Bulldozers Bear Down on the Bucolic Charm of Rural Trabuco Canyon : New Roads, Developments Threaten Rural Community

The people who live in Silverado and Modjeska canyons in the Santa Ana Mountain foothills of Orange County have always had at least two things going for them in the long and mostly successful struggle to retain their pastoral way of life: their determination and the harsh terrain.

But neighbors in nearby Trabuco Canyon have only one of those attributes--determination--and even that seems to be running thin.

Their wooded canyon--with its 230 homes mostly hidden by thousands of live oak trees, the 100-year-old schoolhouse and the rustic neighborhood store--lacks the forbidding steep walls that enclose Modjeska and Silverado and protect them from development.

‘Community Being Dismantled’

The outside world is leaking in and “our community is being dismantled,” says Bruce Conn, a 32-year-old Trabuco resident who speaks for the Rural Canyon Conservation Fund.

The fund is an informal group that Conn admits can only occasionally muster enough residents for a meeting to discuss threats to the bucolic charm of the community nestled beneath the twin peaks of Saddleback mountain. But Conn says residents have just about lost the will to fight off what seems inevitable.

And so, in recent months, the earthmovers have gone to work.

On the perimeters of the Trabuco community, an army of machines has been moving 17.2 million cubic yards of ancient earth and chaparral for five major developments.

“For the relatively short period of time involved, this is the most extensive earth-moving we’ve seen in Orange County,” said Jim Miller, chief of the grading section of the county’s Environmental Management Agency.

“Operations in Mission Viejo and Laguna Niguel were very large, but they were done in increments over long periods of time.”

None of the earth around Trabuco is being taken away from the area. “They’re just lowering the hills and filling in the gullies,” Miller said.

And on the relatively level ground that results, a projected 27,150 residential units eventually will house an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 people in a part of the county that until less than a year ago was considered home mainly to deer, mountain lions, hawks and coyotes.

10,695 Acres Involved

The five developments, where earthmovers are scarring a combined total of 10,695 acres, are Portola Hills at the junction of Live Oak Canyon and El Toro roads, westerly of the Trabuco community; Saddleback Meadows in the same general area; Rancho Santa Margarita and the Robinson Ranch toward the east and south, and the existing but still-expanding Coto de Caza, which presently has about 200 dwelling units but has county approval for 6,419.

In addition, a county document known as the Foothill Trabuco Feature Plan--a specific section of the county’s General Plan for unincorporated territories--was approved by the Board of Supervisors last May.

It designates 6,300 acres as the Trabuco community and puts a top limit of 2,450 dwelling units within that area.

“That’s more than 10 times what we have now,” Conn said.

He said that large portions of that 6,300 acres are in O’Neill Regional Park and in the Cleveland National Forest, where no construction would be allowed. This would mean more dense construction within the community.

Petitioners Seek Fewer Units

Conn and another resident, Ray Chandos, collected 202 signatures on a petition seeking, among other things, to lower the 2,450 proposed units in the Feature Plan to 1,000 units.

“It was one of the rare times these days that we got action from the residents,” Chandos said. “In the past, they attended county board meetings, gave their views and were ignored, and now mostly they are just accepting what’s happening and saying, ‘What’s the use?’ ”

A spokesman in Supervisor Bruce Nestande’s office said the petition for an amendment is being studied.

Leonard Schwendeman, 67, has lived in Trabuco since 1936, when only dirt roads led into the canyon from the county’s flatlands and cities.

“I don’t like high density but, well, I guess this is what happens,” he said with resignation.

The dirt roads of the 1930s have been replaced by some well-paved thoroughfares, such as El Toro Road, Live Oak Canyon Road and more recently the Portola Parkway, which bypasses Trabuco and runs from El Toro Road to the Rancho Santa Margarita, Robinson Ranch and Coto de Caza projects.

Nevertheless, the inevitable population boom demands more, and so more roadways are on the drawing boards. For example, the proposed Foothill Corridor, which would link the Riverside Freeway with Interstate 5 below San Clemente, would pass a couple of miles south of the Trabuco settlement.

But a more immediate concern to Trabuco residents is the proposed Rose Canyon Road, which would cut through part of the community and provide access from El Toro Road to the big developments of Rancho Santa Margarita, the Robinson Ranch and Coto de Caza.

Bob Rende, manager of project planning for the county’s transportation planning division, said the new road, tentatively approved by supervisors, would include a bridge over Trabuco Creek just upstream from the present crossing.

No existing homes would be affected but a large number of oak trees would be removed and heavy grading would be necessary in some sections.

School Opened in 1879

Another indication of what Conn called the “dismantling” of the mountain community is the threat to the Trabuco Elementary School.

The school was opened in 1879. For almost 100 years it comprised a one-school district until, in 1973, it joined the Saddleback Valley Unified School District. The school now has 114 students, from first to sixth grade, most of whom are children of Trabuco residents, with a few bused in from Coto de Caza.

“This school is unique in California,” said its principal, Ray Leverich. “Among other things, we have an animal program that no other elementary school has. We have horses, goats, chickens, ducks and others right on the campus.

“I think this program, which makes the children responsible for the animals--they have to come in even on Thanksgiving and Christmas to feed them--accounts largely for the fact we have never had drug or alcohol or smoking or other social problems.”

On certain days, students can ride the horses around the rustic campus, passing under an 800-year-old oak tree. One day a week, children who have their own horses can ride them to school from their homes.

Plans to Replace School

Now, Leverich said, there are plans to replace the school with a new one, probably in the Rancho Santa Margarita area, possibly as early as September, 1987.

The fate of the current site is undecided.

Just across the road from the school is the Trabuco Trading Post, the canyon’s only “general merchandise” store. Its owner, Gene Taylor, 53, bearded and friendly, is philosophical about impending changes--including construction, now in progress, of a small but modern business and shopping center not far from his store.

“We just have to take it,” he says. “What effect will it all have? I don’t know and I don’t care. I can’t predict the future.”

Ruth Frisby, who has lived in the canyon for 13 years and has been secretary of the school since last April, said: “My home is up where I have a view of all those bulldozers moving around. It’s just not as peaceful as before.”