Women's History Month 2004
Mar. 13th, 2004 02:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sff_corgi_ljPancho Barnes
Who is Pancho Barnes? To put it simply, Pancho Barnes (1901-1975) is considered by many to be one of the 20th century’s greatest American characters. During her lifetime, Pancho (born Florence Leontine Lowe) gained respect for her intelligence, individuality, outsized personality, creativity, entrepreneurship, humor, generosity and integrity. Her life philosophy was, "When you have a choice -- choose happy."
Pancho, as an early champion of equal rights and access for women, refused to allow then-prevailing stereotypes about the differences between women and men to limit her horizons. She spent her childhood in a 32-room mansion in San Marino, California, then as now a genteel enclave of shaded estates and tasteful villas near Pasadena. Born into a family of wealth and privilege, she enjoyed the benefits of nannies and tutors who instructed her in all the social graces that a proper young lady should exhibit given her social class.
Two men dominated her early life. Her father, an avid outdoorsman, freely passed on his enthusiasms to his daughter, and the young Florence absorbed horsemanship and hunting skills along with the genteel accomplishments taught by a series of private schools and tutors. Her grandfather, Professor Thaddeus Lowe, gave her another lasting gift--a fervor for aviation. One of the founders of the California Institute of Technology, he is better known to history as the intrepid balloonist who spied on the Confederate lines during the Civil War and organized the nation’s first military air unit, the balloon corps for Lincoln’s Army of the Potomac. The veteran aeronaut took his young granddaughter to see her first air show at the age of nine.
At a very early age, Pancho learned to ride "lady-like", but later held the record for the farthest distance jumped on a horse. Also classically trained in dance and ballet, she had become so accomplished that at age 10 she performed on stage with the legendary Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova.
At age 20, by family arrangement (1921), she married C. Rankin Barnes, a handsome and prominent pastor of St. James Episcopal Church in South Pasadena. The church congregation to this day still talks about how Pancho frequently buzzed her husband’s church with her plane during Sunday services. The marriage to the pastor produced a son, Billy, whom she referred to as "the virgin birth" because of her complete lack of prior understanding and experience with sex. Although Pancho and Rankin truly cared for each other, they remained husband and wife only on paper, and lived separate lives.
Pancho loved people, and men in particular. She explored her sexuality and became comfortable with her physical self. During her lifetime she would have numerous relationships and marry three more times. One of her closest friends in the 1920s and 1930s was Ramon Novarro (1899-1968), the dashingly handsome Latin film star.
During one of Pancho’s many parties at her mansion on the cliffs at Emerald Bay in Laguna Beach (which had its own landing strip so her friends could fly in), she jokingly proposed an impromptu adventure to her friends. "Why don’t we go up to San Pedro and catch the next boat out for South America. Let's visit the Lost City and those pyramids we've all been hearing about. We're going to Machu Picchu!" On a dare, she went up to San Pedro with a group of friends to do exactly that. Pancho was the only one who didn’t chicken out at the last minute. Noticing that there were only crewmen on the schooner, she quickly borrowed some clothes from one of her friends who 'chickened out,' and dressed as a man in the hopes of 'blending in.' However, once the boat was safely out to sea, she then learned that the boat was actually running guns to Mexican revolutionaries. Naturally, she was delighted. Another adventure!
On board she met helmsman, Roger Chute, a Stanford educated fisheries expert, who had also come aboard for some adventure. They decided to jump ship when the boat anchored at San Blas, Mexico and they spent the next four months roaming through the revolution-torn interior. Somewhere along this trek, while riding a donkey, her comrade dubbed her "Pancho" for her fancied resemblance to Don Quixote’s faithful companion. She was delighted with her new nickname, and kept it for the rest of her life.
Returning to San Marino later that year, she turned her eyes toward the skies. By then, Wall Street’s Bull Market was roaring along, the public was wildly air-minded in the aftermath of Lindbergh’s flight to Paris. Pancho bought an OX-5 powered Travelair biplane, hired an irascible but expert instructor, and set out to learn how to fly. Defying her teacher’s best efforts to discourage his "dilettante" student, she soloed after only six hours of instruction. The young socialite promptly celebrated this feat by taking a friend aloft and buzzing the field while her passenger wing-walked among the flying wires. From that point onward, aviation became the dominant note in her life.
