Will Rogers: The Cowboy Philosopher and the Ranch Above the Pacific

Will Rogers grew up Cherokee in Indian Territory before it was the state of Oklahoma. He learned to rope cattle on his father's ranch and refined the skill into a performance act that took him to vaudeville, Broadway, the Ziegfeld Follies, and eventually Hollywood, where by the mid-nineteen thirties he was the highest-paid actor in the industry. He also wrote a syndicated newspaper column read by millions of Americans every day. He was not playing a character. That was how he talked.

He bought land in Pacific Palisades in the nineteen twenties and built a ranch above the coast: a thirty-one-room house, stables, a roping arena, and a polo field where he played with Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable on weekends. The view from the polo field on a clear afternoon is one of the great unobstructed ocean views on the Southern California coast. He designed it that way.

Rogers died in a plane crash near Barrow, Alaska, on August fifteenth, nineteen thirty-five. He was fifty-five. His wife Betty willed the entire ranch to the state of California in nineteen forty-four. It became a state park.

The polo field is still mowed. On weekend afternoons, matches are still played there, on the same grass, with the same Pacific behind it. Rogers would have approved of that use more than any other.