The Controversial Old Trapper’s Lodge Statues Have Locked Pierce College and a Folk Artist’s Family in a Pricey Stalemate

Featured image credit: Konrad Summers

Being a school that got its start specializing in agricultural studies, Los Angeles Pierce College is a greener campus than most. It’s a surreal feeling when you first see its campus farmhouse as you’re rolling across Victory Boulevard. But within an obscure fenced-off grove of unkempt trees, you’ll find something stranger than a big city barn. And, depending on who you ask, more disturbing. Because, though they’ve gone to great lengths to hide it, Pierce College is the current resting place of one of the most embattled folk art installations in California: the decaying remnants of the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues. And if you walk up on these statues unprepared, your heart is likely to skip a beat. Or three. 

The Legend of the Old Trapper

The story of the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues begins with the self-stylized Old Trapper himself, John Ehn. Born in 1897, he was likely too young to have any significant memories of America’s frontier days. But he felt an affinity with the period nonetheless. For one, he’d been born in a temporary lodging camp; a rustic start to a colorful life.

After dabbling in a myriad of professions (including fur trapping fittingly enough), Ehn heeded the call of his own personal westward expansion in 1941. By this point in his life, spinal inflammation had firmly placed his fur-wrangling days behind him. But he still had enough grit to open his own hotel in Sun Valley, California which he dubbed the Old Trapper’s Lodge. 

Ehn was an eccentric character, often decked out in fringed frontier leathers and turquoise accessories that loudly proclaimed his love for America’s Old West before he’d even spoken a word of introduction. And the entrepreneur wanted the Old Trapper’s Lodge to be an extension of that romance. So, he reached out to Claude Bell, an artist whose notable works included historic statues at Knott’s Berry Farm and the looming Cabazon dinosaurs.

Ehn wanted to be Bell’s next subject. Thus he commissioned the artist to create a statue as large as his personality. It portrayed Ehn as the Old Trapper from his own mythology, hand on his rifle, eyes on the horizon. Greeting weary travelers as they rolled up to the Old Trapper’s Lodge, the statue beamed the golden promises of California. 

The Folk Art Foray of John Ehn

Bell’s Old Trapper sculpture was simply a spark that would set Ehn’s own artistic ambitions ablaze. He carefully studied Bell’s work, noting how the accomplished artist started with a rebar foundation before layering concrete over the frame. After Bell had finished work on the Old Trapper statue, Ehn tried his own hand at the process and found it addicting. Inspired, he set to work recreating his impressions of America’s Old West in concrete, costume jewelry, and occasional oddities (including genuine teeth). 

Ehn was using his creative impulses to not just memorialize a time he’d romanticized since childhood, but also his family’s legacy. He used members of the Ehn family as his models, sometimes even creating plaster masks of their faces to create a realism that stood in stark contrast to Ehn’s own limited ability. This resulted in disproportionate sentinels that seemed to stand guard over the uncanny valley. 

A Divisive Response to the Old Trapper’s Lodge Statues

Ehn began his ambitious project in 1951 and worked on it until his death at the age of 84 in 1981. The result of his decades-long creative outpouring is… divisive. Some see a whimsical yet ultimately touching tribute to a family from the heart of its patriarch. Others see a twisted distortion of American history tainted by racist tropes. And still, others see an artistic abomination of nightmarishly misshapen stereotypes that miss their mark so completely that they’re mesmerizing. 

In 1985, a far cry from the social illuminations of the modern world, Ehn’s statues earned the consideration of the Office of Historic Preservation which designated the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues as California Historical Landmark 939.5. It was a decision that would eventually lead to headaches for the Ehn family, Pierce College, and everyone in between. But for the moment it was simply an honor. An honor that the Office of Historic Preservation could decree but could not enforce, as the surviving Ehns would come to understand. 

A Decades-Spanning Agreement with Pierce College

A mere three years later, the Ehnssold their beloved motel to allow for the expansion of the Burbank Airport’s runway. Historical status be damned; the city slated Ehn’s statues for demolition along with the motel. The family received a fair settlement for the property and acquiesced to its destruction but pleaded for time to find a new home for their patriarch’s folk art. To achieve this, they partnered with an organization called SPACES (Saving Preserving Arts Cultural Environments) to re-house the seven over-arching sculptural tableaus consisting of nearly two dozen statues. 