Scorning the genteel aspects of her upbringing, Pancho took to wearing men’s clothes, often oil-stained and disheveled, and to smoke cigars. Kitchen matches scratched across the seat of her pants replaced silver cigarette lighters, and her speech, never too delicate at the best of times, became notoriously coarse and salty. Although Pancho was always ready for a laugh, however, she was never a buffoon in the air. Always, she took flying seriously and went to great lengths to become a skilled pilot as well as a practical mechanic. Her professional approach to flying never, of course, prevented her from enjoying enormous fun along the way.
In August, 1929, she joined nineteen other women in the Women’s Air Derby, a transcontinental air race from Santa Monica to Cleveland for women. This was the first Powder Puff Derby, an competition still flown until recently. She returned to the Powder Puff Derby the following year in a powerful new Travelair Mystery Ship, a low-winged speedster with huge wheel spats which has been called the most beautiful of the great racing airplanes. Blasting across the route at an average speed of 196.19 mph, she took the world’s speed record for women away from Amelia Earhart.
Not content with this, she honed her aerobatic skills and set out to become one of Hollywood’s favorite stunt pilots. The film capital was no stranger to Pancho; even as a debutante she had slipped away from San Marino to dabble in movie work as a script girl and other jobs. The adventurous aristocrat had even doubled for Louise Fezenda in the horseback scenes in the early Rin Tin Tin movies. Now she became the technical director for Pathe’s The Flying Fool. Shortly she formed her own company and, with three pilots working for her, encouraged the studios to contract with her for guaranteed work, rather than the hit-or-miss method of hiring their own pilots each day. This marked the beginning of the Associated Motion Picture Pilots.
It was also the beginning of numerous "Pancho stories" which circulate freely today: her friendships with the film luminaries of the time--Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn--and rumors of romances with Ramon Navarro and/or Duncan Renaldo. There was a colorful feud with Roscoe Turner involving an impromptu air race, Gilmore the lion, and a pair of powder-blue kidskin boots.
Pancho had a heart of gold, and was extremely generous. During the Great Depression of the ‘thirties, when thousands lost their jobs and many went homeless, she provided food and arranged lodging accommodations for friends who were out of work. She frequently (and often anonymously) paid the hospital bills for people she learned were financially strapped. In 1934 she organized the Women’s Air Reserve to fly in aid to victims of national emergencies.
After depleting her fortune through a lavish lifestyle and helping others financially, in 1934 Pancho moved with her son, Billy, to the California Mojave desert for the second phase of her life. She had already sold her famed Mystery Ship airplane -- the same craft in which she captured the speed record as the ‘fastest woman on earth’ -- to pay debts.
She traded her last major asset for 80 acres of desert land on the then isolated Muroc Dry Lake Bed. The lakebed appealed to her not only for its fertile soil and agricultural potential, but also because it was an ideal take-off and landing spot for her friends. Pancho’s new world was remote, lying alongside a dirt road connecting two hamlets -- Muroc and Rosamond, occupying the lowlands between two large desert playas. Nothing much ever came of Rosamond Dry Lake to the west. But some interesting activity was already stirring on the far shore of the other huge lake bed to the east. Rogers Dry Lake was 44 square miles of rock-hard flatness, the largest such lake in the world. Pancho arrived on the scene not long after the Army Air Corps did; in 1933, working parties in khaki had arrived to set up a bombing and gunnery range to serve the fighters and bombers from March Field, California.
Soon the Muroc Army Air Field (later renamed Edwards Air Force Base) was developed and was her only neighbor. At Muroc, Pancho founded Rancho Oro Verde, where she grew a cash crop of alfalfa and raised hogs and cattle, and founded a dairy. As the Base expanded, so did her business. She eventually built a thriving 9,000 member dude ranch with glamorous hostesses, its own airport, hotel, restaurant, dance hall, gambling den, swimming pool, stables and well-stocked horse corral and championship rodeo stadium. She also presided over a world famous bar where she hosted what she called "the fastest and bravest men on earth" -- to be known world-wide as the Happy Bottom Riding Club. It was the clubhouse for the test pilots, military personnel, designers, mechanics and engineers responsible for advancing aircraft design and breaking the sound barrier. The Happy Bottom Riding Club was home to General Jimmy Doolittle, Chuck Yeager, A. Scott Crossfield, H. H. "Hap" Arnold, Pete Everest, Bob Hoover, Jack Ridley, and all the pilots with the Right Stuff.
