FAWNLODGE

Fawnskin, California · Est. 1925

One hundred years on the north shore of Big Bear Lake, and a story we refuse to let the mountain reclaim.

Before Fawnskin had a market, a church, or a paved road, it had this building on the corner of Rim of the World Drive.

Raised in the spring of 1925 as the Guio Building, it has been a tea room, a Prohibition dance hall, a drugstore, a county library, a barber shop, a hardware store, the Bambi Bar and the House of Wilson. A century later it is still standing, and it needs help.

The Fawn Lodge's massive native-stone fireplace today, still standing exactly where Henry Guio's crew laid it in 1925

The Legacy

The fireplace never changed.

Owners came and went. The dome vanished sometime before 1937. Walls were built and torn out, columns removed, a fifty-foot mural of the Old West painted beside the hearth and later papered over. Through all of it, the massive native-stone fireplace stayed exactly where Henry Guio's crew laid it.

A 1951 article in the Big Bear Grizzly noted that the lodge's unique fireplace had been used hundreds of times as a backdrop for photographs. Generations of Big Bear families are standing in front of the same stones, and it is still the surest way to date a photograph of this building.

1914 to 2025

A century on the corner.

1914
Fawnskin begins
Clinton Miller starts developing the north shore of Big Bear Lake. The land the lodge stands on is his.
1924
Henry Guio buys the corner
Henry and Vivian Guio purchase seven lots at Rim of the World Drive and Navajo, and break ground on Fawnskin's first two-story building, an estimated $20,000 build, roughly $300,000 today.
1925
The Guio Building opens
Completed in the spring, built "in harmony with the general environment": bark-clad timbers, a log-cabin face, and a high dome that made it look four or five stories tall. A three-chair barber shop was among the first tenants. By May it was being called the Fawnskin Lodge.
1920s
The Tea Room and the all-night dances
Frances Thompson created the Fawnskin Tea Room as the town's gathering place. The huge second floor became a night spot with a stage big enough for a nine-piece orchestra and a dance floor. There were no closing times then, parties ran until dawn, and though liquor was illegal, finding a drink was never a problem.
1927–1930s
The quiet decades
Ownership passed from Guio to Ad Johnson and then to real-estate investors Michael and Maddie Ryder, who held it through the Depression. Somewhere between 1925 and 1937 the dome disappeared, no fire, no article, no record. Possibly the great snowstorm of 1932.
1941
It becomes the Fawn Lodge
Peter Holt takes over and the name Fawn Lodge appears for the first time. Under Holt the building housed a cafe, a drugstore, a gift shop, and the San Bernardino County Free Library. He added the canopy and awning still remembered in the postcards.
1946–1973
The House of Wilson
Peter and Helen Holt sell to Fawn Lodge Incorporated; Glenn Wilson pays over $50,000 for the building and its furnishings and immediately spends another $10,000 remodeling, moving the dining room so the great stone fireplace could be better used. Glenn and Jackie Wilson's restaurant became the place for every family celebration in the valley, famous for its steak dinners. Mort Traylor painted a fifty-foot mural of the Old West beside the fireplace; the building took on a Western face with white rail fencing and a wagon wheel at the door. New York steak was $6.75. A Johnny or Suzie Burger was a dollar.
After the Wilsons
Hands and years
The Wilsons held the lodge close to twenty-five years. Ownership then passed through many investors, few of whom ran it as a business. Through all of it, the massive native-stone fireplace, a backdrop for hundreds of photographs, never changed.
1994
Point of Historical Interest
California Office of Historic Preservation registers the Fawn Lodge as a Point of Historical Interest (P804), San Bernardino County, recognizing its place in the story of Fawnskin and the Big Bear Valley.
2025+
One hundred years
A century after Henry Guio's crew raised it, the Fawn Lodge is still standing on all three of its original lots. The lodge is currently owned by the Njus family, Ingmar, Kathy, and Kevin, who have cared for it through its later years. Now Seth Wilson, fourth generation of the Wilson family and carrying on the legacy of Glenn, Robbie, and Christopher, is in talks to purchase the property and restore it so it stands for the next hundred years. Keeping it that way is what this effort is for.

From the Historians

The full history, in five parts.

