“Potter’s Topanga Trading Post”
by Pablo Capra
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| "The Skyscraper." Photo c/o Topanga Historical Society / Tegner Collection, 1928. |
The Malibu Feed Bin’s
bright red paint belies the fact that it’s one of the oldest buildings in the
area.
The business evolved
from a 1920s grocery store across the street, nicknamed “The Skyscraper”
because it was the only two-story building at the Topanga intersection. The second
floor housed the office of Guy Wade (1880-1979), who managed the Lower Topanga
property for the Los Angeles Athletic Club (LAAC).
The store’s longest
owner, Charles Potter (1882-1956), took over on July 27, 1929, with George
Storns managing. After a landslide shoved the Skyscraper sideways in a 1932
storm, Charles built the low sturdy building we see today. Guy Wade moved to a
hut across the street, but his office soon ended up back on the second floor
when the LAAC built a garage under it to house a volunteer fire truck. This is
now the right half of the Malibu Feed Bin.
Potter’s Store
survived the next major storm in 1938, one of the biggest in Los Angeles
history, while nearby buildings were flooded or swept away. Over 100 people
died, and one unnamed local woman, overwrought by the tragedy, tried to drown
herself in the ocean as…
…numerous rattlesnakes and king snakes washed down and were wriggling
out of the debris along Topanga beach.
—Evening Outlook, 1938-03-08
A landslide demolished
the Topanga road. Engineers decided to rebuild the road farther away from Parker
Mesa (today, Sunset Mesa) for the first quarter mile, using the landslide to
partially fill in a neighborhood called Shady Lane. They also widened the
Canyon’s entrance by cutting 200 feet from the hill behind Potter’s Store.
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| Potter's Store is on the right, in its former location across the street. The LA Athletic Club office is at center. Photo c/o the Sykes family, 1933. |
Forced to move his
store to its present location, Charles renamed it Potter’s Topanga Trading
Post. Possibly, he got the idea from Louise Steeb (b.1914), who owned Rust’s
Barbecue restaurant next door. Her father William Steeb had opened the Malibu
Trading Post at Trancas Canyon around 1930.
Charles Potter was
born in Sharon, PA, in 1882. He started his career as a Navy machinist, and married
Lillian Barnes (1887-1918) in 1909. The following year, the couple moved to
California, where Charles worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Los
Angeles and, later, the Standard Oil Company in Coalinga. Lillian died in the
1918 Influenza Pandemic.
Charles’s brother Fred
(b.1887) moved to Malibu first, in Las Flores Canyon. Fred worked a steam
shovel during the construction of Roosevelt Highway (PCH).
Charles followed in
1929, when he bought his store. Regardless of the weather, he swam at Topanga
Beach every morning.
In 1931, Charles
married Eleanor White (1888-1962), a bookkeeper from Louisville, KY, who became
a partner in his store. She invited people to bring in social news for her Topanga Journal column titled “Topanga Beach Items,” writing
about many events in the community that otherwise would have been forgotten.
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| Potter's Topanga Trading Post beside the fire truck's garage and the LA Athletic Club's office perched on top. Photo c/o the Topanga Historical Society. |
The Potters lived
walking distance from their store, on a hill above Topanga Lane (later called
The Snake Pit). A sign on their door read, “High Nuff.” Their young neighbor, Thais
Rust Sykes (1925-2021), remembered, “Nobody would ever visit them because they
had to climb so many stairs.”
The neighborhood
children had some friction with the Potters, calling Charles “Pothead,” and
claiming that Eleanor looked like her dog, Ming Toy, which she always brought
to the store. They once stole a revolver that Charles kept under the counter (because
he had been robbed several times), but fortunately the gun was returned without
incident.
Charles waged a
“one-man crusade” to stop the children from throwing rocks at the swallows’
nests under the Topanga Lagoon bridge. Every spring, he recorded the return of
the birds, finding that they arrived just after March 19, the date when
thousands of swallows famously return to the San Juan Capistrano Mission. In
1946, he declared in The Malibu Times
that “the swallows are no more partial to San Juan Capistrano than they are to
the Malibu.”
Charles was well-liked
by grown-ups and advertised his business as “the friendly store,” but what
really made it unique was his outdoor museum of Western artifacts.
The store is decked with many interesting pioneer relics. Among them
are an old blacksmith bellows and a plow presented to the Potters by L. P.
(Shelly) Sheldon, custodian of Tapia Park in Las Virgenes Canyon, who found
them in the park. Deputy Sheriff Walter Pealand gave them a wheel from an old
prairie schooner, which he found near his home in Agoura. The posts and tie of
the hitching post shown at the left above are redwood timbers formerly used as
railroad ties in the roadbed of the old Malibu narrow-gauge railway. A handmade
bear trap, over a hundred years old, was added to Charlie’s collection by Mrs.
John A. Webster, who found it near the Websters’ Victorville desert ranch. The
side saddle, which hangs near the door, is estimated to be more than 125 years
old. It was picked up in the San Bernardino Mountains. Other antiquities in the
collection include a harpoon picked up on the coast of Baja California, a
hand-forged wagon wheel brake and lock, scales, double-trees and a
hickory-handled cant hook over 75 years old. The collection also includes elk horns
and the skulls of mountain sheep, cattle and deer. A mechanical antique is one
of the original vacuum cleaners sold by Sears Roebuck more than 50 years ago.
—Topanga Journal, 1949-07-22
Charles had other rare
items in his private collection, like a copy of the Ulster
County Gazette from January 4, 1800 that described George Washington’s
funeral, and a violin made by 17th-century master Nicola Amati, which he gave
to local children studying music.
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| Charles and Eleanor Potter with the outdoor museum of Potter's Topanga Trading Post. Photo c/o Barry O. Balin Historical Archives. |
In 1950, Charles
underwent a “painful operation” that seemed to mark the beginning of his
decline. A neighbor, Martha Morgan (1911-1981), was called in to help at the
store. In 1955, the Potters announced that they would be selling their business
and retiring. Then Charles had a heart attack, which left him homebound.
Fearing that he wouldn’t recover, he callously committed suicide with a shotgun
after sending Eleanor to the Trading Post to get chicken for their dinner.
In 1957, the store
reopened as the Malibu Feed and Fuel, run by locals Steven Terrill (b.1924) and
Bobby Jacks (1927-1987).
Next door, the fire
truck’s garage became another store that sold oriental ceramics, called 101
Imports (PCH was Route 101 before the Ventura Freeway was built).
A Malibu investment
group merged both stores into the Malibu Feed Bin in 1961. Investor Asa “Ace”
Smith (of the Smith-Bennett plumbing company) gave charge of the store to his
18-year-old son, Dale Smith, a prize-winning horseman from the Trancas Riders
and Ropers club. Ace bought out the other investors the following year.
In 1966, Marty
Morehart (1945-2020) bought the store. An eighth-generation Californian, he ran
the Malibu Feed Bin for 54 years until his death. The Morehart family runs the
business today.
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Pablo Capra is the Archivist for the Topanga Historical Society and author of Topanga Beach: A History 1820s-1920s (2020).