Pancho always made certain that her guests enjoyed a memorable experience. If music wasn’t playing constantly on the jukebox, it was coming from a bandstand that featured a jazz combo with vocalists. Pancho was also an accomplished songwriter and member of ASCAP. In the Fifties, she enjoyed seeing one of her song compositions, ‘By Your Side,’ sell more than a million copies and reach the Hit Parade.
Pancho's friend and Chuck Yeager’s boss in the flight test world, Col. Albert Boyd, was another legendary old-time pilot who had warm regard for Pancho and her accomplishments. After he was promoted and had assumed command of the flight test establishment, General Boyd appeared less frequently at the ranch. Although he never hesitated to chew her out when her guests flew too close to his base, he remained a respected member of her circle of friends. But after his departure from Edwards in 1952, the good times rapidly drew to a close.
Soon after the next commander arrived on the scene, the entire atmosphere began to change. The reasons were many: conflicting requirements, personality clashes, and some genuine misunderstandings. The immediate catalyst was airspace -- which was becoming increasingly crowded between the large numbers of new aircraft being tested and the private airplanes of Pancho’s guests. The borders of the base were already pressing hard upon Oro Verde, and a master plan had already been written calling for it to expand to its present western boundary. Sooner or later, something would have to give. But the times were changing as well. The brash camaraderie of the wartime years was giving way to the straight-laced Fifties, and the casual flying world of the 1940s was evolving into today’s relentlessly sober approach. Even the bachelor test pilots in their twenties were becoming married professionals in their early middle age. The Happy Bottom Riding Club was doomed in any event.
A lowball offer of $100,000 was presented to Pancho for the purchase of her now 380 acre ranch to expand their test airstrip to accommodate supersonic aircraft. However, Pancho balked at the offer, commenting that her ranch was not in the way of any planned future expansion at Edwards that had been previously acknowledged. She also knew that her land and business were worth far more than what had been offered.
It was a well known fact that the government historically placed any establishment 'off-limits' if there was even a hint of morals issues. The Happy Bottom Riding Club was no exception, and Pancho's ranch was placed 'off limits' to all military personnel after a rumour was started that it was actually a brothel. Then Pancho was served with condemnation papers for her ranch. Serving as her own attorney, Pancho battled in the courts but shortly before the end of the trial, on November 13, 1953, the Happy Bottom Riding Club burned to the ground under highly mysterious circumstances.
Within days of the fire, the trial ended and Pancho was cleared of all charges. She had fought the government and won. She received a formal apology and over four times what the government had originally offered for her land. However, the will of the scoundrels prevailed. The Happy Bottom Riding Club was gone forever. In addition, much of the settlement went into attorney’s fees and, at any rate, the psychological blows had been considerable. Pancho had lost not only her ranch and livelihood, but also a lifetime’s accumulation of irreplaceable souvenirs and valuables. Perhaps worst of all, though, was the rift with her beloved Air Force. Then, like a relentless Greek tragedy, her health began to deteriorate. Pancho took some time off to re-group, contemplate her situation and plan her future.
(As an interesting historical sidebar, despite the intense battle for Pancho’s land, as of 2003 (almost 50 years later), no expansion of the airstrip near or over her land has ever occurred.)
After the sale of her ranch land to the government, Pancho moved to an even more remote desert location in Cantil, California, with the high hopes of rebuilding her business -- however, it was not to be. Over the years her health continued to decline. She developed breast cancer and underwent multiple rounds of treatments and surgeries. Late in her life she developed an endocrine disorder that was never properly diagnosed. Her financial situation deteriorating, she relocated further into the desert (and unfortunately further away from the watchful eye of friends and family), settling into a very small and humble abode in Boron, California.
