Those Were The Days: Mary Putnam Henck changed these mountains

BY RHEA-FRANCES TETLEY

Historian

 

J. Putnam Henck spoke to the Rim of the World Historical Society in 1994, sharing his memories of his family and especially his mother, Mary Putman Henck. Despite living in the mountains, and being an older mother, Mary Henck had great interest in women’s rights and traveled to Washington, D.C., several times to support the suffrage movement to get women the vote.

The Women’s Clubs were a social movement which took place throughout the United States during the early 1900s. They established the idea that women had a moral responsibility to their communities. Mary participated in the creation of the Women’s Club of Lake Arrowhead in January 1926, later on becoming its president.

After a huge fire had burned from Crestline to Heap’s Peak in 1921, the Dexter and Baker sawmills began cutting down the burned trees. The Rim Road was cut through Skyforest to create an access to the Baker Mill on the mountain’s south face. “Prior to that, all the roads had been on the north side of the crest,” said Henck.

As part of a conservation project for the Women’s Club, Mary Henck, along with her kids, students and women from the club began replanting the forest in the burn area for Arbor Day. The reforestation project was on forest land adjacent to the Henck’s property in Skyforest in 1929. “Because of all the replantings over the decades, today there are three times as many trees in the area as in the 1920s,” said Putty to the group. “Just look at the photos of Lake Arrowhead in the 1920s. Part of that replanted area is today Heaps Peaks Arboretum.”

Putty’s father, Joe, was also busy during those years, putting in roads and waterlines. He built a mercantile store, was the first fire chief and was an insurance agent. He enjoyed using the bulldozer and putting in the roads and small ponds. Joe had begun driving a tractor at age 10, so Putty also began tractor driving at 10.

“Lake Arrowhead has always attracted a rich set,” said Putty, who had been a dynamiter removing tree stumps since age 12, and got his first contract to build a wall at age 15, hiring a 12-year-old to help him. He remembered the big 1933 earthquake that destroyed about 100 homes in the Lakewood tract area of Lake Arrowhead, creating a lot of work during the Depression.

Mary insisted the entire family with all four kids go on vacations to many different places, including Mexico, Crater Lake, Death Valley, San Francisco, etc.

Because of World War II, Mary Henck became the Skyforest postmaster from 1944 through 1955. Myrna Loy owned a vacation home there and would come to their home, where the post office was located, to pick up her mail, Putty remembered her fondly.

Putty earned a civil engineering degree from UC Berkeley, which got him civilian contracting jobs in Panama and on the Galapagos Islands during WW II, building airports and radar installations.

In 1945, Mary and Joseph took a three-month trip around South America, beginning in Mexico, traveling though the Chilean Alps, including a cruise down the Amazon and returning to New York City.  Beginning in 1950, the couple took yearly vacations, visiting Carlsbad Caverns, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., London, Rome, Spain, France and Morocco. In another trip in 1954, Mary and Joseph went around the world, visiting the Middle East; New Delhi, India; Singapore; Hong Kong; Toyko, Japan; and Hawaii.

Mary wrote a weekly newspaper column on activities in Skyforest from 1949 though 1951. In the 1950s, when Mary was in her 70s, she fell down her steps, only getting bruised. Glen Holland and Leonard Ray read a 1949 article in the Saturday Evening Post about a Santa’s Village in New York. They leased land from the Hencks in the 1950s and Putty, then a contractor, helped build the amusement park in Skyforest. It opened Memorial Day 1955, five weeks before Disneyland.

By October 1957, Mary was wearing glasses for poor vision and was beginning to lose her hearing, resulting in receiving a restricted daytime-only driving license, limited to the mountains. Family members began driving 75-year-old Mary to her many club meetings and activities. Joseph died the next year on October 6, 1958.

In 1959 there was a national conference on India in Washington, D.C., which Mary attended, visiting Chicago on her train ride home. When Mary turned 79 years old, she became unable to live alone so, in 1961, the family hired a housekeeper to clean and cook, to help her remain in her home.

Mary was healthy and active until she accidently fell while sweeping snow off her front porch in the fall of 1962, cracking her pelvis. She was then unable to remain on the mountain and moved to a rest home in San Bernardino, dying a year later on Nov. 2, 1963, just 25 days short of her 85^th birthday after living a productive and selfless life.