2020-07-10 The Canyon Chronicle - “Cooper’s Camp” by Pablo Capra

“Cooper’s Camp”

by Pablo Capra

Cooper's Camp, early 1920s. Santa Monica Public Library / H. F. Rile.

In the summer of 1918, the growing number of campers on the beach in Santa Monica was making the locals anxious.

…the tents have no sanitary arrangements and… some of the campers are not careful about the attire they wear on the sand.

—“Other Side Will Confer with Mayor,” Santa Monica Outlook, 1918-07-30

The city decided that a campsite was needed, so in 1919, Camp Topango was built on an outlying beach to hide these low-income tourists. It was managed by Miller Cooper (1869-1944), and later became known as Cooper’s Camp, which helped differentiate it from an earlier Camp Topanga that had existed in Old Topanga Canyon between 1909-1916.

Miller lived at the beach with his family, including his brother, Deputy Sheriff Archie Cooper (1883-1932), who guarded the property for the Title Insurance and Trust Company.

Camp Topango was immediately popular, but also immediately drew bad press. One of its attractions was a dance pavilion with live music by “the famous Moon Light Four.” In 1919, an employee named Hazel Pritchard gave an account to police of a suspicious man who showed up there.

On the night of July 4 we had quite a crowd dancing. I was at the gate in charge when a man came down the road on foot. An admission of 25 cents is charged to persons in cars and I asked him where his automobile was. “I left it up the road,” he said. I told him I thought he could go in free. After leaving the gate I danced with him and he introduced himself as Mr. New. He was a very poor dancer and acted strangely. Some of the people at the camp had heard a shot up the road before this. He was there less than an hour and went back up the road.

—“Canyon ‘Dance of Death’ Denied by Love Tragedy Man,” Los Angeles Evening Herald, 1919-07-12

The man was Harry S. New Jr. (1887-1950), who later that night turned himself into police with the body of his girlfriend Freda Lesser (1899-1919) in his car. New had shot Lesser on a drive to Topanga after she told him that she was pregnant but wouldn’t marry him or keep the child.

Hazel’s “Dance of Death” story was corroborated by Miller, who said he’d seen New many times at camp dances. Then things started to unravel. Pritchard was revealed to also be working for New’s attorney, John L. Richardson, who pretended astonishment at her tale, while probably having invented it himself to help New’s insanity plea. Both Pritchard and Miller later said that they were misquoted, and that New had not danced at Camp Topango the night he shot Lesser.

Freda Lesser and Harry New. Los Angeles Evening Herald, July 1919.

In 1920, beach cabins were built, leading to a dispute between the Cooper brothers and their landlord over who should collect the rents. In one cabin lived “Greek George” Conios, who moored his boat in the kelp beds. While disembarking near Temescal Canyon at the Mile Long Pier, which would be torn down later that year, Conios fell into high surf and disappeared. His body was “carried back almost to the door of his beach cottage,” where it was found 11 days later.

The worst publicity for Camp Topango came when the Cooper brothers attacked an African American man named Arthur Valentine (1892-1967) on Memorial Day.

Valentine was born in Des Moines, IA, and lived in downtown LA off Central Ave. According to his granddaughter Jataun Valentine (b.1937), who lives in Venice today, he worked as the chauffeur for a Topanga family.

On May 30, 1920 (Memorial Day was always celebrated on May 30 then), Valentine, his wife Charlotte (1893-1958), children Arthur Jr. (1913-1969) and Gwendolyn (1914-2004), and friend Horace Walker tried to go swimming at Topanga Beach but were immediately hassled. Five-year-old Gwendolyn was pushed aside, which may have been the breaking point.

The Cooper brothers claimed that Valentine had refused to pay the fee to use their property, and that he’d defended his right to be below the mean tide line by pulling a gun. Archie disarmed him, fought him one-on-one while the others were held at gunpoint, and arrested him.

Valentine claimed that the fight was racially motivated, and that they had pistol-whipped him. Years later, the African American newspaper The California Eaglewrote that he’d been shot in the leg. Jataun remembers that he did have a bad leg, and that he wore a monocle to correct an injured eye. She’d heard his injuries were the result of a fight, but he never talked about his problems. Instead, she thinks he dealt with misfortune by striving harder for success. He went on to grow a side business making Black cosmetics, and then became a real estate agent.

1. Arthur Jr. was nine at the time of the fight. Photo courtesy of the Valentine family.
2. Frank DeWar. Source unknown.
3. Archie Cooper fighting a fire. Los Angeles Times, 7-27-1916.

The Cooper brothers were born in a small town called Danby, near Ithaca, NY.

Miller Cooper, the older brother, was usually mild-mannered enough to stay out of the news. Besides managing Camp Topango, he developed the land behind it into the Topango Ranch. He lived there with his wife Mary M. (b.1876), daughters Edna (1900-1989), Sarah (1907-1926), and Mary Laurania (1916-1966), and father-in-law Henry Monroe (b.1841), who ran the Topango Store.