Researched and presented by Richard Graham of the Big Bear Valley Historical Society, drawing on Big Bear Grizzly archives, Frasher postcards, county records and the Wilson family collections.

Part One

The Early Years

Clinton Miller, Henry Guio and the building of Fawnskin's first two-story building in 1925.

Part Two

The Middle Years

Prohibition dances upstairs, the vanished dome, the quiet Depression years and Peter Holt.

Part Three

The Wilson Years

Glenn Wilson buys the lodge, the Woodland Restaurant, the Bambi Bar and twenty new rooms.

Part Four

The Best Years

The House of Wilson, Mort Traylor's murals, the Western makeover and those steak dinners.

Part Five

The Final Years

From 1925 to today, the last chapters of the lodge's first century.

1946 to 1973

The House of Wilson in Photos

Postcards, clippings, and photographs gathered by the Big Bear Valley Historical Society for Richard Graham's Fawn Lodge history presentation, covering the years the Wilson family ran the lodge as one of the finest restaurants in the country.

Hotel Fawn Lodge postcard
The full block in its prime: HOTEL ROOMS, BAR-B-Q DINNERS, House of Wilson steaks, and a row of antique autos parked out front.

Fawn Lodge, July 1946
Frasher’s Fotos card F3708, taken the summer Glenn Wilson reopened the building as Fawn Lodge: striped awnings, storefronts, a hardware sign at the corner, and pines crowding the roofline on the North Shore of Big Bear Lake.

Fawnskin Lodge, mid-1950s
The corner under a different name: FAWNSKIN LODGE spelled out on the gable, HOTEL ROOMS, RESTAURANT and DINING ROOM in the windows, and a drugstore next door. A row of 1950s autos parked on the dirt.

Fawnskin Lodge card, reverse
“Fawnskin, California. Located on Grout Bay, at the entrance to Holcomb Valley, in San Bernardino National Forest… Fawnskin Post Office was established in 1919.” Photo-color by Merle Porter, published by Royal Pictures, Colton, Calif.

House of Wilson card, reverse
“Fawn Lodge, The House of Wilson. Hotel, Restaurant, Cocktail Lounge. P.O. Box 7, Fawnskin, California. Phone 3841.”

A new and better Fawn Lodge
Big Bear Grizzly, June 7, 1946: Glenn's Cafe, Ray's Cocktail Lounge, Fox's Sport Shoppe, Armstrong's Hardware, and Peters' Barber Shop all under one roof.

Fawn Lodge matchbook
“The House of Wilson”, a little map to Grout Bay and Fawnskin, and the old number: Phone BIG BEAR 3841. Restaurant, Hotel, Cocktail Lounge.

The lobby and the hearth
The native-rock fireplace covering nearly one whole end of the room, described at the time as one of the most unique fireplaces in the mountains.

The Woodland Restaurant
The dining room set for service, the room that made the lodge known for its food across Southern California.

House of Wilson dining room
The native-stone fireplace, Mort Traylor's Western murals, and an antique biplane hung from the ceiling.

Mort Traylor mural, left of the fireplace
One half of the Western scene painted across the dining room walls, framing the stone hearth.

Mort Traylor mural, right of the fireplace
The companion panel: riders, rock, and open country running the length of the room.

A table under the mural
Guests gathered for dinner in the 1960s, the painted desert behind them.

The cocktail lounge, 1946
The curved bar and its long row of stools, opened after the remodel that first summer.

The cocktail lounge
Scalloped awnings, a long curved bar and country music, old and new tunes, until 2 a.m. on weekends.

One of the guest rooms
Twenty modern rooms and apartments upstairs, where only twelve had been before the Wilsons took over.

A guest room upstairs
One of the twenty rooms added under Glenn Wilson: knotty pine, hurricane lamps, and mountain quiet.

The Western look
Wagon wheels, board awnings, and the Fawn Lodge sign after Fawnskin remade itself as a pioneer era village.

Glenn and Robbie Wilson
Father and son, photographed for the lodge's twenty fifth year in 1971.

A keepsake from your table
The House of Wilson card that came with the polaroid taken for guests celebrating a special occasion.

The Grizzly, August 16, 1973
“Welcome to the New Look of the Old West”, the ad announcing new owners as the Wilsons stepped out of the saddle.

