Rustic Cafe and Store Sign in San Bernardino Mountain Pines (Circa 1925)

A rustic wooden Cafe Store hanging sign suspended from a massive pine tree outside a mountain grocery store in Big Bear Lake. — Rustic Cafe and Store Sign in San Bernardino Mountain Pines (Circa 1925) · Donald A. Hall Estate Collection

A vertical study in early California mountain commerce, Donald A. Hall Sr. photographed a handcrafted rustic Cafe and Store sign suspended from the trunk of a towering ponderosa pine. Resting behind large granite boulders along an unpaved mountain road in the Big Bear Lake region, the building preserves the frontier commercial aesthetic of early automobile tourism in the San Bernardino National Forest.