Crest: Enclave Shrugs Off Its Growing Pains, Thrives

Shortly before World War II, the old San Diego Sun came up with quite a promotion gimmick. It offered tiny lots intended for summer cabins to anyone who would buy a year’s subscription to the newspaper.

The 25-by-100-foot lots were at the top of a mountain about 30 miles east of San Diego and seven miles south of a tiny hamlet named El Cajon that was surrounded by acres of orchards. Sparsely populated and lacking even running water, the land hardly seemed like prime real estate.

But scores of young families still reeling from the Depression welcomed the chance to start new lives on their own land and became full-time residents on the mountain despite the rustic conditions.

Life was hardly easy for these settlers, nor has it been for the generations who have followed. But the cost of homes in the bedroom community known as Crest has soared past six figures, and today the picturesque town is emerging as East County’s prime enclave for the young, upscale professionals popularly known as yuppies.

Crest truly has blossomed, but it has had--and will continue to have--severe growing pains.

Oldtimers still shudder at the memory of the 54 treacherous curves in the narrow road that once led to the mountaintop. They remember when the wells yielded only a trickle of drinking water for days in succession.

There also were times of social strife. The settlers who built year-round homes on the cabin lots were shunned by the well-to-do, longtime summer residents who had the mountain to themselves during their season before the Sun’s giveaway. People still remember the tensions.

“We had our own Mason-Dixon line for years,” said George Behrens, the town’s first fire chief. “The people on top of the hill, in what was called La Cresta, looked down on those of us in Suncrest. They wouldn’t talk to us.”

Billie Tate, the town’s librarian and a full-time resident since 1966, who spent the summers of her youth in a Suncrest cabin, said with a laugh, “It was because the streets down there weren’t paved, and silly things like that.”

Behrens is credited with bringing the two communities together as Crest--and winning over the bluebloods. “I formed the fire department, and they wanted in,” he recalled with a laugh.

In 1971, the townspeople fought shoulder-to-shoulder for three days against the Laguna Fire, but it burned more than 100 Crest homes as it blazed from Mt. Laguna to El Cajon. Women joined the volunteer fire department out of necessity, because most of the men were working off the mountain during the day and couldn’t get to town quickly to fight a fire.

Today, the residents still face severe water shortages in the summer (there is a moratorium on new water connections) and must travel down the mountain to reach the nearest supermarket, drugstore, gas station or fast-food restaurant.

The town has a population of almost 4,000, but fewer than a dozen businesses, so only a handful of people make a living here. (Some longtime residents whisper that there once was a bordello here to service the young men building homes on their free lots.) The lone cafe and tavern, residents say, often shuts down for lack of customers.

Nevertheless, Crest not only has endured, it has prospered. Many of the older homes that survived the fire remain, some inhabited by the same families who built them 40 years ago. Striking, expensive custom-built homes have filled in around them. Old or new, virtually every residence still commands a stunning view of the Laguna or Cuyamaca mountains.

Expansive yards with large shade trees predominate. This is the antithesis of the planned community--not one of the streets runs in a straight line, no two homes are alike.

You see more kids on horseback than you do on bicycles.

When a resident describes these virtues of the town, the word “character” almost always comes up. Oldtimers say the character has not wavered despite the town’s turbulent history. New residents say it was the character that attracted them to set down roots here.

New residents are considerably wealthier than their predecessors, and they don’t mix much with the older residents.

“They’re individualistic, just like we were,” said Evelyn Behrens, who moved here 42 years ago. “They keep pretty much to themselves, because they wanted to get away on their own or they wouldn’t have moved up on the mountain.”

Whether the residents are young or old, they share one opinion --they wouldn’t give up life in Crest for all of the modern conveniences in the world.

“It took us two years to find the piece of land we wanted to build on, in a town we felt comfortable with, and right now we wouldn’t trade the beauty and the small-town virtues up here for anything,” said Debbie Swanson, a three-year resident of Crest.

“It’s a place where a young family can have plenty of room to spread out, keep animals and appreciate the quiet away from the hectic pace of the city. I don’t care if my kids (ages 10 and 12) do complain about there not being any pinball arcades or movie theaters in town. They’ll see enough of those in their life. But not many kids get to experience a special place like Crest.”