The Fawn Lodge Today

What a hundred winters left behind.

Still standing on Fawnskin's main road, faded red and boarded up. The sign still reads Fawn Lodge. Inside, stripped to the studs and open to the joists, the stone hearth Henry Guio's crew laid in 1925 is still standing in the middle of it.

The Fawn Lodge exterior today, a weathered red wooden building with boarded windows and the Fawn Lodge sign, under an overcast sky in Fawnskin. — Still standing on Fawnskin's main road.
Faded red paint, plywood over the windows, and the old Gold Pan sign out front. A hundred years on, the lodge waits for its next chapter.

Inside the ground floor.

The hearth, stripped bare
The 1925 native-stone fireplace still stands floor to ceiling, soot-black and solid, with the framing torn back around it.

Stone and studs
The chimney mass from the side, exposed framing and conduit where the dining room walls used to be.

Across the main room
Temporary posts hold the ceiling while the floor waits under a century of dust.

The staircase
The original stair to the second floor, still in place beside the stone wall, tagged but intact.

North windows
Daylight through the shuttered north windows, the old ceiling joists open overhead.

Toward the lounge
The long room that once held the bar and the jukeboxes, columns and beams all that remain.

Curved beam and storefront
The gentle curve of the original front beam still reads across the ground floor.

Open framing
Posts and studs laid bare, the ground floor opened up end to end.

Past tenant framing
Framing left behind by previous retail tenants, braced against the original 1925 structure.

Stair and stack
The original staircase in raw lumber, with the old fireplace flue running up beside it.

Bones of the guest rooms
Studs, headers, and daylight where paneled walls once divided the floor.

Wood floor still under it all
Original board flooring runs beneath the debris in the front rooms.

Toward the hearth
A low ceiling of joists opens onto the stone fireplace and the stair beyond.

Painted over
Graffiti across the back wall of a room that once served dinner to a full house.

A vision of the restored Fawn Lodge interior, fieldstone fireplace, red leather booths, wagon-wheel chandeliers and the great wood beams returned to glory

The Future

What a second century could look like.

This is what the lodge can be again, the great stone hearth lit, the wagon-wheel chandeliers glowing, red leather booths full of families, and Mort Traylor's Western murals uncovered once more. The bones Henry Guio raised in 1925 are still here.

A century of snow and neglect has taken its toll, but nothing on this corner is lost that love and labor cannot bring back. Your gift helps us re-light the room where Big Bear has celebrated for a hundred years.

Seth and Evelin Wilson in front of the weathered Fawn Lodge in Fawnskin today. — Seth and Evelin Wilson at the lodge, fourth generation of the Wilson family to care for it.

Who I Am

Four generations of Wilsons, one lodge to keep.

I'm Seth Wilson, great grandson of Glenn Wilson, grandson of Robbie Wilson, and son of Christopher Wilson. My wife Evelin and I, the fourth generation of the Wilson family, carry the responsibility for this place. The Fawn Lodge has been in my family since Glenn bought it and turned it into the House of Wilson.

The lodge is currently owned by the Njus family, Ingmar, Kathy, and Kevin, who have cared for it through its later years. I'm now in talks with them to purchase the property and bring it back into the Wilson family, to restore it and keep it standing for the next hundred years.

I come from a commercial construction background, and the Fawn Lodge is my first development project, the project of a lifetime. Saving a hundred-year-old landmark takes more than sentiment: it takes a plan, capital, and the trades to do the work, and my experience in commercial construction is what I'm bringing to all three. This isn't a flip. I grew up on the stories of Glenn, Robbie, and Christopher, on the same Fawnskin sidewalk my family stood on half a century ago. Everything on this page, every photo and every name, is part of my family's story. I'm asking you to help me bring the Fawn Lodge back to life.

Help keep Fawn Lodge standing.

Every gift, large or small, goes directly to repairing and preserving the lodge for the family and the mountains it belongs to.

Follow @thefawnlodge on Instagram

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FAWNLODGE

The fireplace never changed.

A century on the corner.

Fawnskin begins

Henry Guio buys the corner

The Guio Building opens

The Tea Room and the all-night dances

The quiet decades

It becomes the Fawn Lodge

The House of Wilson

Hands and years

Point of Historical Interest

One hundred years