Old Man on a Mountain

The top of California's Mount Wilson, on which rests the world's largest telescope, was for sale. The price: $425,000 to nearby Los Angeles County; $600,000 to anyone else.

Mount Wilson* was not always worth that much. In 1890 a syndicate of California hotelmen bought 1,500 acres of peak timberland for $4,500. But the small hotel they built burned down and the syndicate broke up.

When Albert C. Childs first went to Mount Wilson in 1922, the mountaintop was owned by James H. Holmes, whose daughter Childs had met and married in Hawaii. The observatory, for which the Carnegie Institution had leased 15 acres for $1 a year, was required by its lease to keep its grounds open to visitors. But the toll road and the hotel atop the peak had yet to make a profit. Said Childs: "This place ought to carry itself."

Childs cut down hotel expenses, improved the toll road, built a swimming pool and picnic grounds, and advertised. He soon had the hotel in the black. When hotel guests began asking questions about astronomy, Childs built a lecture room, bought a twelve-inch telescope, and began giving evening lectures in elementary astronomy. Visitors were soon leaving up to $50,000 a year at his toll gate.

Wartime gas rationing almost shut down the business temporarily. But since the war, Mount Wilson has taken on new importance. Both television and FM depend on line-of-sight broadcasting, and Mount Wilson is the most accessible clear peak in Southern California. Childs has already sold 320 acres to broadcasting companies for $65,000, has also leased a choice plot to the Columbia Broadcasting System for $75 a month (CBS had to agree to give television demonstrations to tourists).

With this new drawing card, Mount Wilson will probably get more visitors than ever before. But 65-year-old Albert Childs hopes not to be there to greet them. After 24 years on his mountain (with only two ten-day vacations), he thinks it is time "to go down off the mountain and see something of the world." Then he wants to settle down to his favorite hobby --astronomy.

* Named for Benjamin Davis Wilson, a winegrower who blazed a trail up the 5,710-foot mountain in 1864 in search of lumber for wine casks.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.