LOS ANGELES, Jul. 15 – Just four years ago, Charles Manson and members of his “family” were sitting at the Spahn Movie Ranch, planning the Tate-LaBianca murders.

For decades before August, 1969 the ranch existed in peaceful anonymity. In the 13 months that followed, it suffered from its notoriety, until finally, it was cremated in the September fires that swept from Newhall to the sea.

Some say the fires were nature’s way of purging herself of evil. For nature had always been the star player at the ranch – until the Family took over the land.

Today, one lone foundation is all that remains after the fires and bulldozers scraped away all evidence of the ranch. And, except for Manson, even its history has been lost.

According to Ray Johnson, Chatsworth’s 75-year-old native-born historian, the land up on the winding Santa Susana Pass Road has never done much more than “just sit idly by.”

Even most of the longtime residents who pride themselves on their knowledge of the area admit they know little about the ill-famed ranch.

As one major studio director commented, “Before Manson, the Spahn Ranch was just another location.”

The land was first homesteaded in 1885 by a farmer named J. R. Williams. But the hard rock and rugged terrain left the area virtually useless on the rim of a fertile valley.

And so it sat through a series of forgotten owners until sometime in the 1940s and the era of the western movies when a not-very-authentic western scene was created and named “Lee’s Trading Post.”

The trading post offered little more than a scene for low-budget film makers. A large barn and a row of stables also had been built with some planning in mind. But most of the ranch just emerged piece-meal, according to immediate needs — a shack here, a trailer there, a water tank.

It was only natural that George Christian Spahn was aware of the ranch and its natural rugged beauty. During the early years of film-making, Spahn was one of the major suppliers of western livestock and props.

From his North HoIlywood ranch at Riverside Drive and Whitsett Ave., he provided the pintos and mustangs that became the standard mounts of Little Beaver, Wallace Berry and John Wayne.

Then came the 50s and the Ventura Freeway, the concrete flood control channel and an ex-circus performer named Ruby Pearl. Spahn gave up his ranch, his wife, his 11 children and the Chamber of Commerce. With Mrs. Pearl he bought and established a new home at Lee’s Trading Post.

Spahn had hoped to turn the worn-down post into a movie location. But he was aging, beginning to lose his eyesight and westerns, already on the wane, were more easily filmed at Corriganville in Simi Valley or across the road at the better-equipped, more established Iverson Ranch.

Except for occasional, small film companies, Spahn’s ranch was virtually ignored. Instead, local youths and students from Valley State College, later named Cal State U Northridge, found the ranch a handy place to rent good horses for a ride in the wilderness.

The trails were rugged and, with only a little imagination, youthful riders fancied themselves as pioneers of the West.

There was the path that led along a cool, trickling stream, past collapsing shacks with their inhabitants of out-of-work stunt cowboys and barefoot, ragged toddlers.

Other trails led up into the hillsides, through groves of oaks with their gnarled roots reaching into dry riverbeds, higher still to the rim of the rocks overlooking the smog-shrouded Valley.

A rider could sit below odd-shaped rocks, listen to the swishing sound of wind through the waist-high foxtails and imagine the world uninhabited.

It was just such tranquility that drew Charlie Manson and his dusty, soft-speaking followers to the ranch. There were empty houses and trailers that provided shelter, plenty of space to strip discarded cars and trucks for their parts and an old, blind man who would leave them alone.

Spahn, now 84, lives quietly today in North-Hollywood with his wife who took him in after 18 years of separation. It is still hard for him to believe that the calm, soft-spoken “children” that took care of his needs at the ranch were capable of murder.

He lost his dream when the fire destroyed his ranch. He doesn’t want to talk about the notoriety that he feels he didn’t earn and didn’t deserve. As his wife commented, “We just want him to get well again.”

Others in Spahn’s family say the memory cannot be forgotten. One of his daughters-in-law, who lives in Van Nuys, still is cautious of strange callers. She said she still hears occasionally from members of the Manson Family, who call to inquire about the health of Spahn.

“There have never been any threatening calls,” she said. “But then, members of the Manson Family never did threaten any body. It’s a chilly, strange sensation.”

In a way, the younger Mrs. Spahn sees the burning of the ranch as a purging for the better.

“I was afraid because of the number of people who had begun to gather at the ranch,” she said.

“Dad is a stubborn old German. He said the kids helped him when the rest of us didn’t. But he could hear them sharpening their knives … I was relieved when it was finally over.”

And so the ranch and its brief notoriety, are gone. All that remains are the piles of rubbish that blemish the canyons and pollute the tiny stream.

By MARTHA WILLMAN