John Ehn Site, Sun Valley, CA
The Site
When John Ehn opened his Old Trapper’s Lodge in Sun Valley, California, he wanted to make sure the property would stand out. He hired sculptor Claude Bell from the amusement park Knott’s Berry Farm to portray him as a trapper in a giant concrete statue. Taking what he learned from Bell, Ehn spent the next thirty years filling his site with painted concrete sculptures depicting folktale characters and Wild West archetypes as well as tombstones with playful epitaphs. Eventually the grounds consisted of several components: Boot Hill Cemetery, intended as a family memorial with life masks of family members; the Old West Mooseum depicting life-size figures; and the decorated interior of the motel, which featured a collection of animal skins, tools, and other memorabilia he had accumulated over his lifetime. His office was filled with trapping paraphernalia, guns, and photomontages. Old Trapper’s Lodge was named a California Registered Historical Landmark in 1985, the same year of his death.
In the late 1980s, many of Ehn’s large sculptures were moved to the grounds of Pierce College in Woodland Hills, California. Kohler Foundation, Inc., acquired some of the objects that were in the hotel and donated them to the Arts Center in 1996.
John Ehn
1897–1981
Born at a logging camp in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Johan Henry (John) Ehn worked as a wildlife trapper across the United States, even creating How to Snare: The Best Kept Secrets of Trapper John, a series of ten correspondence courses. He began creating the statues for which he is known when he was in his fifties at Old Trapper’s Lodge, a motel he owned in Sun Valley, California.
After his death, Kohler Foundation, Inc., acquired and conserved seventy objects from the hotel, including sculpture, tools, signs, and assemblages, before gifting them to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in 1996. In 2017, an additional Ehn sculpture and painted sign became part of the Arts Center collection through Kohler Foundation, Inc.
