Final Homestead in the Angeles National Forest


The Loomis Ranch land patent was signed on June 17, 1919. It has often been written that the Loomis homestead was the last one granted in the Angeles National Forest. For almost 20 years, that may have been true, as memorialized in Odo Stade's article "The Last Homestead", written in early 1938.

However, on December 21, 1938, just a few months after Mr. Stade's article was published, the following land patent was granted for a 30 acre parcel located just north of the Bouquet Reservoir in the western portion of the Forest. According to William W. Robinson, in his work "The Forest and the People: The Story of the Angeles National Forest"1, published in 1946, this became the last patent granted in the Angeles National Forest.

The patent was granted to Constantin Bakaleinikoff, a Russian-born composer and conductor who, along with his older brother Mischa, fled the Bolshevik regime and emigrated to the United States in the 1920s. He worked in the music departments of Columbia Pictures and Grand National Pictures, before landing at RKO. Over the course of his 30 year career, he worked on over 300 RKO films as a music director, and wrote original music of his own, receiving three Oscar nominations in the process. Bakaleinikoff retired at the end of the 1950s and moved to Lancaster, California, where he lived with his wife, silent movie actress Fritzi Ridgeway, until her death in 1961. Bakaleinikoff died in 1966, at age 68.




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1 Robinson, William W., The Forest and the People: The Story of the Angeles National Forest.
Los Angeles: Title Insurance and Trust Co., 1946

[Source: Constantin Bakaleinikoff biography from http://moviemusicuk.us/gallery-ab.htm#bakaleinikoff.]