"The Fire Rodeo"
by Pablo Capra
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| A cowboy on a bucking steer in The Rodeo Grounds, c/o Acker Archives, c. 1923 |
When the Cooper brothers threw their own rodeos, they hired Spanish chef Fred Ramirez to cater, resulting in numerous complaints about his dangerous fires.
On the Fourth of July 1923, Ramirez’s barbecue seems to have accidentally ignited a brush fire.
Scores of men attending a rodeo at Cooper’s Ranch and many residents in the vicinity have been pressed into service and are fighting the flames.
The flames started in back of Cooper’s Ranch and veered toward Las Flores Canyon. A light breeze, however, drove the flames back on Cooper’s Ranch, which is now threatened with destruction.
—“Las Flores Canyon Is Fire Swept,” Los Angeles Times, 1923-07-05
During this time, civilians could be “pressed into service” if a fire broke out near them. It was actually illegal to wait for firefighters. The 1933 Griffith Park Fire is still the deadliest fire in California history for this reason, with 29 civilian deaths, even though it only burned 49 acres.
The Cooper brothers were fortunate that their much larger fire took no lives or structures.
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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.
