Antelope Valley - Notable People

Notable People

Some people of note have spent time in the valley, including:

• Erik Audé, actor/stuntman turned professional poker player, went to Paraclete High School before transferring over to Bethel Christian.
• Judy Garland, then known in the valley as Frances Gumm. As a girl, she would sing in public to her Lancaster neighbors.
• John Wayne, then known as Marion Morrison, was briefly a Lancaster schoolboy who was known not to tie up his horse properly when he left it by the street, as was the old time custom.
• Daniel Fry, a contactee, attended Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster during the 1920s.
• The 90's R&B group All-4-One was from the AV.
• Aldous Huxley drew writing inspiration from the solitude found at his Llano home. A little known children's book, The Crows of Pearblossom, is set in the valley and was the only children's book he is known to have written.
• Pancho Barnes the legendary aviatrix and friend to the U.S. Air Force's test pilots of what is now called Edwards Air Force Base, established the celebrated Happy Bottom Riding Club near Rogers Dry Lake in 1935, later living in Cantil and Boron.
• Chuck Yeager was an early USAF test pilot at then-Muroc Army Air Field, now known as Edwards Air Force Base, where he became the first to break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947.
• Frank Zappa attended Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, graduating in 1958. He met Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) there, a fellow student at the time.
• Terence McKenna noted writer, public speaker, philosopher, psychonaut, and ethnobotanist graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 1965.
• Tippi Hedren, who made her major motion picture debut in The Birds, is an Acton resident since at least 1981 (Acton not being in the valley proper, but nearby to the south).
• Michael Deaver, former aide to Ronald Reagan, is a former Mojave resident.
• Kathleen Soliah, who achieved notoriety as a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 1970s and then as a fugitive living a quiet, middle-class life in St. Paul, Minnesota, grew up in Desert View Highlands, graduating from Palmdale High School in 1965.
• Burt Rutan and his brother Dick Rutan of Scaled Composites, the firm which produced SpaceShipOne and the Voyager aerospace vehicles, work out of Mojave Air & Space Port in Mojave.
• R. Lee Ermey of Full Metal Jacket and Mail Call fame is a current Palmdale resident.
• Home to members of the punk bands Slick Shoes and Killradio.
• Joseph Foreman, more frequently known as Afroman, lives in Palmdale.

See also Aerospace Walk of Honor - downtown Lancaster sidewalk tribute to the U. S. Air Force flight test community.