Then in 1961, Pancho was 're-discovered' and deemed a living legend of aviation. She was officially welcomed back into the fold at Edwards Air Force Base. She was now respectfully and affectionately referred to as "The Mother of Edwards Air Force Base." The officer's dining room at the Base was re-christened "The Pancho Barnes Room," and showcased memorabilia from her numerous life's adventures. In 1968, Billy, her son, bought for her at auction the long-lost, beloved Travel Air ‘Mystery Ship’ airplane. This inspired Pancho to renew contact with her old aviation buddies. There were rounds of parties, recognition dinners and awards. With the repurchase of her Mystery Ship it seemed that her life had come full circle. Unfortunately her medical condition continued to deteriorate, and those around her characteristically ‘gave her her space.’ Then her health failed drastically. As such, despite a lifetime of giving and doing for others, she died alone in a little rock house in Boron, California in 1975. Six years later, her son, Billy, who was also a pilot, died in a freak air crash near the site of the old Rancho Oro Verde and Happy Bottom Riding Club.
Little remains today of what once was a raucous desert playground. However, surviving ruins do hint at the high style and outrageousness that were Pancho’s trademarks. In addition to an amazing rock and boulder four-tiered cascading fountain, the double-sided fireplace and door frames from the dining room and bar still stand, as well as some outbuildings including the concrete shell of the dairy barn which housed the ‘not exactly legal’ gambling activities. On the east side of the ranch stands the infamous wooden gate which Chuck Yeager struck on horseback - breaking two ribs -- the night before he became the first man to break the sound barrier. Also still remaining is the circular swimming pool with special options demanded by Pancho, including recessed underwater lighting and a gently sloping ramp that allowed Pancho and her horse to cool off after a hot afternoons ride by walking directly into the pool.
The site of Pancho’s Happy Bottom Riding Club is eligible for listing on The National Register of Historic Places. Each year, thousands of people convene where the Club and ranch once stood to celebrate the life and times of this great American character with an annual "Pancho Barnes Day" party sponsored by Edward’s Air Force Base and the Flight Test Historical Foundation. And in a hangar in nearby Mojave, Pancho’s black-and-red Travelaire Mystery Ship is gradually returning to its original splendor.
As always, Pancho had the last word: "Well ------- it, we had more fun in a week than most of the weenies in the world have in a lifetime."
http://www.panchobarnes.com/
http://www.edwards.af.mil/history/docs_html/people/pancho_barnes_biography.html
Original photographs copyright Pancho Barnes Enterprises
Who is Pancho Barnes? To put it simply, Pancho Barnes (1901-1975) is considered by many to be one of the 20th century’s greatest American characters. During her lifetime, Pancho (born Florence Leontine Lowe) gained respect for her intelligence, individuality, outsized personality, creativity, entrepreneurship, humor, generosity and integrity. Her life philosophy was, "When you have a choice -- choose happy."
Pancho, as an early champion of equal rights and access for women, refused to allow then-prevailing stereotypes about the differences between women and men to limit her horizons. She spent her childhood in a 32-room mansion in San Marino, California, then as now a genteel enclave of shaded estates and tasteful villas near Pasadena. Born into a family of wealth and privilege, she enjoyed the benefits of nannies and tutors who instructed her in all the social graces that a proper young lady should exhibit given her social class.
Two men dominated her early life. Her father, an avid outdoorsman, freely passed on his enthusiasms to his daughter, and the young Florence absorbed horsemanship and hunting skills along with the genteel accomplishments taught by a series of private schools and tutors. Her grandfather, Professor Thaddeus Lowe, gave her another lasting gift--a fervor for aviation. One of the founders of the California Institute of Technology, he is better known to history as the intrepid balloonist who spied on the Confederate lines during the Civil War and organized the nation’s first military air unit, the balloon corps for Lincoln’s Army of the Potomac. The veteran aeronaut took his young granddaughter to see her first air show at the age of nine.
At a very early age, Pancho learned to ride "lady-like", but later held the record for the farthest distance jumped on a horse. Also classically trained in dance and ballet, she had become so accomplished that at age 10 she performed on stage with the legendary Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova.
At age 20, by family arrangement (1921), she married C. Rankin Barnes, a handsome and prominent pastor of St. James Episcopal Church in South Pasadena. The church congregation to this day still talks about how Pancho frequently buzzed her husband’s church with her plane during Sunday services. The marriage to the pastor produced a son, Billy, whom she referred to as "the virgin birth" because of her complete lack of prior understanding and experience with sex. Although Pancho and Rankin truly cared for each other, they remained husband and wife only on paper, and lived separate lives.
