Those who prefer their meals with a bit of filming location on the side and have an extra $6 million lying around should direct their attention to Newcomb’s Ranch in La Cañada Flintridge. The historic roadside eatery, which sits nestled alongside the Angeles Crest Highway about 30 miles northeast of Pasadena, hit the market this past June for the first time in two decades! Offered at a cool $5,985,000, the listing is held by Lee Shapiro and Justin Weiss of the Kennedy Wilson Brokerage.
The land where Newcomb’s Ranch now stands was initially developed way back in 1878 by Lewis “Louie” Newcomb, a forester, trail maker and “expert carpenter” who a California Highways and Public Works article deemed “one of the real pioneers of the Angeles Forest area.” Initially measuring an incredible 160 mountainous acres topping out at an elevation of 5,340 feet, Louie’s property was remote, intensely private and rarely met by passersby. So he was none too pleased in the late 1920s when plans got underway to develop California State Route 2, aka the Angeles Crest Highway, straight through his beloved homestead. The road, he is said to have lamented, “ruined the place.” As such, he sold his vast tree-strewn acreage to his cousin Lynn Newcomb Sr. in 1929 and migrated to Sierra Madre, where he lived out the rest of his days.
Recognizing the immense possibility for profit the new thoroughfare would provide, Lynn established Newcomb’s Ranch, a roadside restaurant, general store and 15-room inn, in 1939, the same year that the La Cañada to Chilao stretch of CA-2 was completed. One of the only such businesses in the area, the place flourished becoming a popular pit stop for motorists, especially once construction of Angeles Crest Highway was fully executed through to Mountain Top Junction in San Bernardino in 1956.
Though the inn portion of the property was burned in a fire set by a disgruntled worker in 1976, the bar and restaurant have remained intact and are still holding strong today, 85 years after their inception!
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Image Credit: Kennedy Wilson Brokerage The Ranch’s longevity largely stems from Angeles Crest Highway’s enduring popularity as a destination for bikers and car enthusiasts, who regularly embrace its picturesque tree-lined twists and turns. Journalist Kathy Braidhill explains in a 1998 Los Angeles magazine feature, “Post ride, all swagger into Newcomb’s for burgers and beer on tap to bench-race, swap stories and espouse the glory of their machines around the pool tables and wooden picnic tables decorated with red-and-white tablecloths.”
So popular is the roadhouse with bike enthusiasts that you’d be hard-pressed to pass by on any given day and not see the parking lot overflowing with choppers, hogs and all other forms of two-wheelers, as the listing photographs attest to. Braidhill notes, “The woodsy, kitschy, unintentionally hip café has become the informal headquarters for riders whose motorcycles so swarm the dirt parking lot on warm summer weekends that it’s impossible to shoehorn another in. The gleaming array offers a full range of machinery – yuppie Harleys, creaky, leaky British oldsters, rare vintages, garden-variety street bikes, expensive Italian dream machines and café racers that are ridden belly down, feet near the taillights, handlebars very low in front.”
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Image Credit: Kennedy Wilson Brokerage Unfortunately, the roadhouse’s most current owner, Dr. Frederick Rundall, a Los Angeles oncologist who purchased the place directly from Louis Newcomb’s great-great-grand-nephew in 2001 and ran it with his son, Fred, for the ensuing two decades, passed away in August 2019. Then came the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing the eatery to shutter the following March. It has remained closed ever since, much to the chagrin of its legions of fans, including Jay Leno, who is a longtime regular.
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Image Credit: Kennedy Wilson Brokerage Facing an uncertain future, Fred and his sister, Victoria, put the restaurant on the market in late June, a decision they did not take lightly. On Facebook, Fred states, “Newcomb’s has become such an iconic destination and with it comes the responsibility to the community that my sister and I have to find the right buyer.”
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Image Credit: Kennedy Wilson Brokerage Included in the sale is the restaurant space, which measures 7,426 square feet, as well as an adjacent three-bedroom, two-bath, 2,600 square-foot cabin that is currently used as a rental and a 10.17-acre parcel of land. (The remainder of Louie’s original 160 acres were given to the forest service years ago.)
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Image Credit: Kennedy Wilson Brokerage The “only private property along CA-2 in Angeles National Forest,” Newcomb’s Ranch certainly makes for a unique sale. As Chris Erskine opined in a 2012 Los Angeles Times piece, “For alpine vistas, fox, deer, bighorn sheep and Ferrari and Ducati sightings, Newcomb’s Ranch stands out – a time capsule at 5,200 feet, dressed in cedar and old bikers.” Though just a 45 minute drive from bustling Pasadena, the place feels leagues removed from any sort of city life. As Lynn Newcomb noted to Los Angeles magazine, “There’s so much beautiful country. You think you’re far, far away – until a jet flies over.”
The lush surroundings and close proximity to the city have, of course, made Newcomb’s a destination for filmmakers, as well, and over the years the place has garnered some serious screen cred!
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Image Credit: Twentieth Century Fox -
Image Credit: Kennedy Wilson Brokerage In the 1993 thriller “The Vanishing,” Jeff Harriman (Kiefer Sutherland) winds up at Newcomb’s Ranch late one night while searching for his long-missing girlfriend, Diane Shaver (Sandra Bullock). Said to be located in the Pacific Northwest about an hour outside of the fictional town of Lockwood, Washington, the roadhouse is where Jeff meets – and begins to fall for – waitress Rita Baker (Nancy Travis).
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Image Credit: Twentieth Century Fox -
Image Credit: Kennedy Wilson Brokerage Incredibly, despite the passage of almost 30 years, Newcomb’s Ranch still looks much the same today as it did onscreen in “The Vanishing” – though the dated florescent ceiling fixtures have mercifully since been updated with track lighting.
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Image Credit: CBS Television Newcomb’s Ranch also appeared on the 1990s television series “Twin Peaks.” The eatery’s parking lot was one of three spots used to portray Big Ed’s Gas Farm, the service station owned by Ed Hurley Jr. (Everett McGill), throughout the cult favorite’s three-season run. It specifically appeared in the season one episode titled “Cooper’s Dreams,” though very little of the place is actually shown onscreen.
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Image Credit: NBCUniversal Newcomb’s played a bar/underground fight club said to be located “a frickin’ long way out of town” in Grand Gulch, Colorado in the season one episode of the 2008 “Knight Rider” reboot titled “Fight Night.”
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Image Credit: Fox Sports It popped up in the season four episode of “Shut Up and Drive” titled “Los Angeles,” as professional drivers Justin Bell and Rhys Millen tested a Lexus GSF along the adjacent Angeles Crest Highway.
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Image Credit: NBCUniversal And in 2017, Jay Leno headed to Newcomb’s Ranch to shoot the season three episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage” titled “Hand Made.” It was at the roadhouse that the legendary late-night host met with Magnus Walker, “one of the world’s preeminent Porsche collectors, known for turning vintage Porsches into one-of-a-kind works of hand-made art,” to check out his reconfigured 1990 Porsche 964.