Above, can be seen the old Martin stage coach Inn and stage coach stop on 77th St. E. in Littlerock, immediateIy behind the Jack Bones Packing House on Pearblossom Hwy. In the late 1800's. much horse driven and horse traffic stopped at the Martin Stage Coach Inn much Pony Express mail also, goods,, mail, and people headed for California gold fields from the Eastern seashore. The Inn still stands surrounded by huge Palms in memory of the exciting and gay nineties in the Antelope Valley.

    My cousins, Mr. and Mrs. George Martin of Quartz Hill sent me the clipping from the paper with the picture of my grandfather's old rock house. My husband and I read the accompanying article with interest. We thought I should write something for you from my memories. Actually my early memories are mostly of Littlerock but I have written what I could about Palmdale and enclose-it herewith.

    If you feel it is worth publishing, I would appreciate receiving a copy of the paper. I hope my cousins send me more of the articles of old Palmdale as I am somewhat of a nut on California history, especially about the places I know. I have several scrapbooks of clippings of historical places and stories about them, some are the kind that never find a place in history books.

Sincerely,
Ruth E. Kinsman
2803 Moss Ave.
Los Angeles, Ca. 90065

    The picture you recently published of the big rock house at Littlerock brought many happy membories to me. My maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Amasa Martin, who had lived in Littlerock since 1890, purchased it in 1907. The house remained in the Martin family over fifty years.

    My memory of Palmdale is focused on the Southern Pacific depot. My parents lived in the Los Angeles area and from the time I was born in 1900 until 1920 we traveled by railroad at least once a year to Palmdale to visit our grandparents. As soon as we were old enough, my brother and I vied to see who would be the first to glimpse the desert when we topped the Vincent summit. Then it was time to gather up our baggage and make our way to the vestibule to be ready to get off at Palmdale. as the train hesitated so briefly, it was as though it hated to stop at all. Coming in we slid by the puffing helper engines on the sidetrack where they waited to push the southbound trains over the summit, just as we had been helped up the other side. We were always so anxious to see grandpa that we paid little attention to the station. It played its part when we returned home.

    The train we came up on left the old Arcade station at Fifth and Central at seven in the morning but when we returned home the train came through Palmdale at 3 a.m. Many times the train would be late and we would be glad to do our shivering from the crisp morning air of the desert near the potbellied stove in the waiting room, running out to look down the tracks to see the first sign of the headlight. Often the train was so crowded with sleeping passengers the brakeman or conductor would have to take us to the smoker to find a seat. In later years they ran a train during the day that we could return home on.

    Sometimes I could accompany grandpa to Palmdale to pick up the groceries grandma had ordered from Ralphs Grocery Company in Los Angeles. There would be flour by the barrel, hundred pound sacks of sugar, sacks of potatoes, cases of canned vegetables and always a case of Fels Naptha soap. I never will forget the smell of those bars of yellow soap but with plenty of elbow grease and a brass washboard, they made the clothes come clean. Oh, and I mustn't forget my Bostonian grandmother's small wooden box of dried codfish packed in salt.

    After the wagon was loaded from the station platform, grandpa would drive to Moore's General Store to buy cheese, fresh meat if they had any, and small items that grandma needed. After that we would have dinner at the Palmdale Inn. Then head southeast across the desert to Littlerock.

    The road in those days was a wagontrack that wound around the Joshua trees, junipers, creosote bushes and rocks too big to drive over. I liked to watch the jackrabbits we scared lope away from the road. Once in awhile we would see a coyote skulking along parallel with us about a couple of hundred feet from the road, trying to satisfy his curiosity about us.

   Two miles east we passed the few remaining houses that had comprised Old Palmdale as it was now called. It had been the original settlement but had lost its identity when the railroad came through. Years later the wagontrack road was to be surveyed and run on the straight line it now follows and ranches came into being along the way. When I first remember traveling the road there was nothing between Old Palmdaleand the bridge over Littlerock Creek.

   The little cluster of windswept, sundried buildings with only an occasional cottonwood tree, its "city limits" marked by the sparkle of sun on the discarded tincans and whiskey bottles among the sagebrush, bore little resemblance to the thriving suburban town with its shade trees and green lawns of present day Palmdale.

Sincerelly, Ruth E. Kinsman