The Hollywood Dream (7): Trouble at t'Ostrich Farm
As promised, a deep dive into avian-adjacent shenanigans on the Los Feliz Rancho.
Have you ever stood face to face with an ostrich? A fully grown male would have to bend its neck to meet your eyes, as they stand up to nine feet tall1. If your new rooster buddy doesn’t like what he sees, forget running away. Ostriches can hit speeds of 45 mph, twice as fast as humans. Their dinosaur genes (the Ornithomimosauria) sit just beneath the surface. In their warm-blooded form they’ve been around for much longer than we have–120 million years, as opposed to our few hundred thousand. They’re the archetypal tough old birds. They’ve adapted to living in desert conditions and never need to drink water. They survive by munching small rocks that help grind up the stringy vegetation they eat.
Thankfully for us, ostriches aren’t particularly intelligent. Their brains are smaller than their eyeballs. So, we humans, over history, have managed to farm them, for their meat, leather and feathers. Ostrich chicks, once hatched, grow a foot per month, topping the feed-to-weight gain ratio farmed animal league table. Ostrich meat—juicy red steaks—trumps beef on several levels. It’s high protein, low fat, low allergen, and has much less of an environmental impact. Ostriches take up less space, eat less, and barely even fart, compared to their cattle counterparts. They’re decorative too. Their distinctive, bumpy leather is highly prized, as are their plumulaceous feathers.
In Los Angeles, at the peak of Victorian fashion’s obsession with bird plumage, investors set out to exploit the multi-talented ostrich for what they hoped would be significant profit. In 1883, an experienced ostrich farmer, Dr. C. J. Sketchley, raised $80,000 to establish the California Ostrich Farming Company and bring the first birds over from South Africa2. Only twenty two birds survived the journey from Cape Town. Their arrival at the Costa train station on March 22, 1883 drew quite a crowd. Onlookers marveled at the “strange immigrants” as Sketchley approached each one from the rear, threw a ‘stocking’ over its head, and maneuvered it into a cage on a truck. When the ostriches were released into a pen, they “manifested their joy by indulging in the most ludicrous antics. For over half an hour they kept up an incessant waltz around the corral…”3 Welcome to America, Big Birds.
Sketchley purchased 640 acres near Anaheim and built corrals, a breeding pen, and an incubator shed. His ostriches thrived in their new quarters and were healthy enough to have their feathers harvested every seven months–yielding 25 apiece, to be sold at $5 a pop. Although one of the original flock was kicked to death by its mate (“it had its heart torn open with a fearful wound”4), by 1887 there were 61 healthy birds, including, to the delight of visitors who paid 50¢ to cluck over them, eleven recently hatched babies.
Sketchley initially allowed visitors who thronged the farm to peer directly into the pens, but “parent birds became so much excited on the approach of strangers that they stepped on the chicks and with their heavy feet, of course, killed them.” There were also issues with human behavior: “people appear to have an irresistible tending to wave their hats at the birds and poke at them with canes and parasols.” A few even insisted on bringing their dogs, which terrified the birds and risked a stampede. Sketchley had to push the fences further back, to keep everyone safe.
Despite these precautions, the ostriches’ potential for violence was an important part of their appeal. The Times reporter describes the frisson felt when watching an attendant enter the pen, causing a rooster to make “all sorts of demonstrations of anger, walking back and forth, craning his long neck, and his eyes looking daggers. As though he could not show his disturbance enough, he laid down on the ground and cut up all sorts of frenzied antics.” Perhaps to keep the yahoos at bay, or perhaps to keep them paying for admission, Sketchley was fond of recounting stories from South Africa about the birds kicking and killing herders, or even breaking a horse’s back. He informed the LAT:
“In one case a man was literally disemboweled by a blow from the business end of one of these bottle-eating beasts. They kick right out in front, and once the ostrich gets his victim prostrate on the ground he rakes him unmercifully with his spike-armed and ponderous foot.”5
The Anaheim ostrich farm was so successful that, in October 1885, Sketchley announced he was opening another location, closer to the population center of Los Angeles. He raised another $100,000 and made another run to South Africa for stock. 34 birds survived this trip and were duly installed on the new Los Feliz farm—on the bank of the river, leased from Griffith J. Griffith. Sketchley and his investors, Elizabeth Laver, Frank Burkett, Granville P. Beauchamp and Randolph H. Stracey, had grand plans for the site as a ‘resort’, an easy day trip destination for city dwellers. The attractions included an aviary, zoological gardens, and a restaurant. Griffith wasn’t part of the ostrich consortium, but he did invest in the proposed railway that would bring visitors the seven miles from Downtown Los Angeles—and make residential development on his land seem like a more attractive prospect.
