Brush cattle numbering thousands ranged throughout Victor Valley in the early 1900's.
Father and son cowmen, William and William Edwin Robinson, whose family arrived at San
Bernardino in 1857 from Utah, owned most of these turn of the century bovines. Operating
from twin ranch facilities, one at La Delta, a settlement three miles north of Oro Grande
and the other, the family's original 1870's homestead, near Point of Rocks, now Helendale;
the combined family's livestock roamed over 1,000 dusty square miles. Grazing from El
Mirage west to Palmdale and north to the vicinity of Rogers Dry Lake, now Edwards Air
Base, these cattle barons used this desert areas for winter foraging. Not much grass, but
enough nourishing fodder to sustain life and allow "beef" to grow.
Authentic cowboys, men living most of their thread bare lives atop a horse and hired
when herd sizes enlarged, received as wages a dollar a day plus grub and a place to put
one's bedroll. These so called "Saddle bums", who probably owned their own
saddles, often used ranch horses and were usually one size-lanky.
When summer heat burned down on the Western Mojave Desert, Robinson cow punchers
"punched" their "doggies" east, to home grounds and the shaded river
valley where the welcomed Mojave surfaced occasionally, offering water to thirsty
critters. Men exposed for months in Victor Valley's changing weather patterns, built and
used tiny adobe bunk houses, set up on the Robinson's properties, called "line
shacks". Two men could escape the elements by entering these and enjoy limited
comfort. Constructed several miles apart and up ground from the river's sandy beaches. two
line shacks- line, as in trap line- remain. Both relics are deteriorating, and damage
continues due to brainless vandalism. More bunk houses not catalogued in written history
are believed lost in past raging floods which washed out every thing in their paths. In
the book, Mohave V, photographs show the flooded river at Helendale, running nearly a mile
wide.
Mirl Orebaugh, Helendale pioneer and noted authority on the region, says today's ruins
of the northernmost shack was in decay prior to his first seeing same in 1932. Eight years
later, the roof was gone and evidence showed the building had burned. Another, smaller
adobe house sits in ruins several miles upstream. It's received worse treatment from man
and weather, and now can claim being only a skeleton of its earlier sheltering self.
In 1927, William "Ed" Robinson became the elected Judge of Oro Grande
Township. As the veteran twenty-year lawman aged. his family's once mighty cattle empire
dwindled away. "Ed", whose father had predeceased him by decades, died in 1947
at 66 years of age. He left no heirs. The 100-year old Helendale line shack will be open
free for public viewing during Helendale's Annual Rendezvous on Saturday, Sept.26. This
rare opportunity to visit the site and see how real cowboys survived in early Victor
Valley will occur only during this one-day celebration.
