In 1938 a major flood hit the Mandeville Canyon area, particularly ravaging the lower Mandeville area. The damage was so extensive that the Garden Land Company remained inactive for the next sixteen years. However, beginning in the early 1940s, centered mostly around horses, Mandeville Canyon started to become a canyon neighborhood with rustic homes for the well-to-do, including at various times the families of Donald Wills Douglas, Sr. of the Douglas Aircraft Company, Robert McClure (founder of the "Santa Monica Evening Outlook" newspaper), composer Meredith Willson, and actors Robert Taylor, Eva Marie Saint, Robert Mitchum, Harry Morgan (Morgan's son Charley states that family moved to Mandeville in 1954 and has remained there to present date), Esther Williams, Dick Powell, Don DeFore and others. Polo players such as Jack Martin Smith and other neighbors would exercise their horses, riding daily across the canyons to play polo at Will Rogers State Historic Park or just down the canyon to the L.A.A.C.