Harry Oliver (April 4, 1888 – July 4, 1973) was an American humorist, artist, and Academy Award nominated art director of films from the 1920s and 1930s.

Raised in a Tom Sawyer environment, he associated with trappers, timbermen and steamboat men, and became an expert canoesman, guide, and muskrat hunter while a very young man.

He said, "I attended public school in Eau Claire, Wisconsin until the fourth grade, that's when dad put me to work in a small town print shop in hopes that I would learn to spell."

Harry's parents soon settled down on a chicken ranch in Santa Cruz, California where Oliver worked as a burro-driver for the U.S. Forest Service.

Oliver built a number of adobe houses for himself and his family, both because he liked the esthetic effect, and because the building materials were extremely inexpensive.

Homesteading at Borrego Springs (see below), Oliver built his Rancho Borego house from 1930 – "a real first class, old time Spanish residence" and "surely a credit to the valley" according to the local newspaper.

[3] Moving to San Juan Capistrano in the late 1930s, where he managed a general store–trading post after retiring from Hollywood, he may have built another adobe house for himself, but documentation on this is sparse.

The elaborate gingerbread Willat-Spadena Witch House (1921), "perhaps the ultimate example of Storybook Style" [5], with no two windows or angles alike, was originally built on the set of the Irvin Willat Film Studio in Culver City, then moved to Beverly Hills in 1934 and converted to a private residence.

It was built at the Willat Studio film lot around 1921, then moved about 200 feet (61 m) south of Beverly Drive on Western Blvd.

Members of the Lawry's Foods and Van de Kamp Bakery families decided to build a restaurant at the corner of Boyce and Los Feliz in Hollywood.

In 1935, Oliver was engaged to design, direct and produce Gold Gulch, the largest concession at the San Diego World's Fair (California Pacific International Exposition).

In 1946–1947, Oliver designed and supervised the construction of the Arabian Nights Stage at the National Date Festival fairgrounds in Indio, California.

He pulled them out of school and together they traveled all over California, visiting all the missions, the construction site of the Golden Gate Bridge, numerous Gold Rush locales, "and Harry kept his daughters busy writing history theses on everything they saw."

His daughters' families spent a great deal of time at the Fort; some descendants, like granddaughter Betty Jo, told of happily "growing up" there.

Oliver seems to have started adopting his Desert Rat persona in 1916, when he was introduced to life in California's Borrego Valley (which he insisted on spelling Borego), and with the informal formation of the Pegleg Smith Liar's Club, made up of Los Angeles desert enthusiasts and Anza-Borrego area homesteaders.

He passed the duration of World War II growing rubber at Bell Ranch and working with the US Army at Palm Springs Airport.