Mountain Views News          Saturday, October 2, 2010

14

HOMES AND PROPERTY

MountainViews-News Saturday, October 2, 2010

One Of A Kind: Featuring unique homes & gardens and the people who create them Story and Photos By Chris Bertrand

Lizzie’s Trail Inn Chris is taking a few week’s vacation. Please enjoy a few of her favorites while she’s away.


A Century 
of Memories 
at Lizzie’s 
Trail Inn

Maurice 
Orme opens 
the door to 
Lizzie’s Trail 
Inn and a 
century of 
memories… of family, of hikers and 
campers, of pack mules, chicken, 
ravioli and bowls of spiced beans. 
“If I close my eyes, I can still hear 
the music and the voice of all the 
people having a good time,” he says. 

The Orme family pulled up stakes 
in Missouri in the late 1920’s. The 
men of the family set out first, to set 
up or buy local businesses in the La 
Manda Park and Tidleyville areas 
near Sierra Madre. Eventually, 
the Orme women and children, 
including young Maurice, came 
out by train, moving together in 
a multi-home compound of sorts 
on Lima and Montecito. A couple 
of the homes still exist, with one 
still occupied by a family member, 
while the others were razed to build 
apartments decades ago. 

Elsie Orme Mc Elwain, Maurice’s 
mother, took up employment as a 
cook at Lizzie’s Trail Inn in the mid 
1930’s. A rest stop and restaurant 
had been located on the site since 
the 1890’s to serve the trail built 
by Don Benito Wilson in 1864. 
Originally it was simply called 
“The Eating Place at the foot of the 
Mount Wilson Trail.” 

Later it was Doug’s Lunch Stand, 
and in 1924 became Elizabeth 
“Lizzie” Stoppel Mc Elwain’s Trail 
Inn, providing food, pack supplies, 
mules and even a dance floor for 
travelers. Visitors journeyed to this 
“crack in the wilderness” to fish, 
hunt and vacation, enjoying the 
tried and true, unchanging menu 
of fried chicken and ravioli, spiced 
beans, cole slaw, beverages and even 
distilled spirits during Prohibition. 

After 1935, Thelma and Robert 
Orme and Elsie Orme Mc Elwain 
worked together with the hold of the 
extended family and friends to keep 
the busy place humming, especially 
on summer weekends when the Red 
Car brought hundreds of people to 
the Mt. Wilson Trail and its camps.

Some people, Maurice remembers, 
thought Lizzie’s was plenty far 
enough from the city life. They 
rented adjacent cabins for $2 a 
night instead of continuing further 
up the trail. He also remembers 
that sweeping up at Lizzie’s could 
be somewhat profitable. When 
he swept, he kept the coins that 
had fallen unnoticed from the slot 
machines to the floor, which he 
quickly fed into Lizzie’s pinball 
machine. 

The Ormes and Mc Elwains 
continued the business until World 
War II rationing severely restricted 
supplies and the CCC took down 
Orchard Camp. Maurice remembers 
being part of the last packs taking 
Lizzie’s food up to the workers 
dismantling the camp, ostensibly for 
fire prevention reasons. Years later, 
when post-war building and zoning 
in Sierra Madre encroached on 
the previously secluded mountain 
retreat, Lizzie’s closed forever in 
1948.

In 1913 the structure was actually 
moved, lock stock and barrel, from 
the site that now holds the Mira 
Monte Reservoir to its current 
location across the street. Twice, 
it’s been rebuilt by an army of 
volunteers. Refurbished first in 
1976 for the nation’s Bi-Centennial, 
the next twenty five years and four 
earthquakes left Lizzie’s again in a 
state of near collapse. In 2001, Dr. 
White, who once owned the local 
hospital on Sierra Madre Blvd., 
spearheaded the project to rebuild 
Lizzie’s for a second time with some 
300 volunteers.

In the interim, pictures, memorabilia 
from the restaurant and from those 
who enjoyed the trail has been 
collected here. Old menus, photos, 
trivia, literature and artifacts from 
a century of hikers and packers, the 
old stove that cooked thousands 
of Lizzie dinners, and much more 
are a treasure trove of history for 
visitors. Music of the era plays in 
the background to put visitors in 
the right spirit.

