Anyone who cares about Malibu history will be saddened to learn that Rhoda May Adamson Dallas passed away last week. She was the daughter of Rhoda and Merritt Adamson, granddaughter of May and Frederick Rindge, and her memories of growing up in that remarkable house (that's the view from her girlhood bedroom window) and in this amazing landscape helped make the Adamson House such a rewarding place to visit.

From the obit in the Malibu TImes:

Born in Santa Monica on Feb. 14, 1917 to Merritt and Rhoda Agatha Rindge Adamson, Dallas' life spanned the entirety of Malibu's modern existence. Dallas' grandparents, Frederick Hastings Rindge and May Knight Rindge, were the last owners of Malibu Rancho before it opened to the public in 1925, followed by the Roosevelt Highway (now Pacific Coast Highway) three years later.

Dallas spent her childhood and early youth in the family's homes at Muirfield Road and 4th Street in Los Angeles, the Hancock Park area and in Malibu. The family's iconic Malibu home located next to Surfrider Beach is operated today by the state of California as the Malibu Lagoon Museum, a preserved relic of a vanished Malibu lifestyle. Among the displays at the museum are brightly colored Mediterranean-style tiles produced by Malibu Potteries, the company founded by her grandmother May Rindge in 1926.

The eldest of three children, Dallas' surviving family said she loved to explore the hills and trails of early Malibu with her sister, Sylvia, and younger brother, Merritt, Jr., and go swimming and boating in the ocean located just outside their back door.

Lots more in the obit -- and in the Adamson House itself, where the docents (full disclosure -- I'm a lapsed docent and am in no way unbiased on the subject of May Rindge and the Adamson house) give fascinating tours of one of the prettiest houses anywhere.