Pancho loved people, and men in particular. She explored her sexuality and became comfortable with her physical self. During her lifetime she would have numerous relationships and marry three more times. One of her closest friends in the 1920s and 1930s was Ramon Novarro (1899-1968), the dashingly handsome Latin film star.
During one of Pancho’s many parties at her mansion on the cliffs at Emerald Bay in Laguna Beach (which had its own landing strip so her friends could fly in), she jokingly proposed an impromptu adventure to her friends. "Why don’t we go up to San Pedro and catch the next boat out for South America. Let's visit the Lost City and those pyramids we've all been hearing about. We're going to Machu Picchu!" On a dare, she went up to San Pedro with a group of friends to do exactly that. Pancho was the only one who didn’t chicken out at the last minute. Noticing that there were only crewmen on the schooner, she quickly borrowed some clothes from one of her friends who 'chickened out,' and dressed as a man in the hopes of 'blending in.' However, once the boat was safely out to sea, she then learned that the boat was actually running guns to Mexican revolutionaries. Naturally, she was delighted. Another adventure!
On board she met helmsman, Roger Chute, a Stanford educated fisheries expert, who had also come aboard for some adventure. They decided to jump ship when the boat anchored at San Blas, Mexico and they spent the next four months roaming through the revolution-torn interior. Somewhere along this trek, while riding a donkey, her comrade dubbed her "Pancho" for her fancied resemblance to Don Quixote’s faithful companion. She was delighted with her new nickname, and kept it for the rest of her life.
Returning to San Marino later that year, she turned her eyes toward the skies. By then, Wall Street’s Bull Market was roaring along, the public was wildly air-minded in the aftermath of Lindbergh’s flight to Paris. Pancho bought an OX-5 powered Travelair biplane, hired an irascible but expert instructor, and set out to learn how to fly. Defying her teacher’s best efforts to discourage his "dilettante" student, she soloed after only six hours of instruction. The young socialite promptly celebrated this feat by taking a friend aloft and buzzing the field while her passenger wing-walked among the flying wires. From that point onward, aviation became the dominant note in her life.
Scorning the genteel aspects of her upbringing, Pancho took to wearing men’s clothes, often oil-stained and disheveled, and to smoke cigars. Kitchen matches scratched across the seat of her pants replaced silver cigarette lighters, and her speech, never too delicate at the best of times, became notoriously coarse and salty. Although Pancho was always ready for a laugh, however, she was never a buffoon in the air. Always, she took flying seriously and went to great lengths to become a skilled pilot as well as a practical mechanic. Her professional approach to flying never, of course, prevented her from enjoying enormous fun along the way.
In August, 1929, she joined nineteen other women in the Women’s Air Derby, a transcontinental air race from Santa Monica to Cleveland for women. This was the first Powder Puff Derby, an competition still flown until recently. She returned to the Powder Puff Derby the following year in a powerful new Travelair Mystery Ship, a low-winged speedster with huge wheel spats which has been called the most beautiful of the great racing airplanes. Blasting across the route at an average speed of 196.19 mph, she took the world’s speed record for women away from Amelia Earhart.
Not content with this, she honed her aerobatic skills and set out to become one of Hollywood’s favorite stunt pilots. The film capital was no stranger to Pancho; even as a debutante she had slipped away from San Marino to dabble in movie work as a script girl and other jobs. The adventurous aristocrat had even doubled for Louise Fezenda in the horseback scenes in the early Rin Tin Tin movies. Now she became the technical director for Pathe’s The Flying Fool. Shortly she formed her own company and, with three pilots working for her, encouraged the studios to contract with her for guaranteed work, rather than the hit-or-miss method of hiring their own pilots each day. This marked the beginning of the Associated Motion Picture Pilots.
It was also the beginning of numerous "Pancho stories" which circulate freely today: her friendships with the film luminaries of the time--Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn--and rumors of romances with Ramon Navarro and/or Duncan Renaldo. There was a colorful feud with Roscoe Turner involving an impromptu air race, Gilmore the lion, and a pair of powder-blue kidskin boots.