“We wanted a place where the kids would spend their time like this instead of at a shopping mall,” said Janet Clayton, as she watched her daughter put the family’s horse through its paces in the show ring at South Park.

The Claytons moved to San Diego County three years ago from Maryland, and were shocked when they saw the cookie-cutter lots and tract homes that predominate in East County. “We wanted to be in the country, but close to the city,” said Clayton, whose husband is a financial consultant with a large San Diego firm, about a 40-minute commute.

“We looked everywhere, but this was the only town that filled the bill.”

People lock their doors in Crest, but they say it probably isn’t necessary. Incidents of serious crime are few and far between. “Just about everyone you talk to wants to be here because it’s safe and quiet,” Tate said. “Some things have changed, but that aspect of the town hasn’t, thank God.”

Al Fehlberg, the closest thing this town has to a mover and shaker (he’s the fire chief and serves on the local water and planning boards; his wife is the postmistress), brought his family here to escape the problems of urban life.

“We were in a nice two-story home in Chula Vista with a swimming pool, and everything fell apart,” he said. “There were public housing projects put in nearby. Pretty soon, there was nothing but fights, drugs--all kinds of crime. We had to get away.

“A friend lived up here, so we looked into Crest. It was the escape we wanted. We have our problems, but they don’t dominate our lives like they did before. This has stayed a really nice place to live.”

Evelyn Behrens, who moved here as a young widow with four children before marrying George, agrees that the town has retained its good attributes. The Behrenses still live in the house George built for $1,600 in the early 1940s, when there were fewer than 600 residents.

In the front of the house, Evelyn runs a beauty shop, although it is more sedate there than it was 20 years ago, when the town’s fire siren sat in the reception area. The backyard commands a panoramic view of the Laguna Mountains.

It was the view, Evelyn said, that convinced her there was no place like Crest. And having been born and raised “a city girl” in Los Angeles, Evelyn was initially a skeptic. “When we first were married, George brought me here and told me to look out over the mountains,” she said.

“There’s no sight like it anywhere in the world when the mountains are covered with snow or the harvest moon is coming up. No matter what, the view changes every 30 minutes. That’s enough entertainment for me.”

It was from their mountain perch that the Behrenses watched as the Laguna Fire raged toward their town to wipe out the life’s work of many of Crest’s original families.

“We watched it coming for a week, and we sat out here in the back and talked about how sorry we felt for the poor people on Mt. Laguna,” Evelyn Behrens said. “Then the fire hit here.

“The men and even the young teen-age boys fought for three days. A lot of the women finally left when things looked too dangerous. I got out right as the house next door was going up.”

The fire wiped out one-third of the town, but virtually all of the residents built new homes. “For a lot of them, the fire was a blessing in disguise,” Fehlberg said. “The value of the old houses had gone way up, and with insurance and low-interest government loans, just about everyone built a house that was much nicer than the one they had before. It made for a big change in the town.”

“I can’t remember anyone leaving because of the fire,” Evelyn Behrens said. “You don’t just fold up your town because of something like that. You get together and build it up again.”

While the fire upgraded the living conditions of many Crest residents, Fehlberg fears there could one day be another devastating blaze and, like the Behrenses in 1971, that he will be without the water to fight it.

Last summer, Crest nearly ran out of water, as the supply dwindled to one day’s worth. Emergency rationing began.

Fehlberg proposes a more permanent solution--annexation to the much larger Padre Municipal Water District. An election to decide the issue will be held in June.

“Our pipes bringing the water up from El Cajon were made from government surplus in the ‘40s, and they’re just no good anymore,” Fehlberg said. “A lot of people are used to water problems here, so they don’t realize how serious the situation is.

“And, they’re afraid of joining up with a big brother--people here have always been stubborn and independent, and it’s showing through on this.”

“We’ll keep to ourselves, because that’s the way it has always been in Crest,” said Mike Randolph, who was raised here and has returned to raise his family here. “Beating raps like the water problem is what keeps this town together.”