7 - Rebecca's Calabasas Ranch
Surrounded by the Santa Monica Mountains, Calabasas was a haven for desperadoes and willing ladies during the 1860s, when the town was a notorious stop on the Butterfield overland mail route from St. Louis to San Francisco. "It was rough-and-tumble," says local historian Rosemary Hull. "The stagecoach got people through as fast as it could because it was too dangerous to stop for long."
One of the young settlement's first homesteads later became the historic Wagon Wheel Ranch at Mulholland Highway. Today it comprises 16 acres of rolling land, including meadows, sagebrush, stands of pines, oaks and magnolias and a rustic ranch house that sits on a knoll overlooking it all. "Legend has it that Randolph Scott built the ranch house," says listing agent (and property co-owner) Marc Coleman of Coldwell Banker, referring to the popular cowboy actor who later channeled his movie money into an eight-figure fortune in oil and real estate. "We know it was a brothel and gambling den. The property changed hands many times, won and lost in poker games."
But property records seem to call the bluff. The real man behind Wagon Wheel Ranch was attorney and politician Lloyd S. Nix, a onetime L.A. city prosecutor who bought the Calabasas site in 1935 and four years later built the ranch house, a wood-sided, two-story residence with a stone fireplace and stenciled wood beams and paneling. Nix and his business partners decided to sell the place in 1944, and subsequent owners have possibly included a pair of celebrated horse trainers but no Randolph Scott - and, as far as we know, no madams.
Coleman and his partners list the property for $1.3 million. But don't bother to call if you plan to raze the ranch house. "We hope it will be retained," says Coleman," as a tribute to the past." Which version?
Original article: Los Angeles Magazine, October 2000
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