Pico Cottage, aka Big House
Pico Canyon | Mentryville
August 6, 2014 —
If you've seen HBO's "Big Love," you've seen the Pico Cottage, aka the Big House in Mentryille. The 13-room mansion was built in the early 1890s for Alexander Mentry,
superintendent of the Pico oil field west of Newhall.
Heavily damaged in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, the structure and surrounding acreage were transfered to an affiliate of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy
in 1996 when Chevron was unloading its nonperforming assets (the last Pico oil well closed in 1990).
Closed to the public, the mansion has been used to generate revenue for the Conservancy as a film and television set. The public has been waiting nearly 20 years for
the Conservancy to use state park bond funds (or filming and other revenues) to convert the building into a museum, as per the original plan.
19200 dpi jpegs from ditigal images by Evan Decker.