But even in 1988, finding a venue for a DIY statue of a skin-headed fur trapper stabbing a Native American chief to death was a tall order. Venues including Knott’s Berry Farm and the L.A. Zoo rejected offers from SPACES… many would say wisely. But that same year, David Wolf, then the President of Pierce College accepted the proposal, declaring, “It is with pleasure that I, on behalf of Los Angeles Pierce College, accept Historical Landmark #939, also known as John Ehn’s Old Trappers Boothill.” And later generations would keep his promise at the cost of their own interests. 

The surviving Ehns used their own money to transfer the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues to the Pierce College campus in Woodland Hills. Along with Ehn’s “boot hill” landscape, a sculpted “graveyard” for fictitious outlaws and Wild West heroes, the statues were deposited in a little-used scenic picnic area dubbed Alvin Cleveland Park at the periphery of the Animal and Earth Sciences Buildings and the campus farm. 

An Unusual Arrangement

Love them or loathe them, Ehn’s statues were a perplexing addition to a college campus… especially one in the suburbs of the second-largest city in the country. And with it began a relationship between Pierce College and the Ehn family that was more complicated than even the most toxic Facebook relationship status. SPACES drafted an agreement stipulated by the Ehn family that Pierce College accepted with their reception of the garish folk art. A portion of this agreement detailed Pierce’s obligation should the installation need to seek a new home:

“Under no circumstances is the ‘Boothill’ to be destroyed or disposed of unless every effort has been made to contact the donors. If they are unavailable, a sincere, diligent effort must be made to find a safe new home for the ‘Boothill’. As a last resort, the artifacts can be separated and given to various Folk Art museums, etc. This should be handled by the SPACES organization if they are still in existence. Priority should be given to organizations in Southern California. All current restrictions and agreements are to remain in effect with the new recipients. If Pierce College cannot find a proper site, the Ehn Family retains the right to take back the sculptures.”

In those honeymoon days, Pierce College meticulously maintained the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues. But gradually the Ehn family moved away from the Greater Los Angeles area. SPACES disbanded. And the faculty and administration from Pierce College turned over. When the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues began to decay, there was no one left to care. And decades later, any student or faculty member who stumbled upon the chipped and faded statues peppering Alvin Cleveland Park likely wondered how these warped racist and sexist stereotypes of nightmare Americana found their way onto a forgotten corner of a college campus in the first place. 

An Outdated Focus

Most fans of the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues would agree that, out of context, the figures are an unsettling sight. And Pierce College has done everything but literally sweep the statues under a rug in subsequent years, so context is a big ask. The portrayal of Native Americans in Ehn’s art is particularly off-base, opting unanimously to depict white settlers fending off the onslaughts of demonized savages.

A dark-skinned emaciated grimacing vagrant with serpentine limbs carries away a distressed scantily-clad maiden. Meanwhile, a chief grapples with a settler, pouring blood with mouth agape and frenzied eyes staring into meaningless oblivion. Did scenarios like this happen in America’s history? Sure. But by opting for such a narrow focus instead of a comprehensive picture, Ehn holds a funhouse mirror up to America’s Old West as opposed to a stirring portrait. 

Then, there are the women, frequently depicted as prairie harlots with skirts hiked up to reveal their long albeit malformed legs. Sure, a little leg isn’t exactly scandalous. But again, a narrow perspective of America’s Western history is on display in Ehn’s art. And in a situation where art is left to speak for itself, not everybody was thrilled to hear what they thought the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues were saying. 

Pierce College Rescinds Its Welcome

This outcry built into a fever pitch during the summer of 2020. The aftermath of George Floyd’s murder brought racial tensions to a head and put heightened scrutiny on Confederate-era monuments. Relics of Southern pride were being removed, some by legal means, others by force. It didn’t exactly cast Ehn’s work in a new light. It just strengthened the beam that was already there. 

Faculty and students of Pierce College banded together to voice their outrage over the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues. When a vote was put to the executive board of the college system guild, they voted unanimously to jettison the problematic statues. But the agreement between the Ehn family and Pierce College remained. So, the college hired professionals to seek out the Ehn family to find a solution forward. 

