Adams Pack Station, established after J.P. Steele of Sierra Madre obtained a special use permit in late 1936 for a pack station, outfitter store, and parking lot at the end of the new road to Chantry Flat, became the last remaining pack station in southern California. The barn and two-room bunkhouse/store still in use in 2011 had been built 75 years earlier by Steele, who also owned First Water Camp below Chantry in the Angeles National Forest. For three-quarters of a century, the station’s donkeys and mules supplied three active resorts and about 200 cabins in Big Santa Anita Canyon that could be reached only on foot. After a flood in March 1938 washed away 68 cabins, the Steele family abandoned the station. Frank Adams bought it in the fall of 1938, and a few months later his brother Bill and sister Katie began running it. The business expanded in 1939, and Bill soon bought it from Frank. During World War II, Bill injured his right hand while working nights at a rubber plant, was forced to sell the station for $500, continued working there part-time, and repurchased it in the fall of 1949 for $1,500. Bill and his wife Lila then spent 35 years packing supplies, delivering mail, hauling out garbage, selling ice cream and soda, greeting visitors, and generally caring for the canyon. In 1984, they sold the station to Bill’s nephew Dennis Lonergan and his wife, Jody, who ran it for 15 years until economic pressures and natural challenges led them to sell in 1999. Kim Kelley bought the station in 2000 but, after years marked by natural disasters and a road closure lasting nearly two years, was forced to sell. Deb Burgess and her mother Sue Burgess bought it in April 2006, restored the Adams name, and, with general manager Richard Conforti and other volunteers, returned to the Adams business model while adding a web site, expanded store and food offerings, outdoor music programs, animal petting, and guided hikes. Despite continuing economic troubles, natural disasters, and road closures, by 2011 the station still served its original purpose by supplying Sturtevant Camp and the 81 remaining canyon cabins as Adams Pack Station marked its 75th anniversary.