Once owned the property now known as "Peter Strauss Ranch", a park operated by the National Park Service in the beautiful Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in Southern California. The property, once know as "Lake Enchanto", had been an amusement park in the mid-1930s but fell into disrepair and finally closed in the early 1960s. He purchased the property and restored it in 1976, living there until 1983, when he sold the property to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.