This photo counts as the strangest in my grandfather, Charles D. Mahaffie’s archive. It took some sleuthing to make sense of it. The back of the photo says it’s “Thorkildsen’s Studios, Hollywood,” and pictured are Stephen T. Mather, Director of the National Park Service, Harry Chandler, editor of the Los Angeles Times, and Charlie (on right, blurred). Charlie was then the Solicitor of the Interior Department.
I Googled my way to Thomas Thorkildsen who was named in the photo. I found his connections to Stephen Mather, and worked out through other documents and newspaper archives what this was about. The photo is, in fact, of Thomas Thorkildsen’s home in the Hollywood Hills, Briarcliff Manor. It was New Year’s Eve, 1919.
Charlie, then Solicitor of the Interior Department and a close friend of Stephen Mather, the Director of the National Park Service, traveled west and visited several places in California at the end of 1919 into January 1920.
Being the Solicitor of the Interior Department meant traveling the country with Mather and helping the Park Service director work out, at was in the 1910s and 1920s almost a fevered pace, what places could or would be national parks and monuments, and how the parks could be developed and improved. And it meant meeting with men with money and power, boosters and enablers of that process.
Central to their goals for this trip were new enhancements at Yosemite National Park. But that meant also visiting men of power, money, and influence around the state.
Harry Chandler was then the editor of the Los Angeles Times. Chandler was also a huge real estate developer in 1920s Los Angeles. He developed Mullholland Drive and was in the real estate syndicate that put up the Hollywoodland sign in 1923.
Stephen T. Mather had been in the borax business with Thomas Thorkildsen before becoming the founding director of the National Park Service. They produced (and Mather named), 20-Mule Team Borax, which is still marketed under that name). Both had become wealthy through the borax business. Mather used a lot of his money to improve the national parks.
My sense of these trips is that they would have been interesting, and lots of fun. They would have done most of the travel by train. I imagine Mather may have supplemented their expense accounts, if such was needed. Stephen Mather and Charlie close friends through their work together.
This is one of a series of posts that explore the life of Charles D. Mahaffie, Sr. through family memories and items from a family archive. Charles was the author’s grandfather. He left a remarkable collection of papers, photos, and mementos which offer a lens through which to explore his life and legacies. For the full collection, click here.
Once again, wouldn’t it have fun to be a fly on the wall near conversations between Charles Sr. and Mather? I wrote some stuff on Stephen Mather for the Park Service and he was outspoken, hated Washington, and a devout conservationist even though a rich man. When he criticized the Secretary of the Interior on the Parks, the Secretary called him out: “Why don’t you come down here and run them yourself?” So that’s what Mather did. He was also friends with John Muir and Horace Albright – I’d like to think Charles Sr. was a conservationist, as well.
This was built for my great grandfather brother
What fun! It’s quite the storied place, with the wildly different folks who have lived there.