As is the case with many volunteer 
organizations, just a few people 
are responsible to run the museum 
each week, and to give special 
tours. Maurice Orme comes every 
Saturday. Dr. White lands back at 
the museum after his traditional 
Saturday, 5 a.m. hike up Mt. Wilson 
Trail with a long-standing group. 
The small group could always use 
help in keeping the history of the 
inn and the trail alive for young and 
old alike. 

A project near and dear to Orme’s 
heart is the idea to transform the 
mural of the mules, packers and 
the Mt. Wilson Trail onto the 
newly completed Mira Monte 
Reservoir structure. This corner, 
at the beginning of the Mt. Wilson 
Trail, is always busy with hikers 
eager to delve into this crack in the 
wilderness. 

Orme feels a historic mural here 
would be the perfect avenue to 
bring the past and present together. 
He is always looking for help and 
financial support toward that end. 
Contact him at 626-254-1013 at 
Coldwell Banker in Arcadia if you 
have ideas to make the idea a reality!

Both Lizzie’s Trail Inn and the 
Richardson House, at 127 Mira 
Monte in Sierra Madre, are open on 
Saturdays from 10 a.m. to noon for 
free tours. 

To schedule school or special tours, 
please call the society at (626)355-
8129, Jay Whitcraft at 626-355-5987 
or visit www.smhps.org 


Maurice Orme shares his childhood memories of Lizzie’s Trail Inn with 
visitors every Saturday.


Elsie Orme Mc Elwain makes Lizzie’s famous raviolis circa 1940.


DISCOVERY OF FIRST TRULY HABITABLE EXOPLANET

Discovery Suggests 
Our Galaxy Could Be 
Teeming with Life

 A team of planet hunters led by astronomers 
at UC Santa Cruz and the Carnegie 
Institution of Washington, and supported 
by the National Science Foundation (NSF) 
and NASA, has announced the discovery of 
an Earth-sized planet orbiting a nearby star 
at a distance that places it squarely in the 
middle of the star’s “habitable zone,” where 
liquid water could exist on the planet’s 
surface. If confirmed, this would be the 
most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered 
and the first strong case for a potentially 
habitable one.

 “This is clearly one of the most exciting 
areas of science these days” said Ed Seidel, 
assistant director for NSF’s Mathematical 
and Physical Sciences directorate. “If we 
do discover life outside our planet, it would 
perhaps be the most significant discovery of 
all time.”

 To astronomers, a “potentially habitable” 
planet is one that could sustain life, though 
not necessarily one that humans would 
consider a nice place to live. Habitability 
depends on many factors, but liquid water 
and an atmosphere are among the most 
important.

 “Our findings offer a very compelling 
case for a potentially habitable planet,” said 
Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and 
astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. “The fact 
that we were able to detect this planet so 
quickly and so nearby tells us that planets 
like this must be really common.”

 “With modern techniques, it is now 
possible to actually search for worlds 
that might be able to support life as we 
understand it,” added Seidel. “Just a few 
years back I wouldn’t have thought this 
could have advanced so fast.”

Persistent Ground-Based Observing

 This discovery was the result of over 
a decade of observations at the W. M. 
Keck Observatory in Hawaii. “Advanced 
techniques combined with old-fashioned 
ground-based telescopes continue to lead 
the exoplanet revolution,” said Paul Butler 
of the Carnegie Institution. “Our ability 
to find potentially habitable worlds is now 
limited only by our telescope time.”

 Vogt and Butler lead the Lick–Carnegie 
Exoplanet Survey. The team’s new findings 
are reported in a paper to be published 
in the Astrophysical Journal and posted 
online at arXiv.org. Coauthors include 
associate research scientist Eugenio Rivera 
of UC Santa Cruz; associate astronomer 
Nader Haghighipour of the University of 
Hawaii–Manoa; and research scientists 
Gregory Henry and Michael Williamson of 
Tennessee State University.

 The paper reports the discovery of two 
new planets around the nearby red dwarf 
star Gliese 581. This brings the total number 
of known planets around this star to six, the 
most yet discovered in a planetary system 
other than our own solar system. Like our 
solar system, the planets around Gliese 581 
have nearly circular orbits.

 The most interesting of the two new 
planets is Gliese 581g, with a mass three to 
four times that of the Earth and an orbital 
period of just under 37 days. Its mass 
indicates that it is probably a rocky planet 
with a definite surface, and that it has 
enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere, 
according to Vogt.

