Within a year or so, Whiting saw an advertisement in the Los Angeles Times regarding 415 acres in the Crescenta Valley that were for sale. He contacted the owner, a Wisconsin resident, and discovered that the advertised land adjoined the property he already owned. “This land was very beautiful, having a regular forest on many parts,” Whiting wrote.
After negotiating the price for several months, he bought the property, outbidding another Wisconsin man, who, according to the Ledger, 1953, planned to subdivide the property into several small chicken ranches.
In early 1921, Whiting’s ranch house ``burned to the ground, furniture and all,” he later wrote. Nevertheless, later that same year, he purchased 260 acres of flat meadow land further up in the canyon from a truck farmer who was growing vegetables with water provided by natural gravity from the surrounding mountains, according to the Ledger. This third purchase brought Whiting’s holdings to 670 acres.