Private Family Portraits in the Public Sphere

Several surviving ancestors of John Ehn returned to Los Angeles to address the situation. When they looked at the folk art meticulously created by their frontier-focused patriarch, they saw a loving tribute to their family. It was literally in the faces of the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues. Where one might see a tacky portrayal of an Old West dancehall girl, they saw aunts and grandmothers. Where others saw a grizzled white settler cartoonishly murdering a native son of this land, they saw an eccentric artist with a campy sense of humor who loved his family very much. From this perspective, the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues aren’t historical commentary. They’re just theater. 

That’s not to say they can’t have a deeper meaning. The surviving Ehns have pointed out that there’s actually a message of peace at the center of Ehn’s most controversial offering; the sculpture of the white settler battling the Native American Chief to a mutually bloody end. The family provides additional context, stating that the fight is over ownership of a cow. By choosing violence, both men lose their lives. If they had worked together, they would have survived. But it’s a message perhaps too sophisticated for two crude statues of rebar and concrete with no onsite context. 

Regardless, Ehn’s work still has its admirers, even in an era of heightened social awareness. Pierce College has admitted that, through the decades, an anonymous source would periodically write to give notice that they would be coming to paint the statues. And, free of charge, the unidentified caretakers would appear, throw down a fresh coat of paint and, even on one occasion, tidy the grounds of Alvin Cleveland Park, presumably to give Ehn’s artistry a proper platform for appreciation. 

A Passing Solution

For a fleeting moment in 2022, it seemed that Pierce College and the Ehn family had found an amicable path forward with Valley Relics Museum, a collection of pop cultural artifacts culled from around the San Fernando Valley. The museum’s founder, Tommy Gelinas, agreed to take the controversial folk art installation and even got so far as uprooting and transporting the massive boot hill landscape. But as Gelinas shared his progress on the Valley Relics Facebook community, local sightseeing guide company Esotouric took issue with the methods of transportation used by Gelinas. They promptly brought it to the attention of the Ehn family. 

Esotouric specifically cited a photo showing the notable “gravestone” of Ironfoot Eva being transported by dolly in the back of a pickup truck with no protective covering and a rake resting atop the sculpture. For those unfamiliar, the haunting gaze of “Ironfoot Eva” was one of the more popular Old Trapper’s Lodge statues; a mock tombstone that depicts a nude Amazon, naughty bits obscured by long golden hair as she directs a steely stare at nothing and everything. This is perhaps one of the best glimpses we get of Ehn’s eccentricity, the statue inscribed with the memorial: 

1800 – 1830

300 lb. giantess poetess-singer and blacksmith killed on her wedding day by unknown rifleman

The Ehn family began speaking with legal counsel. Not wanting a protracted court battle, Gelinas began to realize that his acquisition of the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues was more trouble than it was worth. He backed out of the deal with Pierce College and all parties returned to square one. For what it’s worth, Gelinas stated that the removal of the boot hill was just the first step of a multi-phase process that prioritized the safe handling of Ehn’s art. With the boot hill tombstones out of the way, the Valley Relics Museum would have been free to bring in cranes and specialty equipment to transport the statues themselves. 

The Old Trapper’s Lodge Statues in Limbo

Around this time, Esotouric used a public records request to obtain details of an appraisal provided by a local art lab. According to the document, preparations for the de-installation and transportation of the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues would cost approximately $76,150. The actual de-installation, crating, and transportation of the statues would tack on an estimated $157,390. With Valley Relics Museum out of the picture, it’s now up to Pierce College and the Ehn family to work to an amicable, though likely costly solution. 

Visit Pierce College today and you won’t accidentally stumble on the Old Trapper’s Lodge statues. You probably wouldn’t see them even if you expressly set out to find them. Their obscured corner of Alvin Cleveland Park is even more hidden now, behind a chainlink fence veiled in fabric. Even if you find a hole torn in the cloth, the statues have been draped in black plastic and the unkempt flora further enshrouds Ehn’s folk art legacy. 

An imperfect system and a hasty agreement that none of today’s surviving parties had a hand in perpetuates this unusual stalemate. Yet, it seems that eventually, the buck runs out of road, and someone has to foot the bill racked up by the past.