A legacy built in the mountains.

How it began

Early in 1949, several associates of Robert "Bob" M. Pyles met with a common purpose: the desire to establish a living monument to a man whose personal life was dedicated to finding and developing the good in all people. All of them, employed in various phases of California's oil industry, had at some point been deeply influenced by the humanitarian qualities so predominant in Bob Pyles' character. Bob measured wealth by the abundance of friendships he had harvested, sowing seeds of faith, hope, and charity in the hearts of others.

Idea piled on idea, but none felt worthy of the purpose, until a camping trip in the Lloyd Meadow basin. Around the campfire after a long day's ride, his associates finally just asked Bob himself: "What do you want your legacy to be?" Bob got up, walked off from the group, sat on a rock, and thought.

"I should like," he said, "to find a beautiful site in the mountains, where the cool, clean air will fill their lungs and give children renewed strength and vigor; where the clear, flowing waters of a mountain stream will afford them a place to fish and swim and rebuild their depleted bodies; where the grassy meadows, the winding trails, and the tall trees will furnish them the means of regaining free hearts and free minds, and instill in them once more a feeling of security, a belief in self, and the desire to become the finest citizens in the finest country in the world."

Who Bob Pyles was

One decision remained before construction could begin: the campsite itself, left to Mr. Pyles, whose years of following mountain trails, hunting, fishing, and camping qualified him well to choose. Bob was born in 1892, the ninth of ten children in Mansfield, Texas, into what he'd describe as an ideal family built on love, respect, and devotion.

After his father's unexpected death and a fire that destroyed the family's only store, his newly widowed mother gathered their few remaining belongings and set out for California, settling the family in Kern County. Bob attended school only through the 8th grade. When depression fell across America in 1906, he quit at 14 to help hold the family together, first driving a mule team to the mining camps of Skidoo and Ballarat, then moving into oil-field construction, where his boundless energy and effort led him all the way to a career as a successful oil executive. In 1928, he even patented a piece of oilfield equipment, a rotary jar.

"Who are you?"

So in the spring of 1949, Bob made the trip to see the Forest Supervisor of the Sequoia National Forest, to request a site along the cool Kern River, high in the pine-studded Sierra Nevada. The Supervisor looked at him and asked, simply: "Who are you?"

"That was a good question," Mr. Pyles would chuckle, recalling it later. "I believe it was the first time in my life I had ever consciously stopped to think: who am I? But I guess I must have known the answer, because we received a grant to establish two campsites, Upper Pyles and Lower Pyles, along the Kern River, and a year later we were permitted to add a third site, Camp Lloyd Meadows."

The legacy

That record of accomplishment is its own answer to "Who are you?": a record reflecting the sincerity, integrity, and high purpose of a man who dedicated his life:

"To find the poor and needy, the underprivileged children, whose bodies are undernourished, whose thoughts are clouded by fear, whose hearts are heavy from lack of love and understanding — to find and rebuild them into healthier and happier generations of Americans, firmly endowed with the ideals and principles of our freedom-loving country."

A man who believed, simply, that a hand extended for a handshake is a helping hand.