Helendale, California

Helendale
Area Map
Helendale Schools
Silver Lakes

Helendale History

Keepsake vol One
Keepsake vol Two

  1. Inner cover page,
  2. School District
  3. Helen Becomes Helendale - 1918
  4. Helendale Teacherage
  5. Songs written for Helendale
  6. About the Fifth Annual Helendale Rendezvous
  7. Schedule of events -
  8. Self Guided tour
  9. An Old Landmark
  10. Life As A Boy In Lenwood, California
  11. Jack Gaffney Crew Chief, Nose Artist
  12. Growing Up On The Desert
  13. Life On The Desert As I Remember It
  14. Orebaugh Biography,
  15. Buzz Banks
  16. Eva Von Dettum Helendales Poetess
  17. Old Number 8
  18. Airplanes That Sailed Over The Victor Valley Skies In The Past
  19. Brief History of George Air Force Base
  20. Unsung Heroes
    21.

 

Route 66 Communities
in California

 

Keepsake vol Two

AN OLD LANDMARK

 

AUGUST 13, 1994
FRED GIBSON

 

Many of you have driven old Hwy. 66 between Helendale and Barstow.
You have looked North across the Mojave River from the Old Hodge
Brotbers Place and have seen a Silo or tall building standing
there.  You may have wondered what it was, as I had in the 1920's.
I went North across tbe river to visit Albert Rupert, who was a
classmate in school with me at the Hodge School.

I found where Albert now lives  about 1992 and went to visit him.
While there I asked him about some history of the Old McLean place,
since called the Wheeler place. He told me that the Hall Brothers
had done the concrete work. The start of the dairy Barn was still
there in the 1920's and early 1930's. McLean's had moved there in
the late teens or early 1920's. Windsor had advertised for a cook
at the place and Albert's mother had seen the ad and responded. It
soon became clear that it was cheaper to marry the cook than it was
to pay her wages.

At the time there was a 2 bedroom clapboard house of about 24 ft.
square, a tool room on a lower level from the house, and a bunk
house where two hired men slept. Their major crop was alfalfa.

It had been many years since I was at the old McLean place. I had
been trying to get two other fellows to go out but there was always
something else going on. So I took it upon myself to try and see if
the road was possible and if I could even find the right road.

I had no problems. It was a county graded road and except for being
corduroy and dusty it went right past the remains to the farm.

The old silo still stood. Not much else is left. The remains of the
dairy barn are gone. It looks as if the flood of 1938 moved the
river about l,000 ft. North as the bank was now about 50 ft. from
the silo. The house is completely gone either by neighbors or the
flood. The tool shed, the bunk house, the Western part of the dirt
reservoir. I hope to go back and look around for anything else that
might still be there.

We drove east from the silo and came to a place where we could
overlook the remains of the alfalfa fields and could see four
concrete stand pipes east in a row in the field. We appeared to be
on the northeast bank of the large dirt reservoir and had a hard
time turning around.

We went back out to the graded road and headed East for about 1/8
mile and came to a barbed wire fence with a KEEP OUT PRlVATE
PROPERTY sign on it. No road was visible going East from there but
a road did lead north up the hills, which we did not go on.

 

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