From 1989 to 1997, Janice and I lived in two small rented cabins on Trancas Creek in Malibu. Shortly after we moved out, heavy rains washed out the dirt road leading to the cabins, and they remained uninhabited ever since then. In November of 2018 the cabins were destroyed in the Woolsey Fire. I went with our former Trancas neighbor Bill Koeneker to meet with a FEMA rep at the site of his burned-out AirStream trailer, which was a mile up the dirt road from us, and then I hiked down to view the remains of the cabins. Please note the photo captions. There are a couple of videos as well: Video 1Video 2
We were accompanied by Bill and Alvin Kincaid, son of the original homesteader Freeman Kincaid.
We were told that the cabins were built sometime in the 1920s by Angus Campbell, a Scottish Canadian who was a decorated hero in WWI, who wanted to live as far away from other humans as possible. He erected the cabins and laid the stone steps leading up to the tiered terraces above. Later, the Malibu Trading Post, which was located at the intersection of Trancas Canyon Road and Pacific Coast Highway, which is now a Starbucks and used to be a Borderline Bar, among other establishments over the years, began hosting deerhunting expeditions based at the cabins. Supposedly Clark Gable and Frank Capra stayed in the cabins on hunting trips. I had often imagined overnighting in them again, to revisit the past times somehow. But now that will never happen.
