My son sent me the article that was in the paper about you wanting some of the old stories and legends of the South Valley. I have only had the article a few days and he remembers me saying that much of the color and history of the Littlerock area is forgotten. When I graduated from Grammer school, Kepple Union in 1928, I was valedictorian and my subject was the history and legend of the area. I have long ago lost that speech by fire, but I thought I might have some items of interest as what I learned then came mostly from people who are long since dead. I cannot, at this time separate these stories into history and legend, but these may help some. The items will all be short so here they are. I will separate them as much as memory allows at this time.

   The story goes that years ago there was a stage coach that ran through the area, as a child there were still the remains of one of the walls of the stage coach building where they stopped and replaced the horses and ate their meals. This was located on top of a foothill just above the old La Cienage spring I'm not sure of the spelling of these locations, they were Spanish names. Littlerock for many years, obtained their drinking water from this spring, it has just been in the last few years that the spring has gone dry and the area is no longer tree grown and beautiful. On the stage that ran through the area they carried gold shipments, so there was a bandit named Llargo, who stayed in the area and robbed the stages as they went through. It was rumored that there is still gold buried in the surrounding foothills. The original name for Littlerock, I was told was Llargo for this bandit. The settlers didn't like the settlement to be named for a bandit, so they changed it to Littlerock. As I remember the story, Llargo joined up with the Vasquez gang and was killed when they were held up in the Vasquez rocks. As I say, I don't know how much of this story is history and how much was legend.

    The area was then planted pretty much into almond orchards, a few of the remnants of these still stood when I left the area 15 years ago. Almonds turned out to be not a very dependable crop as they froze so often, so then these were pulled up in much of the area and pear trees were planted. My father and mother arrived in the area about 1908 or 1909, and my father helped to plant many of the pear orchards that were later planted. At first, the school was called the Almondale School in 1908 or there abouts. The school was held in a tent for the first few months on what was known as the "Martin Ranch." After harvest was over and the weather became too cold to hold the school in a tent, one of the ranchers, Mr. Bartlet, ranch now known as Twin Cedars, offered the use of his packing shed for the school. The floor had inch wide cracks in it and was heated by an old pot bellied stove, so you know the children were not very comfortable, they had to wear top coats all day during the coldest of the weather. This school was taught by the woman who later became Mattie Primmer. In 1910 she and Mr. Primmer left the area to return later in 1916 at which time Mr. Russel Primmer became one of the ranchers in the area. I know this about our first school was true, as my half-brother attended this school and it was often discussed in our home. We even had a picture of the school children. Later, a one room school was built and was known as the Alpine school for a while. When I attended this school, it had about 32 pupils in the eight grades and children came to it from as far away as the McAdam children from the area now known as Pearland. These children rode horses to school and we had a small barn on the school grounds. Later, when I was in the third grade, the Alpine, Llano, Pleasant View Big Rock and a couple of other schools were organized int the Kepple Union School and it became a three teacher school with the largest grammar school district in the world. They ran busses to these other areas some of them just passenger cars one of which later made a trip of 30 miles to pick up just one student to bring to school. It was understood by her parents that if the weather turned stormy or the snow fell, she would stay with the bus driver.

    In the years when my parents first came to Littlerock before I was born, there were many mountain lions roaming the area. One day as my father and mother were riding in the buggy, I don't know what year this was or how many children they had at that time, only that I was not born yet, they passed the Twin Cedars Ranch and as they were going by the tree that is close to the road a mountain lion jumped out of the tree onto the horses back, naturally, the horse reared and started to run away, it dislodged the mountain lion and my father often said it was a miracle that the buggy didn't tip over, but it didn't and none of the family was hurt.

    The old O. Lewis store was built about the time of W.W. I i was a cement building with iron barred windows, two stories high The upper story was for apartments. The ceiling of the first story was 10 or 15 feet high. There was an old rickety stair in the back of the store. They carried horse food, chicken food, materials for sewing with all the accessories and all kinds of food. The Post Office was in the back of the store. We had moved out of the area during the war and when we moved back, our first home was one of the apartments in the second story. It was the only one of the four apartments that was finished for many years. I don't really know if the rest were ever finished. Mr. Lewis owned quite a few acres of pears and my father was his foreman. Before this store was built, the people in Littlerock would have to go to Palmdale for their food and business. There were many new people moved into the area on our return from Los Angeles. There were a few cars, we owned a hard rubber tired truck and there were several other cars in the area so Mr. Lewis installed a gas tank and pump to the front of his store. When a person wanted gas, Mr. Lewis wouldn't sell more than about 5 gallons to a customer, saying that he wanted to be sure there was some left for the next fellow.

    I remember there was one family in the area, the father of which was a half-breed Indian. He was allowed to hunt deer the year round. In those days there were quite a few deer left in the area. This man would make deer jerky and oh, how we loved to eat that jerky.

    Here is another story I heard much later. There was a man living in the area who had two fingers missing from one of his hands. At the time he moved there, he was a Christian. A group of the young men went into Palmdale for a Saturday night at the pool hall where there was a gentleman, who was a stranger, asked them if they knew a gambler called "Three Fingered Jack". They said they had never heard of such a man. This gambler said he had heard that "Three Fingered Jack" was around there some place and he was one of the best gamblers in the west. That he had lost his two missing fingers when a gambler shot at him for stacking the cards. The local boys asked for a discription of "Three Fingers". When he got through describing the gentleman, they recognized him as this Christian man who had moved into the area. To their knowledge, he never played cards or gambled. So they got together to ask him to play poker with them, they played poker every week, so asked him to join them. He refused for some time to play with them, but they would not give him any peace, so finally he said he would play with them. When he startedd to play, he seemed to fumble the cards, they decided that they were mistaken, he couldn't be this "Three Fingers", for they were none of them getting beaten too badly. Finally he told them he must go home. They insisted on one more game. It was his deal coming up, he agreed to play one more game if they wouldn't wager any bets on it. He shuffled the cards in his bungling way and dealt them out. Then he asked them what they would have bet if money was involved each said he would bet all the money they had on that deal. Then he told each in turn just what cards he held in his hand. The young men laid their hands on the table for all to see as he went around the circle each had a hand that you would almost be sure to win in any poker game. Then he told them his hand would beat them all and he laid it out on the table. They were surprised for su~eenough it would. Then he told them he had all the cards marked by the third time he shuffled them. You can be sure they never tried to entice this Christian gentleman into another game of cards they left him alone from then on.

    I'm almost sure you may have already got some of this color from the stories of the Littlerock area. I have used few names for some are still there others are gone. I hope you may find some of these useful.


Thank you
Mrs. Alma (Reese)
Young

P.S. Any other stories I might give you I'm sure you have gotten from the old timers of the area. But thanks again for letting me tell these tales to you. Alma Young

P.O. 704
Morro Bay, CA 93442