Boosters See Boom Times for Antelope Valley Area

Since man first pierced the sound barrier in 1947, sonic booms have rolled across the Antelope Valley almost as often as the wind-driven tumbleweeds.

Now a boom of a different sort is thundering across the high desert valley. Fueled by a boosted defense budget and long-haul commuters looking for affordable housing, the region is rapidly becoming the Los Angeles area’s newest bedroom community.

Once home mostly to prospectors and rattlesnakes, the Antelope Valley, including the vast Edwards Air Force Base, has been the cradle of the nation’s aerospace industry since the closing days of World War II.

Every jet-propelled advance--from the Bell X-1, in which test pilot Chuck Yeager bested the speed of sound in 1947, to the space shuttle--rocketed to fame over the valley. A visitor today can look up and see sausage-shaped and knife-edged profiles of prototype aircraft swooping and soaring in the clear desert sky.

‘Aerospace Valley’

Dubbed “Aerospace Valley” by the locals, these 2,500 square miles of Joshua trees and sagebrush sit on the edge of the Mojave Desert about 60 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

The current housing surge is chiefly affecting the valley’s two largest communities--Lancaster, with a population of 60,000, and Palmdale, population 23,000.

The kind of single-family, detached homes that cost $135,000 and more in the crowded Los Angeles suburbs sell for about $50,000 less in the Antelope Valley.

Many new arrivals are “road runners,” commuters who drive 50 miles or more to jobs “down below” in the Los Angeles Basin, said James Gilley, Lancaster’s city manager.

“The commute is not that bad in today’s real world . . . if you drive at a normal speed of about 100 m.p.h.,” joked Phillip E. Maher, manager of the local telephone office.

Maher used to make the 90-minute drive over the San Gabriel Mountains from the Los Angeles area until he settled in the valley six years ago.

“There’s a tidal wave of new residents coming from over the hill,” he said. “I don’t think it will let up even after the Reagan Administration.”

Economy Booming

The President’s push to rearm the military has strengthened the airplane business, which in turn has been good for the Antelope Valley’s economy.

Most of the big aerospace companies have plants in the valley. Gilley expects that they will eventually move their headquarters there too, much the way that computer firms congregated in the Silicon Valley south of San Francisco.

At the Rockwell International complex in Palmdale, 6,000 people are assembling four B-1B strategic bombers every month, with price tags of $282 million each. The $100-million operation is part of Air Force Plant 42, where Northrop and Lockheed also maintain assembly and testing facilities.

The optimism of a California real estate boom enhances the patriotic spirit associated with building military planes for America, said Mel Baker, executive director of the Antelope Valley Board of Trade.

“World events are the reason that Aerospace Valley happened,” Baker said. “First, Edwards Air Force Base was a bombing range during World War II. Then it was needed for test flights. Now (because of the aerospace industry), the valley helps shape world events.”

Sleepy Desert Town

Lancaster Mayor Lynn Harrison is proud of the role the aerospace business has played in building the valley. She remembers 30 years back to when it was a sleepy desert town of 3,500 people.

“We have a history and we have a future,” she said. “We’ve had every airplane developed here from the most top-secret spy planes to the finest commercial airliners. Aerospace is woven into the fabric of daily life.”

Because of the area’s proximity to the congested Los Angeles Basin, she said the valley offers more than unlimited skies for test pilots.

“Aerospace is going to be an important element of the valley’s economy, but things are going to grow up around it,” she said. “In the past, our growth has followed the vagaries of the aerospace industry, but I think that period is over.”

The valley has freeway access to Los Angeles and gets water from the California Aqueduct, she said. It has charms other than the howling winds that blow tumbleweeds across hundreds of miles of empty space. The winds, which new arrivals find disturbing, keep the air clean, she said.

“People call it big sky country here,” she said. “We have clean air and we have four seasons. We even have snow.”

Attractive Housing Costs

The biggest attraction, she acknowledged, is the price of homes.

“People in the San Fernando Valley and in the rest of the metropolitan Los Angeles area have been squeezed out of owning a home,” she said. “People are willing to make the commute here to own a home.”

Cyclical cutbacks in aerospace have caused earlier booms to go bust in the valley. But the determination of desert dwellers to build habitable cities kept the area from dying in the down cycles.

“We made 22 trips to Washington with (trade) delegations,” said Clifford Rawson, 81, who acted as ambassador for the valley. “If you turned your back, some group from Georgia or someplace would get in there with some project of their own.”

When 4,000 new houses were sitting empty for lack of buyers, Rawson and his supporters convinced the Federal Aviation Administration that Palmdale was the perfect place to put a regional air traffic control center that brought 800 jobs with it.

“We used our contacts with our senators and congressmen to build contacts in the Defense Department,” he said. “Then, we passed bonds for sanitation districts and for schools.”

Pushed for Freeway

The boosters also angled for the Antelope Valley Freeway that carries commuters over the San Gabriel Mountains.

One development prospect hovering like a mirage on the desert is the proposed Palmdale International Airport to ease congestion at Los Angeles International Airport, 70 miles away. Civic boosters have pressed their case for 17 years.

The Los Angeles Department of Airports owns land near Plant 42, but the Air Force opposes an airport for security reasons and because civil aviation could hamper the wide-open conditions that make the high desert ideal for flight testing.

But regardless of whether the airport is built, planners, politicians and area residents see growth and prosperity blooming on the desert floor.

“There’s going to be a linear city, from the San Fernando Valley out to the Mojave Desert,” Baker said.

“This is still part of the pioneering migration of the 1800s. We’re just filling in back from the coast. The desert is a hostile environment, but man accommodates himself to hostile environments.

“That’s why we’ve got air conditioning.”