The sun had just set on the West Coast on Jan. 7 when Jennifer Rogers’ phone pinged in Oklahoma. What played on her screen was a 14-second video message: A dark, smoky sky. A friend speaking, his voice steady and sad, as he pointed toward the orange glow of the fast-encroaching Palisades fire.
“OK, Jenn, it’s in the park,” he said. “Without a doubt.” The park — named after Rogers’ great-grandfather — was Will Rogers Historic State Park in Pacific Palisades. A two-story wooden ranch house, the last place the cowboy-humorist had called home, stood there. After watching the video, Jennifer Rogers, who lives near her great-grandfather’s gravesite in Claremore, Okla., “just put my phone on silent and sat and cried.” The fire destroyed Will Rogers’ century-old house, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. And it incinerated his white-and-green stable with its stately central rotunda.
In the surrounding park — 186 wooded acres cut with ocean-view hiking and equestrian trails — more than 200 trees planted in the 1920s and 1930s at Rogers’ behest were so badly charred they soon will be removed, according to California State Parks officials. Four months after the fire, a portion of the still-closed park is being used as a processing site for trees and shrubs removed from the fire zone, according to the state parks department. The site also is being used to pulverize concrete removed from burned properties, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. As for the twisted remains of Will Rogers’ 31-room ranch house: They had not yet been cleared as of Friday. For Jennifer Rogers, the question she faces the most is the one that’s hardest to answer: What comes next?
It’s hard to overstate the grip Will Rogers had on Americans in the early 20th century. Rogers was the country’s first multimedia superstar: Nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. Book writer. Radio broadcaster. Hollywood’s highest-paid actor and the star of more than 70 movies.
The “Cherokee Kid,” as he was known, was born in 1879 in Indian Territory near modern-day Oologah, Okla. With his country twang and aw-shucks mannerisms belying a keen intellect, he was the lasso-roping star of vaudeville and Broadway stage. And his wry political commentary is widely considered the precursor to the modern late-night TV monologue. [“All I know is just what I read in the papers,” he once quipped, “and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.”]
“He was born in the Old West, the dying days. And by the time he’s 21, it’s the 20th century, and everything is changing and he’s adapting like some kid jumping on the internet in the ‘80s or YouTube in the aughts,” said Larry Nemecek, board president of the nonprofit Will Rogers Ranch Foundation. “He became the king of all media while it was being invented.”
In 1919, Hollywood — the up-and-coming center of the film industry — came calling. Rogers, fresh off his first silent film, “Laughing Bill Hyde,” moved with his wife, Betty, and their four children to Southern California at the behest of movie producer Samuel Goldwyn. A few years later, the couple bought more than 200 undeveloped acres in the Santa Monica Mountains, in the nascent community of Pacific Palisades. There, the family built what started as a six-room weekend cabin. It was added onto over the years until it became a 31-room, year-round residence.
In a 1927 letter to his architect, Rogers said he wanted the cream-colored house to be a simple, box-like structure, “very plan [sic] and ordinary” and with “a big wide porch.” It was built on a gentle slope. But, he wrote, he wanted some level ground in front of the porch “so we can ride our horses up and hitch ‘em right in front of the house.”
