For sale: Adams’ Pack Station, home of the last donkey-assisted goods delivery system in Southern California

Approach Adams’ Pack Station in the Angeles National Forest and the aroma of farm animals pierces the mountain air.

A herd of goats bleat loudly. Black-and-white domestic cats scurry across the threshold of the owner’s cabin that doubles as a mountain store.

On weekends it’s a makeshift restaurant, attached to a dirt space walled off with plastic sheeting, where hungry campers, hikers and cabin owners enjoy bowls of cowboy chili, grilled hot dogs, ice cream and live music.

And then, a more unexpected sight: Nine donkeys stoically standing in the back barn near a loading dock.

These trained work animals, hardly stirring while awaiting their next payload, are the muscle and soul of one of the most unique businesses in the region: the last animal-assisted goods delivery system in Southern California.

Old school

In this day and age of same-day truck deliveries and goods drops, the pack donkeys are a throwback — but one that’s more essential in these parts than any modern delivery system.

They can each carry 130 pounds of roofing material, flooring, food, tools, wood, whatever the cabin owners or renters need to make their stay in Big Santa Anita Canyon above Sierra Madre and Arcadia a successful one.

Their steady gait can maneuver switchbacks and flat trails alike, often to cabins four miles from the terminus of Chantry Flat Road, which leads from Santa Anita Avenue to the canyon oasis.

For the first time in a dozen years, the circa-1936 business is for sale.

Deb Burgess, who bought the place in 2006, has listed the packing station — the house with a sitting room, kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom; the barn; the donkeys; the store and restaurant — for an asking price of $500,000.

Not the goats, though.

“Oh, the goats are coming with me,” she interrupted during an interview at the station Monday evening. “I have to have animals around me.”

Between two worlds

Burgess, who just turned 60, ran Adams’ Pack Station with her mother, Sue Burgess, in the style of the popular husband-and-wife duo Bill and Lila Adams, who operated the business from 1949 to 1984. That included friendly, customer service and a “mi casa, su casa” attitude.

Burgess wanted to be like Lila Adams, a grand lady of the canyon who with her husband, would be seen fixing trails, rebuilding rock walls and checking in on cabins while owners were away. They welcomed visitors as if they were guests to their home.

When the couple sold the business, the cabin owners even chipped in for their retirement, said Elizabeth Pomeroy, local historian whose next book “The Life of Accomplishments of Glen Dawson,” a mountaineer and bookshop owner, comes out in early 2019.

But the introverted Deb Burgess began to grow weary of the onslaught of visitors and intrusions, where people would yell out for service while she was napping in a back bedroom, she said.

“If you really are a people person you will love it. But you live in a fishbowl. You have no privacy,” she said, while giving a reporter a tour of her home located behind the store and restaurant, all off a dirt road on a hill just west of the Chantry Flat parking lot and row of popular forest trailheads.

Burgess said her mother would duck behind the kitchen counter when a visitor would yell for assistance on days they were closed. She left for a place in the southern Sierra Nevada after three years.

Now that Sue Burgess is 80, Deb wants to move in with her mother and take care of her, she said.

During a tour of the kitchen, she remembers with a hint of nostalgia the surprise visit from a possum on a dark winter night. And the black bear who poked his face through the cat door.

“I kicked him in the nose,” she said, laughing.

A fifth generation Californian who grew up in Long Beach and Lakewood, Burgess loves living in the mountains. She raised her son there. She made friends with cabin owners who still wave to her when she’s out for a run.

But she’s facing a big decision and is torn between two worlds.

“It can be a great life here. But now there is little to keep me here anymore,” she said.

In the next breath, she spoke of the mountain trees. The cool, moonlit nights. The smog-free air.

“Oh yeah, nighttime is wonderful,” she said. “I get up at 4:30 in the morning. Everything is quiet and it is wonderful. I’ll sit on the porch, catch up on emails. Then go for a run.”

A tough sell

Burgess admits selling Adams’ Pack Station will be a tough task.

In 2010, Burgess remembers she almost went bankrupt. But she raised money and added new retail services to supplement the pack station. A Pasadena Star-News article from 2010 said she was not quite ready” to leave.

Eight years later, “Maybe now I am ready to pack it in,” she said.

The new owners — perhaps a small family — would need to communicate with visitors. They’d need to run the donkeys, or hire someone who could do this unique job.

So far, Burgess has received more than two dozen calls and has zeroed in on two couples who are legitimate prospects, she said.

Burgess said the sale of the pack station includes the permit with the U.S. Forest Service. She also wants the store and eatery to continue after she leaves.

Brandi Anderson and Raymond Coombs helped remodel their friends’ cabin. They used Burgess’s pack animals to offload roofing materials and new furniture.

“It would have been hell without the pack animals,” Anderson said. “It would have been extremely hard to get that stuff in” since the cabin is 1 1/2 miles from the end of the road.

Pomeroy, a cabin owner herself, said during a phone interview Wednesday it would be a shame if the new owners did not keep up the packing business.

“There is no substitute for the animals to carry things like that up the trail,” she said. “Humans can only backpack in so much.”