Murray’s was a real Western experience for Black residents of Southern California in 1930s
Just a few tamarisk trees in a field of sagebrush today hint where a most unusual dude ranch once prospered at Dale Evans Parkway and Waalew Road in Apple Valley.
This ranch by all standards was not your usual desert getaway. The Murray Ranch was owned by and patronized by African Americans, including many celebrities. At a time when few restaurants and hotels welcomed Black people, it was advertised as “The only Negro dude ranch in the world.”
“Many Black celebrities found the low-key ranch life, free from racial problems, just what they had been looking for,” explained Richard Thompson in a 2002 article he wrote about the ranch for the Mohahve Historical Society.
People like dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, singer Lena Horne, and Oscar-winner Hattie McDaniel often spent time at the ranch. Champion boxer Joe Louis was one of several African American fighters who used it as a training site.
From the Great Depression into the 1960s, the ranch was a regular stop for many, whether for a vacation, entertaining, or as a sanctuary for hungry travelers along Route 66.
The heart and soul of the ranch were the Murrays — Nolie, a Los Angeles businessman, and Lela, a registered nurse. They bought the plot in 1922, partially to improve Lela's health and to create a place for troubled kids — Thompson called it “sort of a black ‘Boys Town.'” It would also welcome vacationers under its name of “The Overall Wearing Dude Ranch.”
But by the mid-1930s, the Murrays were having trouble keeping the doors open, receiving little money for caring for kids. They tried to expand their efforts to attract vacationers to the ranch, but that was not very successful during those dreadful years of the Great Depression.
But then Life arrived. Victorville in those years put on a rodeo, which by 1937 attracted as many as 10,000 people, including Hollywood celebrities. A photographer assigned by Life Magazine to cover the rodeo learned Louis was training at the ranch nearby and spent his time photographing the champion.
The six photos in the Nov. 15 issue of Life were a boon for the Murrays. Helped by the national publicity, the ranch soon became a popular place to visit for African American people. Even people staying at nearby White guest ranches dined at the Murrays' restaurant.
The guest ranch was immediately expanded, and a 70-foot-long swimming pool was built and filled by a new well.
Paul Williams, a wellknown Black architect, who had designed the Ontario post office and many other buildings throughout Southern California, spent 1938 and 1939 headquartered at the ranch. He was working on repairs to the Arrowhead Springs Hotel near San Bernardino which had been badly damaged by fire.
Hollywood even noticed — “for the first time in the history of the colored film industry an all colored talking picture is being filmed at a colored location,” wrote the African American newspaper, the California Eagle, on Oct. 13, 1938.
Two films, “Bronze Buckaroo” and “Harlem on the Range,” used the ranch's desert background and horses. Both starred Herb Jeffries, who Thompson said was the first “Black singing cowboy.”
But the biggest draw among celebrities at Murray Ranch was Louis, who came there to prepare for several fights. His typical day was jogging 6 miles each morning, riding horses and hunting, before his ring work. Louis and his entourage took over the ranch for two weeks before his 1939 fight with Jack Roper.
With the advent of World War II, Victorville found itself visited by many military men, but its USO was open only for White soldiers. Lela Murray, a member of the Victorville Chamber of Commerce, complained bitterly about this. Finally, another
USO was opened in the Latino portion of town, but Murray, still unhappy with that arrangement, opened her ranch welcoming all races.
“Oh, it was an enriching experience,” she recalled in an interview. “We still get letters from the boys saying how grateful they were. We took care of their wives, their children. We turned no one away from here.”
The ranch was also popular to Latino and African American kids who were barred from swimming in the private plunge in town. Former Victorville Councilman Felix Diaz, in a 2005 interview, recalled, “Mr. Murray was always gracious to us” and allowed everyone to use their pool.
The ranch began to see some small changes in attitudes after the war as a few White people as well as African Americans vacationed at the ranch.
But the place lost Lela Murray when she died in March 1949 in San Bernardino. Nolie sold much of the ranch in
1955 to singer Pearl Bailey and her musician husband Louie Bellson. They made some necessary improvements and renamed it the Lazy B Ranch. It stayed open into the 1960s.
Nolie kept 5 acres of the land and built a small motel. He was in Fontana in June 1958 for medical tests when he suddenly died at age 70.
By the 1980s, the property was pretty much abandoned and in the hands of a receiver. The last vestige of the ranch was leveled in a firetraining exercise by the Apple Valley Fire District.
At times, it wasn't always easy to reach the dude ranch along a dirt road northeast of Victorville, but Nolie Murray had a solution. He placed a directional sign on a truck at 7th and D streets in downtown that informed visitors: “Only two places to see: Paris and Murray's Overall Wearing Dude Ranch.”
Fox Theater tour
A tour of the historic Fox Pomona Theater will be offered Saturday by the Historical Society of the Pomona Valley.
The tours of the theater, 301 S. Garey Ave., begin at 5 p.m. with the last ending at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20 and are available at https://www.pomonahistorical.org/foxtours.