Pancho had a heart of gold, and was extremely generous. During the Great Depression of the ‘thirties, when thousands lost their jobs and many went homeless, she provided food and arranged lodging accommodations for friends who were out of work. She frequently (and often anonymously) paid the hospital bills for people she learned were financially strapped. In 1934 she organized the Women’s Air Reserve to fly in aid to victims of national emergencies.
After depleting her fortune through a lavish lifestyle and helping others financially, in 1934 Pancho moved with her son, Billy, to the California Mojave desert for the second phase of her life. She had already sold her famed Mystery Ship airplane -- the same craft in which she captured the speed record as the ‘fastest woman on earth’ -- to pay debts.
She traded her last major asset for 80 acres of desert land on the then isolated Muroc Dry Lake Bed. The lakebed appealed to her not only for its fertile soil and agricultural potential, but also because it was an ideal take-off and landing spot for her friends. Pancho’s new world was remote, lying alongside a dirt road connecting two hamlets -- Muroc and Rosamond, occupying the lowlands between two large desert playas. Nothing much ever came of Rosamond Dry Lake to the west. But some interesting activity was already stirring on the far shore of the other huge lake bed to the east. Rogers Dry Lake was 44 square miles of rock-hard flatness, the largest such lake in the world. Pancho arrived on the scene not long after the Army Air Corps did; in 1933, working parties in khaki had arrived to set up a bombing and gunnery range to serve the fighters and bombers from March Field, California.
Soon the Muroc Army Air Field (later renamed Edwards Air Force Base) was developed and was her only neighbor. At Muroc, Pancho founded Rancho Oro Verde, where she grew a cash crop of alfalfa and raised hogs and cattle, and founded a dairy. As the Base expanded, so did her business. She eventually built a thriving 9,000 member dude ranch with glamorous hostesses, its own airport, hotel, restaurant, dance hall, gambling den, swimming pool, stables and well-stocked horse corral and championship rodeo stadium. She also presided over a world famous bar where she hosted what she called "the fastest and bravest men on earth" -- to be known world-wide as the Happy Bottom Riding Club. It was the clubhouse for the test pilots, military personnel, designers, mechanics and engineers responsible for advancing aircraft design and breaking the sound barrier. The Happy Bottom Riding Club was home to General Jimmy Doolittle, Chuck Yeager, A. Scott Crossfield, H. H. "Hap" Arnold, Pete Everest, Bob Hoover, Jack Ridley, and all the pilots with the Right Stuff.
Pancho always made certain that her guests enjoyed a memorable experience. If music wasn’t playing constantly on the jukebox, it was coming from a bandstand that featured a jazz combo with vocalists. Pancho was also an accomplished songwriter and member of ASCAP. In the Fifties, she enjoyed seeing one of her song compositions, ‘By Your Side,’ sell more than a million copies and reach the Hit Parade.
Pancho's friend and Chuck Yeager’s boss in the flight test world, Col. Albert Boyd, was another legendary old-time pilot who had warm regard for Pancho and her accomplishments. After he was promoted and had assumed command of the flight test establishment, General Boyd appeared less frequently at the ranch. Although he never hesitated to chew her out when her guests flew too close to his base, he remained a respected member of her circle of friends. But after his departure from Edwards in 1952, the good times rapidly drew to a close.
Soon after the next commander arrived on the scene, the entire atmosphere began to change. The reasons were many: conflicting requirements, personality clashes, and some genuine misunderstandings. The immediate catalyst was airspace -- which was becoming increasingly crowded between the large numbers of new aircraft being tested and the private airplanes of Pancho’s guests. The borders of the base were already pressing hard upon Oro Verde, and a master plan had already been written calling for it to expand to its present western boundary. Sooner or later, something would have to give. But the times were changing as well. The brash camaraderie of the wartime years was giving way to the straight-laced Fifties, and the casual flying world of the 1940s was evolving into today’s relentlessly sober approach. Even the bachelor test pilots in their twenties were becoming married professionals in their early middle age. The Happy Bottom Riding Club was doomed in any event.
A lowball offer of $100,000 was presented to Pancho for the purchase of her now 380 acre ranch to expand their test airstrip to accommodate supersonic aircraft. However, Pancho balked at the offer, commenting that her ranch was not in the way of any planned future expansion at Edwards that had been previously acknowledged. She also knew that her land and business were worth far more than what had been offered.
