Breaking Camp : Plans for Change in Temescal Canyon Rock ‘Cradle of the Palisades’

In July, 1922, the oak trees of Temescal Canyon shaded the first of the yearly Chautauquas sponsored by the Methodist founders of Pacific Palisades. The two-week gathering, based on a lecture movement that originated in Chautauqua, N.Y., mixed religious exhortation, educational seminars and cultural performances.

In a campground spread over more than 200 acres, the participants moved from activity to activity: gospel singing and hymnology, a lecture on Latin American affairs, a concert by the great contralto, Madame Schumann-Heinck.

The last Chautauqua was in 1933. And ever since, the fate of Temescal Canyon has been a source of controversy in the Palisades, where various civic groups have fought to preserve as much of the Chautauqua flavor as possible.

“After all, that canyon is the cradle of the Palisades,” said Ronald Dean, president of the Pacific Palisades Residents Assn., which represents 1,700 families.

Drawing Fire

Now the owners of more than 160 still-rustic acres above Sunset are planning to make changes. Some of those proposals are drawing criticism.

The Presbyterian Synod of Southern California and Hawaii, which represents 285 churches, is seeking city and state permission to expand the capacity of its conference center from 135 to 500 overnight guests. The synod wants to tear down some of its oldest buildings, dating back to the Chautauqua days, and build new structures, as well as adding hookups for recreational vehicles. The development would be concentrated on 15 of its 147.6 acres.

The Palisades-Malibu YMCA is negotiating to buy three acres from the synod for a new facility to replace its cramped headquarters in the Palisades village center.

A third project, development of a 20-acre park by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, has not generated vocal opposition. But some community leaders believe the park may not be able to serve its intended purpose as a gateway from the urban environment to the wilds of the Santa Monica Mountains if the Presbyterians and the YMCA proceed with their plans.

Hikers who begin on the conservancy’s trail would still have to cross the Presbyterian property to reach trails in Topanga or Will Rogers state parks, which link up with a vast Santa Monica Mountains network of walkways.

‘Much Too Large’

The conservancy and the 450-member Temescal Canyon Assn., which includes neighbors and hikers, have expressed concern that the proposed construction would lessen the natural atmosphere along the trail. “We feel it’s much too large,” said Philip Leacock, president of the canyon association.

Despite the synod’s assurances that the public would continue to have access to two marked trails on the conference grounds, there is fear that outsiders may someday be cut off.

Below Sunset, the canyon already has irrevocably changed. Community groups lobbied the city throughout the 1930s and 1940s to buy and preserve the lower 80 acres, but their efforts were in vain. The property was sold by one movie director to another for use as a private residence.

Today, Temescal Canyon Road cuts a wide asphalt swath from Pacific Coast Highway to Sunset, bordered by a city park with picnic tables on green lawns that gives way to homes, a theater under construction and Palisades High School, which opened in 1961.

“That was the exquisite part of the property,” said Thomas R. Young, curator of the Pacific Palisades Historical Society.

Flanked by Trees

But above Sunset, there is still a trail and it is still flanked by oaks, sycamores and willows. The mountains conservancy expects to finish its park, with additional short trails, parking spaces and restrooms, in 1987, according to Executive Director Joseph T. Edmiston.

The conservancy trails will connect with the main trail, which begins as an asphalt path near the Palisades’ first permanent structures, a meat

market and grocery store that now serve as the Presbyterian conference center’s office and cafeteria. The trail runs past stretches of lawn and small stucco Chautauqua cabins with Spanish tile roofs that are grouped among the trees.

Throngs of outsiders pass through on their way to Topanga and Will Rogers. Each month, between 500 and 1,000 hikers sign the campground register to gain entry to the Presbyterian property, synod consultant Ann Krueger said.

Neighbors have won battles to keep out a junior high or alternative school, and even a miniature golf course, in the days when the Los Angeles Unified School District owned the land now destined for the conservancy park. They watched the threat of a housing tract fade away five years ago when a developer backed out of a deal to buy part of the synod’s land.

Compared with those possibilities, synod officials believed their decision to keep most of the property open and continue using it as a conference center would be accepted easily by the neighbors.

“We have been surprised at some of the criticisms,” said Dr. Ray Heer, the synod’s associate executive for conference programs and management.

Purchase Applauded

After all, the synod’s original purchase of 77 acres in 1942 was hailed by an editorial in a local newspaper, the Palisadian. The editorial expressed relief that the northern portion of the Chautauqua grounds would not be developed as private residences or “in a commercial way that would be harmful to the moral and physical values established here in the past two decades.”

