), the daughter of a Calabasas pioneer named Wencil Daic (1846-1934). Clayton also befriended Malibu pioneer Rhoda May Rindge (1864-1941) and Topanga pioneers the Cheneys. In 1915, the same year that the new road was completed, May Jennie died at only 28.
For the next five years, Clayton worked as a car mechanic in Northridge. He met Ina, who was nearly half his age, while living at the Burbank boarding house of her aunt, Senea Lou Barnes (1865-1946).
Senea had come to California with nine children after her husband died in Texas in 1902. She was preceded by her brother Josiah Thrasher (1867-1943) and his wife Alice (1878-1906), Ina’s parents, who were pioneers of Van Nuys. Alice was said to be related to Jerome C. Davis (1822-1881), the founder of Davis, CA, but I couldn’t figure out how.
In 1919, Clayton and Ina married, and he got a job at the Orcutt Ranch above Northridge. Soon afterwards, he got a job running the Lower Topanga gas station.
The Rusts first lived in a small beach house, then bought a two-story house behind Cooper’s Camp. They were able to afford it because the builder had run out of money before finishing the interior. The Rusts couldn’t finish it either, and only lived on the first floor.
A few houses away lived Greek fisherman John Foundoukos, whom Clayton befriended. When somebody came to the gas station and told Clayton about three barrels floating offshore, Foundoukos helped Clayton grab the bootlegged whiskey.
Some of the first relatives to move to Lower Topanga were Clayton’s parents: Raburn Stedman Rust (1862-1933), a traveling preacher, and his wife Rachel (1862-1952), who went by her middle name Ella. It’s likely that Raburn helped plan the Pacific Palisades, which was founded as a Methodist commune in 1922, but his involvement is unclear because his brother Albert Rust (1866-1954) had two sons, Raburn Ross Rust (1904-1991) and Noel Rust (1905-1977), who were also in the Pacific Palisades Association.
Clayton’s parents lived in his old beach house. When they moved to Arcadia, CA in 1928, they passed the house on to Ina’s sister Mary Kays (1899-1973), her husband Carl (1895-1982), and their children Carl Jr. (1921-1999) and Marilyn (1924-2002).
The Rusts’ property was buried by fill dirt from the bridge construction in 1933. To save their house, they moved it half a mile up the canyon to Brookside. The Kays may have faced the same problem because they also moved to Brookside.
More relatives moved nearby or were already living there.
Albert Rust’s daughter Cleo (1898-1952), her husband Fred Wendell (1892-1949), and their daughter Avis (1922-1992) lived across the creek from the Rusts.
Senea Lou Barnes’s daughter Toy (1897-2006), her husband Clyde McClellan (1894-1973), and their daughter Marvelle (1923-2012) had a vacation home there. Three of Senea’s children lived to be over 100, and Toy had seen three centuries by the time she died at 109.
Ina’s father Josiah moved to Shady Lane in the 1930s, where he kept cows in a large field. After the 1938 flood, the Topanga road was rebuilt over his property, and he moved back to Van Nuys.
The Rusts were friends with two other Shady Lane families.
Frank (b.1892) and Ruby Porter (b.1891) taught “Topanga Beach Bible School” on Sundays to the Rusts’ daughter Thais (b.1925).
Joseph Harward (b.1886), a carpenter who lived with his wife Odessa (b.1888), finished building the interior of the Rusts’ house after it was moved to Brookside.
During the 1938 Topanga fire, Thais’s bedroom on the second floor burned. Clayton single-handedly saved the rest of the house by pouring buckets of water from his fishpond onto the roof. Flames burned a handkerchief in his back pocket, but he somehow escaped injury. In the garage was a propane tank that could have exploded at any moment.
Lower Topanga’s location, on the borderline between city and county land, often caused odd responses. In this case, fire trucks parked on the boulevard but wouldn’t enter the neighborhood. This inaction contributed to the large number of homes that burned there. The Kays were among the unfortunates, but they were able to rebuild with lumber and supplies donated by The Red Cross. Amazingly, the next day Ina cooked everyone a Thanksgiving dinner.
Around this time, a fire station was built at the Topanga intersection, on a lot formerly occupied by the office of Los Angeles Athletic Club property manager Guy Wade (1880-1979). Wade’s office was lifted up and added onto the roof. The fire station later became part of the Malibu Feed Bin.
Guy, his wife Elsie (1877-1937), and daughter Elizabeth (1904-2000) had a cottage at Brookside. He and Clayton were friends, and took hunting and fishing trips together in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
In 1944, Clayton and Ina divorced. Clayton stayed in Lower Topanga, while Ina took wartime jobs at Garrett AiResearch and Douglas Aircraft in the city. She continued to work in aerospace after the war.
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This is an excerpt from the book Topanga Beach: A History, 1820s-1920s. Author Pablo Capra is a former Lower Topanga resident, and continues to preserve the history of that neighborhood on his website, www.brasstackspress.com, and as a board member of the Topanga Historical Society, www.topangahistoricalsociety.org.
