Hartsook - Later Life As Rancher and Resort Owner

Later Life As Rancher and Resort Owner

The success of his photographic business allowed Fred Hartsook to acquire three properties in California and take up life as a rancher and resort owner. In addition to 3,000 acres (12.1 km²) of pastureland at the mouth of Red Rock Canyon in Kern County, Hartsook also owned a 41-acre (0.16 km²) "country home and ranch" in Lankershim (now North Hollywood), where he raised prize-winning purebred Holstein cattle as well as Toggenburg milk goats and "big type Poland China hogs". McGroarty notes that Hartsook's training as a civil engineer helped him develop his properties. Also in keeping with his past as mule driver, "it not uncommon for Mr. Hartsook to pose some of the world's noted people one day and be driving a big mule team on his ranch the next."

In the early 1920s the Hartsooks also purchased their honeymoon cabin and extended it to a resort comprising 37 acres (0.15 km²) of pristine redwood forests, the Hartsook Inn. In 1926 the resort received its own post office and Hartsook, California became an official postal designation. At that time the resort was a major attraction for Hollywood celebrities and counted Mary Pickford and Bing Crosby among its guests. In August 1927 the Hartsook Inn burned down in a forest fire, but was rebuilt and reopened shortly thereafter. In Spring 1928, Hartsook's photographic business went into receivership and was sold in an auction in January 1929. On 30 September 1930, Fred Hartsook died of a heart attack in Burbank, California, shortly before his 54th birthday. Bess Hartsook outlived her husband by forty-six years and operated the Hartsook Inn until 1938, when it first went into receivership and then burned down again, this time due to a kitchen fire. Fred and Bess Hartsook had three children: Helen, Frederick, and Delyte. Fred Hartsook also had a daughter, Francis, from a previous marriage.

Beyond the short-lived postal designation, the Hartsook name is memorialized in a street in the San Fernando Valley, running along the former Lankershim property. In close proximity is Hesby Street, named after Bess Hesby Hartsook. In Humboldt County, Hartsook Creek, a tributary of the South Fork Eel River, and a redwood tree called "the Hartsook Giant" remind visitors of the family name. The Hartsook Inn was rebuilt and survived under a succession of owners (and another fire in 1973) until the 1990s, when the last operator sold the property to the Save-the-Redwoods League after threatening to log the Giant to stave off bankruptcy.