Pasadena Now, 9/19/2024

Award-winning journalist and writer Justin Chapman has written a new book about Paradise Springs, once a hedonistic retreat in the San Gabriel Mountains north of Pasadena for early Hollywood stars such as Charlie Chaplin, then a Christian camp for decades and now a “glamping” (glamorous camping) resort owned by a French company called Huttopia. The book was published recently by Huttopia.

Nestled in a remote, beautiful canyon about 19 miles west of Wrightwood, 25 miles east of Palmdale, and 70 miles northeast of Los Angeles, the 165-acre property was purchased in 1910 by a prominent lawyer from Pasadena named Louis Luckel.

Luckel was “bored with entertaining Hollywood royalty at his home in Pasadena,” according to a 1999 Daily Press article, so he set up 29 portable tents and cabins and he and his guests went fishing and hunting for bears, antelopes and bighorn sheep. “He intended to sire seven sons, but ended up with only one nature-hating daughter” named Adelaide. She preferred the gentility and social graces of Pasadena to the rugged solitude and wilderness of Paradise Springs.

During her first visit to the property in 1913, at age 13, Adelaide “shrieked when she realized she’d have to walk on dirt,” said Bill Hunt, marketing director for the Big Rock Creek Camp that operated on the Paradise Springs property from 1981 to 2017. “She hopped back into the limousine, never to return.” She soon convinced her father to sell the property when the opportunity came, leading to a couple of hard-partying silent film actor brothers—Noah and Wallace Beery—turning the place into a hedonistic wonderland for stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

The camp was frequented by Chaplin, Joseph Kennedy, Francis X. Bushman, Gloria Swanson, William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies, Jack Warner, Cecil B. DeMille, Johnny Weissmuller and many others. They threw wild parties there, brewed illegal homemade hooch during Prohibition, hosted tennis tournaments and gambling, operated a cathouse and raised millions of trout.

In 1923, Chaplin built a rickety, winding staircase—still standing today but too dangerous to climb—by himself in Beery’s cabin, which Huttopia recently renovated and is now available to rent. The stairs led up to the second-floor bedroom that Chaplin used for his “extramarital romantic trysts,” according to Hunt, who learned it from Beery’s son, Noah Beery Jr. of “The Rockford Files” fame shortly before his death in 1994. It was Beery Jr.’s job to warn Chaplin that his wife was coming up the hill so he and his mistress could escape out the back window.

After Beery befell numerous tragedies, Paradise Springs did a complete 180 and became a Christian camp in the late 20th century until it was sold in 2017 to Huttopia, a French glamping company that has since revamped and reopened the property as part of its line of Huttopia Villages. The Village concept is a small community campground that blends in with the surrounding nature, combining the experience of a camping escape with communal spaces, meals and outdoor activities.

Chapman’s book, Paradise Springs, is a longer version of an article that appeared in Pasadena Now, for which Chapman won a first place journalism award from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2023 in the 65th Annual Southern California Journalism Award’s Culture News category. The judges said: “Absolutely wonderful storytelling that takes the reader back to the ‘Golden Age’ and what went on behind the scenes. Great history of the building. Very colorful and entertaining.” Another version of the story was published in LAist, which won a third place LA Press Club award in 2022 in the Entertainment Features category.

Chapman has won a dozen awards from the LA Press Club over the past three years, including three first place awards. He is also the host of the award-winning Pasadena Media TV show “Pasadena Monthly with Justin Chapman.”

Chapman was the youngest elected official in LA County when he served on the Altadena Town Council at age 19. He has written hundreds of articles for dozens of print and digital publications, including Pasadena Now, KPCC/LAist, Alta Journal, Huffington Post, LA Weekly, Berkeley Political Review, Irish Post, Pasadena Weekly, Pasadena Star-News and many others. He currently serves as the District 6 Council Liaison/Field Representative to Pasadena Vice Mayor and City Councilmember Steve Madison.

To purchase a copy of Paradise Springs, reach out to Chapman at jdchapman15@hotmail.com or visit the Huttopia Paradise Springs camp store, 18101 Paradise Dr., Valyermo, CA 93563. Stay tuned for details about a book event Chapman will host at Paradise Springs in Summer 2025.