Archie Cooper was hot-headed, reckless, and stubborn. Before moving to Topanga Beach, he’d been a motorcycle cop in South Pasadena. A three-year report showed that, since he’d been hired, there were fewer warnings given, and double the number of fines and arrests. He’d been in at least six speeding accidents, miraculously escaping each time with minor injuries. Once, while pursuing a suspect, he hit a car, flew through the windshield into the passenger seat, and ordered the driver to keep up the chase. Another time, he hit a curb and flew headfirst onto the ground, lying unconscious for 10 minutes. “Only a remarkable physique saved Cooper,” a doctor said.

Archie’s dangerous behavior had been evident in his youth. In 1903, a streetcar returning to Los Angeles from San Pedro was held up by three masked men. The driver was beaten, and all aboard were robbed except 20-year-old Archie, who defiantly hid his money. When the robbers began cursing at the women, Archie called them cowards and challenged them to an honest fight. They threatened to shoot him if he didn’t shut up. He replied that he “would make a sieve” out of them if he had a gun. Despite this provocation, the robbers only fired a few warning shots and fled.

Archie’s belligerence may even have affected his childhood… if he attended Formwalt Street School in Atlanta, GA. There, in 1897, a schoolboy with his name and age teased a new classmate named Sol Williams for wearing a collar, saying, “Dogs wear collars.” After school, the boys fought, and Archie stabbed Williams in the back, nearly killing him. The principal, Mrs. Gregory, acknowledged that Archie was a troublemaker. The Cooper family relocated to California around this time.

A second deputy sheriff, Canadian Frank DeWar (1883-1932), also got involved in the beach fight, either because he was living there too or just happened to be visiting for the holiday.

DeWar owed his life to Archie. In 1916, he was making a rescue in the flooded Los Angeles River when his leg and two ribs were broken by floating debris. Archie was assisting, and managed to pull him into a boat before he was swept away.

Frank Dewar's World War I Scottish battalion The Black Watch, nicknamed "The Ladies from Hell," 1917.

A Spanish-American War veteran, DeWar quickly bounced back. That same year, he enlisted in World War I (before the US draft!), fighting with a kilted Scottish battalion nicknamed “The Ladies from Hell.” He was discharged after being gassed and having his leg scarred by shrapnel, but enlisted again to operate a tank when the US finally joined the war. His dedication earned him a letter of congratulations from former president Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), even though the war ended before DeWar could return to Europe.

At the time of the beach fight, DeWar was still in and out of the hospital, recovering from his injuries. It’s no wonder that this tough guy went on to become Los Angeles’s ultimate noir cop. He was in charge of the city’s anti-gangster squad, and worked on several high-profile cases, like the trial of “The Tiger Woman” Clara Phillips (b.1899).

Miller’s father-in-law Henry Monroe was also present at the beach fight and held a gun, but his participation was considered to be insignificant.

Were these men racists? It seems so. In court, their attorney Samuel S. Hahn (1888-1957), who ominously went by “S. S.,” tried to justify their actions by saying that “he would not care to be close to any colored person” either. More race-baiting comments were made by their second attorney, John L. Richardson, the same man who had defended New. Richardson’s involvement in their defense further suggests that Miller helped fabricate the “Dance of Death” story for New’s insanity plea.

During this time, Los Angeles was experiencing a Ku Klux Klan resurgence.

In Topanga, a resort called Kneen’s Kamp advertised with the initials KKK by inserting the word “Komfort” into its name (although no other connection to Klan has been found).

In Santa Monica Canyon, “the greatest Ku Klux Klan initiation ever held in the West” took place on March 29, 1922. Cars lined the beach for more than a mile, as 300 Klansmen inducted 800 new members, with 200 others in attendance.

Weeks later, an incident called “The Inglewood Raid” led to the outing of many Klansmen who were Los Angeles officials, including Sheriff William Traeger (1880-1935), the boss of Archie and DeWar.

It’s worth noting that DeWar was once accused of being in the KKK himself by an African American robbery suspect, who complained at his trial that DeWar was making faces at him. Traeger was especially close to DeWar, promoting him to Undersheriff, honoring him with a diamond-studded badge, and treating him as his successor. However, just as Traeger was about to leave office, DeWar died in a plane crash.

Police Chief Louis Oaks (1883-1938) was also outed as a Klansman. Responding to accusations that the KKK was undermining the morale of the police force, his department outrageously stated that, while 50% of its officers were indeed KKK members, it saw “no reason why the policemen cannot join the organization if they so wish, provided they perform their duties.”

 In 1919, the nearby Kneen's Kamp, in Topanga between Highvale Trail and Robinson Road, advertised with the initials KKK.

The Valentine case ended, after nearly three years of strategic delays in Los Angeles Superior Court, when charges against the Cooper brothers and DeWar were dismissed because of “insufficient evidence.” The California Eaglepublished its assessment of what the case had meant to the African American community 25 years later.

…while a satisfactory victory was not won, at least Negroes of this community served notice on that element seeking to establish a Jim-Crow policy on the ocean beaches, that they would fight to the last ditch to protect and preserve their citizenship rights.

—“On the Sidewalk,” The California Eagle, 1947-01-02

The embarrassment of these events led to a decrease in the KKK and its eventual outlawing in California.

African Americans decided that they needed their own beach, and began to establish their presence at Bay Street Beach in Santa Monica, where they had historically felt safe because it was near a Black church.

Bay Street Beach became an important gathering place for decades, and it’s also known for producing the first recorded California surfer of color, Nick Gabaldon (1927-1951). It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.

***

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.