It was a well known fact that the government historically placed any establishment 'off-limits' if there was even a hint of morals issues. The Happy Bottom Riding Club was no exception, and Pancho's ranch was placed 'off limits' to all military personnel after a rumour was started that it was actually a brothel. Then Pancho was served with condemnation papers for her ranch. Serving as her own attorney, Pancho battled in the courts but shortly before the end of the trial, on November 13, 1953, the Happy Bottom Riding Club burned to the ground under highly mysterious circumstances.
Within days of the fire, the trial ended and Pancho was cleared of all charges. She had fought the government and won. She received a formal apology and over four times what the government had originally offered for her land. However, the will of the scoundrels prevailed. The Happy Bottom Riding Club was gone forever. In addition, much of the settlement went into attorney’s fees and, at any rate, the psychological blows had been considerable. Pancho had lost not only her ranch and livelihood, but also a lifetime’s accumulation of irreplaceable souvenirs and valuables. Perhaps worst of all, though, was the rift with her beloved Air Force. Then, like a relentless Greek tragedy, her health began to deteriorate. Pancho took some time off to re-group, contemplate her situation and plan her future.
(As an interesting historical sidebar, despite the intense battle for Pancho’s land, as of 2003 (almost 50 years later), no expansion of the airstrip near or over her land has ever occurred.)
After the sale of her ranch land to the government, Pancho moved to an even more remote desert location in Cantil, California, with the high hopes of rebuilding her business -- however, it was not to be. Over the years her health continued to decline. She developed breast cancer and underwent multiple rounds of treatments and surgeries. Late in her life she developed an endocrine disorder that was never properly diagnosed. Her financial situation deteriorating, she relocated further into the desert (and unfortunately further away from the watchful eye of friends and family), settling into a very small and humble abode in Boron, California.
Then in 1961, Pancho was 're-discovered' and deemed a living legend of aviation. She was officially welcomed back into the fold at Edwards Air Force Base. She was now respectfully and affectionately referred to as "The Mother of Edwards Air Force Base." The officer's dining room at the Base was re-christened "The Pancho Barnes Room," and showcased memorabilia from her numerous life's adventures. In 1968, Billy, her son, bought for her at auction the long-lost, beloved Travel Air ‘Mystery Ship’ airplane. This inspired Pancho to renew contact with her old aviation buddies. There were rounds of parties, recognition dinners and awards. With the repurchase of her Mystery Ship it seemed that her life had come full circle. Unfortunately her medical condition continued to deteriorate, and those around her characteristically ‘gave her her space.’ Then her health failed drastically. As such, despite a lifetime of giving and doing for others, she died alone in a little rock house in Boron, California in 1975. Six years later, her son, Billy, who was also a pilot, died in a freak air crash near the site of the old Rancho Oro Verde and Happy Bottom Riding Club.
Little remains today of what once was a raucous desert playground. However, surviving ruins do hint at the high style and outrageousness that were Pancho’s trademarks. In addition to an amazing rock and boulder four-tiered cascading fountain, the double-sided fireplace and door frames from the dining room and bar still stand, as well as some outbuildings including the concrete shell of the dairy barn which housed the ‘not exactly legal’ gambling activities. On the east side of the ranch stands the infamous wooden gate which Chuck Yeager struck on horseback - breaking two ribs -- the night before he became the first man to break the sound barrier. Also still remaining is the circular swimming pool with special options demanded by Pancho, including recessed underwater lighting and a gently sloping ramp that allowed Pancho and her horse to cool off after a hot afternoons ride by walking directly into the pool.
The site of Pancho’s Happy Bottom Riding Club is eligible for listing on The National Register of Historic Places. Each year, thousands of people convene where the Club and ranch once stood to celebrate the life and times of this great American character with an annual "Pancho Barnes Day" party sponsored by Edward’s Air Force Base and the Flight Test Historical Foundation. And in a hangar in nearby Mojave, Pancho’s black-and-red Travelaire Mystery Ship is gradually returning to its original splendor.
As always, Pancho had the last word: "Well ------- it, we had more fun in a week than most of the weenies in the world have in a lifetime."
http://www.panchobarnes.com/
http://www.edwards.af.mil/history/docs_html/people/pancho_barnes_biography.html
Original photographs copyright Pancho Barnes Enterprises
