Mileposts #1132 – Totem Pole Point

By Bill Pumford, Image from the ROWHS Collection

Last week’s Milepost on John Dexter’s lumber mill provides a transition into the story of
Totem Pole Point of which most people in Lake Arrowhead have heard. In 1936 the Paramount
Pictures movie company contracted with John Dexter to cut 5 large logs and transport them to a
peninsula that juts out into Blue Jay Bay on Lake Arrowhead. At this time John Dexter was a
prominent lumber man on the mountain with his mill located in Strawberry Flats (Twin Peaks).
Paramount then hired a crew to carve the poles to look like totem poles like those used by
northern Indians in places such as Alaska. The totem poles were used in the movie Spawn of the
North which was released in 1938 and starred George Raft, Henry Fonda, and Dorothy Lamour.
The plot of the movie revolves around the spawning of salmon in Alaska; the friendship
between two fishermen, Tyler Dawson (George Raft) and Jim Kimmerlee (Henry Fonda) since
boyhood; and fish piracy by the Russians. It was at one time thought that another movie had
been filmed using the totem poles but research by a variety of people has not turned up any
other movies. This week’s image is a photo of some of the totem poles from the Russ Keller
archives. By the 1980s the totem poles had fallen down and had deteriorated beyond
recognition. The property on totem pole point was then divided into lots for development by the
Unocal Land & Development Company and consisted of 19 lots (18 lots on the waterfront)
which ranged in price, at that time, from $225,000 to over $500,000. The development is
entered through a castle-like gatehouse. Ornamental gates and fences, and walls made up of
thousands of tons of Arizona stone mark the perimeter.

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