 Gliese 581, located 
20 light years away 
from Earth in the 
constellation Libra, has 
a somewhat checkered 
history of habitable-
planet claims. Two 
previously detected 
planets in the system 
lie at the edges of the 
habitable zone, one on 
the hot side (planet c) 
and one on the cold 
side (planet d). While 
some astronomers still 
think planet d may 
be habitable if it has a 
thick atmosphere with 
a strong greenhouse 
effect to warm it up, 
others are skeptical. 
The newly discovered 
planet g, however, lies 
right in the middle of 
the habitable zone.

 “We had planets 
on both sides of the 
habitable zone—one 
too hot and one too 
cold—and now we have 
one in the middle that’s 
just right,” Vogt said.

A Planet That Doesn’t 
Rotate

 The planet is tidally 
locked to the star, 
meaning that one side 
is always facing the 
star and basking in 
perpetual daylight, while the side facing 
away from the star is in perpetual darkness. 
One effect of this is to stabilize the planet’s 
surface climates, 
according to Vogt. The 
most habitable zone 
on the planet’s surface 
would be the line 
between shadow and 
light (known as the 
“terminator”), with 
surface temperatures 
decreasing toward 
the dark side and 
increasing toward the 
bright side.

 “Any emerging life 
forms would have a 
wide range of stable 
climates to choose 
from and to evolve 
around, depending on 
their longitude,” Vogt 
said.

 The researchers 
estimate that the 
average surface 
temperature of the 
planet is between 24 
degrees below zero 
and 10 degrees above 
zero Fahrenheit. 
Actual temperature at 
any given place on the 
planet’s surface would 
range from blazing 
hot on the side facing the star to freezing 
cold on the dark side.

 If Gliese 581g has a rocky composition 
similar to the Earth’s, its diameter would be 
about 1.2 to 1.4 times that of the Earth. The 
surface gravity would be about the same 
or slightly higher than the Earth’s, so that 
a person could easily walk upright on the 
planet, Vogt noted.

Observed for 11 Years

 The new findings are based on 11 years 
of observations of Gliese 581 using the 
HIRES spectrometer (designed by Vogt) 
on the Keck I Telescope at the W. M. Keck 
Observatory in Hawaii. The spectrometer 
allows precise measurements of a star’s 
radial velocity (its motion along the line 
of sight from Earth), which can reveal the 
presence of planets. The gravitational tug of 
an orbiting planet causes periodic changes 
in the radial velocity of the host star. 
Multiple planets induce complex wobbles 
in the star’s motion, and astronomers use 
sophisticated analyses to detect planets and 
determine their orbits and masses.

 “It’s really hard to detect a planet like 
this,” Vogt said. “Every time we measure 
the radial velocity, that’s an evening on 
the telescope, and it took more than 200 
observations with a precision of about 1.6 
meters per second to detect this planet.”

 To get that many radial velocity 
measurements (238 in total), Vogt’s team 
combined their HIRES observations with 
published data from another group led by 
the Geneva Observatory (HARPS, the High 
Accuracy Radial velocity Planetary Search 
project).

 In addition to the radial velocity 
observations, coauthors Henry and 
Williamson made precise night-to-night 
brightness measurements of the star with 
one of Tennessee State University’s robotic 
telescopes. “Our brightness measurements 
verify that the radial velocity variations are 
caused by the new orbiting planet and not 
by any process within the star itself,” Henry 
said.

 The researchers also explored the 
implications of this discovery with respect 
to the number of stars that are likely to 
have at least one potentially habitable 
planet. Given the relatively small number 
of stars that have been carefully monitored 
by planet hunters, this discovery has come 
surprisingly soon.

 “If these are rare, we shouldn’t have found 
one so quickly and so nearby,” Vogt said. 
“The number of systems with potentially 
habitable planets is probably on the order 
of 10 or 20 percent, and when you multiply 
that by the hundreds of billions of stars in 
the Milky Way, that’s a large number. There 
could be tens of billions of these systems in 
our galaxy.”

 You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@
MtnViewsNews.com.


Figure 1: This artist’s conception shows the inner four planets of the Gliese 581 system and 
their host star, a red dwarf star only 20 light-years away from Earth. The large planet in the 
foreground is the newly discovered GJ 581g, an Earth-size planet that orbits in the star’s 
habitable zone. Artwork by Lynette Cook. 


Figure 2: Orbital diagrams comparing the Gliese 581 system to our own solar system. Image by Zina 
Deretsky, NSF.