August 5, 1950 — The Herman Benz family of Bouquet Canyon. From left: Baby Phyllis, John, Henry, Herman (dad), Joe. The children are siblings.

According to contributor Phyllis Benz Froemming, the family lived in a house which, as late as the 1940s, had been the schoolhouse. In 1955 the family moved to Plum Canyon. (The schoolhouse would have been the New Era school, built in 1924 — Ed.)

The entire 300-acre area that included the school on the north and Plum Canyon on the south had been the Suracos' ranch, which the Benz family (parents of Herman) purchased in 1940 or 1941. Herman's brother lived on the property south of the schoolhouse where the Suracos' historic adobe home had stood, in what would be the 2848X block of Bouquet Canyon Road. (The adobe was crumbling to dust when the Benz family acquired the property.)

The schoolhouse building had no proper street address when the Herman Benz family lived in it; its postal address was Route 2, Box 4.

Phyllis writes (2013): "The [Herman Benz] house was on the same side of the street down from where the probation camp is, right before the bend or curve in the road on Bouquet Canyon. I remember as a small child that cars coming down Bouquet didn't make that curve and ended up along side of our house."