Soon, however, the Los Angeles Ostrich Farm erupted in acrimony and scandal, and not because of the ostriches.
On December 4, 1886, Sketchley and Beauchamp filed a lawsuit against Stracey.6 In it, they accused their partner of gross professional misconduct. While Sketchley took care of the ostriches, Stracey was meant to be running the restaurant (stocked with “liquors, wines, cigars, and eatables”) and supervising the care of the various exotic birds and animals in the zoo. It sounds like a dream gig. However, instead of performing his duties—the lawsuit alleged—Stracey “openly, notoriously and scandalously debauched and had illicit intercourse with the female servants and employés of said firm.”
In a brutal example of the misogynoir of the period, the Los Angeles Times blames one of the servants “the Madrassee Govinda” in the headline (“GOVINDA, AND THE TROUBLES SHE’S CAUSED THE OSTRICH FARM”), rather than Stracey. The lawsuit itself attacked Govinda’s appearance, describing her “as homely as a mud fence”. Despite poor Govinda’s lowly status as an immigrant servant, probably coerced into sex by her boss, her influence is somehow akin to that of “a ravening wolf”, corrupting Stracey. In accordance with the anti-miscegenation elements in the 1880 California Civil Code, sex between Stracey and Govinda was framed as a criminal act.
After Govinda left the farm, presumably dismissed, Stracey continued having “illicit intercourse” with another servant, Mrs. Bidwell, who he brought from England with her husband, Edward. The lawsuit accused him of intending to maintain her as his “concubine and paramour”. Additionally, he abandoned the restaurant to go hunting, leaving it unlocked, and was frequently intoxicated and unable to do his job. He’s accused of being “indolent and morose” and of abusing the staff. Worse still—and this is what triggered the lawsuit–his indiscreet behavior led to gossip among the other employees, which reached the wider public, bringing “great scandal and reproach on the other members of the firm.” In short, Stracey turned the ostrich farm into a notorious den of iniquity that no “decent and reputable” person would consider paying to visit.
After this public scandal, the ostriches’ Hollywood dream was over. In 1889, Sketchley took his birds up to Red Bluff near Sacramento, and the nascent railway line was absorbed into the Pacific Electric. Only Frank Burkett remained on the land, living in a $3000 (i.e. fancy) house he’d built for himself—without paying Griffith any rent. This situation lurched on for a couple of years, with Burkett ignoring Griffith’s demands for payment of either rent or the agreed land purchase price. Then the house ‘mysteriously’ burned down. After a couple of failed lawsuits to try and recoup his investment, a desperate and destitute Burkett vowed revenge against his former landlord. On October 28, 1891, Burkett tailed Griffith to the Catholic Cemetery on Buena Vista Street. Griffith and his wife Tina visited her recently-deceased mother’s grave and, as they were leaving, Burkett fired his shotgun at Griffith a couple of times. Then, without realizing he’d failed to kill his target, Burkett shot himself. All of this took place in front of horrified onlookers.
Was the Los Feliz Rancho cursed, damning anyone who attempted to do business within its limits? Or did ostrich farming simply attract volatile individuals likely to implode? Either way, the dramatic end of the avian venture must have contributed to Griffith’s decision to hand over the land to the City in 1896, and thus be done with it. No one can blame the birds–there were plenty of other successful ostrich farms in the area, including Edwin Cawston’s, which attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors to its South Pasadena location from 1896 until it closed in 1935.
These days, Southern Californians seeking to scratch their large flightless bird itch can visit Ostrichland USA, near Solvang, and even hand feed the ostriches and emus there. It seems like they’re much mellower than their 19th century ancestors.
You can hear me talking about Griffith J. Griffith and his rise and fall, along with discussion of the ostrich farm debacle on the latest Haunted Hollywood Hour podcast, with Carly Heath. Available on Apple, Spotify, Castbox or wherever you get your podcasts.
Los Angeles Times, 16 Mar 1883
ANAHEIM'S OSTRICHES,: Arrival of the Fowls--Some Facts Concerning Them. Los Angeles Times; Mar 25, 1883
OSTRICH FARMING.: AN INDUSTRY TRANSPLANTED FROM SOUTH AFRICA Los Angeles Times Jan 19, 1887
THE KICKAPOOS. Los Angeles Times Apr 22, 1883 pg. 2
GOVINDA,: AND THE TROUBLE SHE'S CAUSED THE OSTRICH FARM Los Angeles Times Dec 5, 1886 pg. 4
This is wonderful history!