For years, as the synod added adjacent property to its holdings, the Chautauqua structures and nearby open space were preserved. “These are not evil people,” said Young. “They have tried in the past. They have kept the flame on this property.”

But in the early 1960s, city inspectors ordered the synod to raze many of the original buildings. Until then, about 1,000 people could occupy the small cabins and tent frames that dotted the canyon.

In 1981, during a period of transition for the synod, the church organization closed its conference center and flirted with sale of the campground to a developer who could have built 21 homes under existing zoning.

But the arrangement fell through. Attempts to sell two other synod campgrounds also failed.

After restudying its needs, the synod decided to keep all four of its campgrounds. (The others are in Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead and north of Santa Barbara near President Reagan’s ranch).

Multipurpose Center

The Palisades site, which would eventually hold more than twice as many guests as any of the others, would be “the central multipurpose center,” Dr. Heer said, “because of the location, the convenience and the setting, and because of the history” as a religious campground.

The center has been nearly full on weekends and has been heavily occupied the last two summers, Heer said. Church groups and other nonprofit organizations, such as Boy Scouts, community chorale groups and the Red Cross have booked the campground.

To increase capacity to 500 guests, along with 10 to 15 staff members, the synod wants to spend about $5 million to remove 19 of the Chautauqua-era buildings, keep six structures and build eight new ones: two-story guest lodges, a dining and assembly hall, staff housing, a visitors center and a maintenance headquarters. The project is expected to take about 10 years to complete.

The synod wants to straighten a stream running through the campground and place all of its buildings on the east side of the water. The public hiking trail would run along the west bank, ensuring the privacy of groups that have booked the conference center.

For hikers, who will walk along the undeveloped side of the stream, “I would think that’s going to be more lovely” than the path that now runs through the middle of the cabin groupings, Krueger said.

The cabins slated for demolition “are very old buildings and they take a great deal of care to keep them going,” Krueger said.

Private Areas

The new lodges will be terraced to fit into hillsides and will be built around patios and courtyards to create private areas for reflection and to break up the mass of the buildings.

The synod also wants to establish a 21-space recreational vehicle park. Now there are four hookups for RVs scattered around the grounds, Krueger said.

Originally, the RV park was to be placed in an oak grove far into the canyon. But because the civic groups protested that the sensitive oaks could be damaged and that traffic should not be allowed so deep into the property, the synod has decided to leave the oak grove the way it is, Krueger said.

However, the synod will find a space for the RVs elsewhere on the campground, she added. “Many people travel as a family to conferences in their RVs,” Krueger said. “They pay less that way. A significant number of church programs are centered around the vehicles. We have one group called the Mariners, a husband-and-wife group, that has been a very sustaining group for this site and for the Presbyterian church.”

Considering Request

As for concerns about outsiders’ rights to use the Presbyterian trails, Krueger said the synod is considering a request by several community groups that the path be permanently designated a public walkway. “That’s something that will be looked at,” she said. But, she added, the synod would be reluctant to give up control of the trail unless it could also be relieved of responsibility for maintenance and safety of the path.

Community reaction also has prompted the synod to offer to let the historical society move one of the cabins to be razed, and to consider sparing the old meat market and grocery.

The YMCA executive director, Dee Bright, said her organization’s plans also are subject to change. “We would only build something there if we had a community that wanted it built,” she said.

But “we are bursting at the seams” in the current quarters, a converted theater, Bright said. “I think we could offer more programs by having a newer facility with a better floor plan.”

In the canyon, she said, “we would want to develop a facility that looked good and was not an eyesore, maybe with a subterranean gym and archeological displays in the lobby.”

Problems Unsolved

Still, most of the problems with both projects remain unsolved, critics say.

“What they don’t understand is if you straighten the stream and you tear out the structures and you put the new buildings to one side, it’s just not going to be the same,” said Young, of the historical society. “We want to keep the feel of those Chautauquas. The idea was small buildings in the forest. It has to be a continuation of that architectural style.”

At least six of the old Chautauqua grounds, from Ohio to Michigan to Maryland, have been recognized and preserved as historic sites, said Alfreda L. Irwin, historian for the Chautauqua Institution at the original location in New York.

Chautauquas were held at about 250 sites around the country at one time, Irwin said, “but they were of varying degrees and sizes.” The Palisades Chautauqua “really was a major one,” she added.