At Will Rogers State Historic Park’s Inspiration Point

Tomorrow is the 134th anniversary of Will Rogers’ birth. In commemoration, the Will Rogers Ranch Foundation had a birthday party for him, complete with music, an art show, and free cupcakes. After the music, which was mostly 1930s vintage (Will died in a 1935 plane crash in Alaska), Martine and I hiked up to the top of Inspiration Point. The trail is along a relatively easy fire road with a 116-foot gain, about 1.25 miles in length. From up top, you can see a broad swath of Los Angeles extending from downtown to Westwood to Santa Monica and south along Santa Monica Bay to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. You can see the bay behind me and a piece of Will’s polo field just to my right.

Will Rogers State Historic Park is the nicest stretch of greenery near where I live. For a $12.00 day use fee per car, one could watch a polo match (the season is over for now), barbecue some hamburgers, tour Will’s ranch house with a docent, loll aound on the lawn, or take a hike. The Inspiration Point hike is more in the nature of a stroll, but branching out from it is the Santa Monica Mountains Backbone Trail, linking Will Rogers with Topanga State Park, Malibu Creek State Park, and ultimately Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County—some forty miles up and down the ridge line of the Santa Monica Range.

Martine and I usually wind up visiting the Park three or four times a year. Even on the hottest days of summer, its proximity to the ocean usually means there is an occasional breeze. (Farther inland, there is no such relief.)

It was a good day.