By RHEA-FRANCES TETLEY
Historian
Switzer Park on Highway 18 is located east of Arrowhead Villas and west of Skyforest. The area was chosen by the Lake Arrowhead Women’s Club, established in 1926, first to reforest the area after the fires and then to honor two of their past presidents, Sara Switzer and Pauliena LaFuze for the benefits the mountains had received from their activities.
There are four historical plaques at Switzer Park. This monument recognizes the Tree Shrine and renames the park for Sara Switzer.
Sara Switzer
Under doctor’s orders, TB bedridden patient Bert Switzer was encouraged to move to a drier climate, so nurse Sara accompanied him as they left Michigan on a train to California. They arrived at the mountain, coming up Daley’s City Creek Toll Road in 1890 on a wagon, with Bert on a stretcher, staying at a campground west of Running Springs with Bert sleeping on a cot in a tent. They married so she could care for him better. Sara Switzer nursed him back to health by baking fresh natural pies and rich foods in the cookhouse along with the regular camp food. Bert recovered well enough that he began to hunt and fish.
In 1902, Bert became a U.S. Forest Ranger, patroling two townships and building the Prairie Flat Ranger Station, located near the current Burnt Mill Ranger Station, just west of the entrance to Arrowhead Villas (near current day Switzer Park). He fought the devastating 1911 fire. He remained a forest ranger until the end of the 1920s.
He chased bootlegger Squint Worthington, who was never caught and his still was never discovered, but they had encounters. Switzer highly prized his cap after one encounter with Worthington that left Switzer’s hat with a bullet hole through it from Worthington.
While he was still a Forest Ranger, in 1919, the Switzers bought the Tip Top Market in Twin Peaks and Sara became the Twin Peaks postmaster, a job she held until 1940. Bert built vacation cabins for the Switzer Resort and enjoyed retelling stories of the “olden days” to the visitors.
While chair of the Lake Arrowhead Women’s Club’s Conservation Committee, Sara encouraged the club, as suggested by the California Department of Highways, to purchase and plant Spanish Broom along the sides of the High Gear Road in the newly cut-in areas to deter erosion, which they succeed in doing. As club president, her focus was on conservation and replanting burned areas.
The current Switzer Park locale was the movie set of the grandfather’s mountain cabin in the 1937 movie Heidi, which starred Shirley Temple. The outdoor mountain scenes showing Heidi and Peter climbing up the mountainside with the goats were filmed there.
Pauliena’s rock with plaque for planting more trees in 2005.
A stone monument and plaque were placed at the park on Nov. 13,1937 naming it the Mountain Tree Shrine, commemorating Sara’s “untiring efforts” in leading the tree planting and restoration effort.
The park was renamed the Sara Switzer Tree Shrine in 1945 (although many think the park was named for her husband, Bert; although he was very impactful, he never did get Squint). Club members continued to hand-water the trees they’d planted until 1958 when contractor J. Putnam Henck installed a water system there. The club was recognized in 1960 with top conservation honors for the work they had done at the park during the Woman’s Club presidency of Pauliena LaFuze.
Pauliena LaFuze
Pauliena met Sara when the LaFuzes moved to Twin Peaks in 1934. Cecil LaFuze, Pauliena’s husband, worked for the Edison Company and was involved in getting electricity to all the mountain communities. Pauliena soon joined Twin Peaks’ Worthwhile Club with Sara and then the Women’s Club in 1938. The Women’s Club invited old-timers to speak at the meetings and Pauliena became fascinated with the lives of the mountain’s pioneers.
Pauliena was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate from DePaul College and was a high school English teacher and newspaper writer before marrying and moving to the mountains.
Inspired by the old timers’ stories, Pauliena, while chairman of the History and Landmarks Committee in 1952, with her typewriter copied the daily journal of pioneer lumberman Joseph Tyler. This interest evolved into her writing the thoroughly researched two-volume history of the mountains, The Saga of the San Bernardinos, initially published in 1971 and republished in 2006. She was a charter member of the Crest Forest Historical Society in 1986, which has evolved into the Rim of the World Historical Society.
On April 9, 2005, then 99-year-old Pauliena was again planting trees at burned-over Switzer Park after the 2003 Old Fire. With a shovel in her hand, she planted another Women’s Club-donated tree. On a large boulder nearby is a plaque with Pauliena’s quote from that day, “I never thought I’d outlive the trees.” Be sure to see it, it’s inspiring.
When Pauliena turned 105 on Oct. 3, 2010, she spent the day at the new museum, giving everyone a tour of the museum, telling the docents about what they had chosen to put on display and autographing her book.
Switzer Park is a fine picnic area with flush restrooms that, unfortunately, many locals miss in their rush to get someplace else.
Pauliena LaFuze signing a book for County Supervisor Neil Derry at the Rim of the World Historical Museum in Lake Arrowhead.
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