Newcomb's Ranch Celebrates 75th Anniversary - Everyone Welcome

The birds don’t stop singing for the sound of cars and motorcycles. In fact, they may sing a little louder on Sunday mornings, just so they can hear each other over the din of engines.

After the silence of the Station Fire’s aftermath, it’s a welcome sound. Things are getting back to normal. Newcomb’s Ranch Restaurant and Bar has survived another epic chapter in the history of the Angeles National Forest. On Sunday, August 10, they’ll celebrate their 75th summer in the forest.

The place has burned, it has changed owners, it has faced near financial ruin between the Station Fire and now, the lack of snow. Newcomb’s has two good seasons...summer and winter...and one insanely busy day each week...Sunday. If it can make it up the mountain, chances are you’ll see it in the parking lot, likely as not resting next to one of Jay Leno’s many exotic vehicles or a Porsche that costs as much as a house. Sport bikes and chrome motherships share the asphalt. Over the occasional roar of a throaty engine, there is laughter...genuine, deep-from-the-belly laughter. This is, after all, a place where many people have come for years to meet up with old friends and make new ones, to breathe clean air, enjoy clear skies, to smell the scents of a wilder place.

Seventy five years is an accomplishment in any endeavor. Newcomb’s has seen good times and bad. Highway 2 was a fresh stretch of asphalt when the restaurant was built, and nearby Chilao a hamlet bustling with life. There were no strangers on the mountain in those days; you knew your neighbors, and their children, and their pets. The weave of the human fabric on the mountain has changed many times, but the sprawling ranch has remained a central hub in the local community, and an integral part of the lives of an extended community that reaches well beyond the forest boundaries in all directions.

To reach Newcombs from La Canada, take the Angeles Crest Highway North (Highway 2) into the mountains approximately 27 miles. Newcomb’s will be on your left in the end of mile 50. (Mile markers are present all along the highway; small white vertical signs which measure the distance in tenth of a mile increments, extending all the way to Wrightwood and the San Bernadino County line. Because Highway 2 begins in Santa Monica, the mile markers on Angeles Crest begin not at zero, but in the mid-twenties).