Isolation Is the Beauty of It All on Mount Laguna

The gas station is closed.

The Air Force base is closed.

And they say the post office would close if it weren’t for Roland Robinson and his mail-order harp-making parts business, which keeps postal workers behind a counter on Mount Laguna year-round.

The postal people turn over to Robinson letters from India, Paraguay, Ireland and any other country where folk harpists clamor for spare parts. One of the workers Robinson keeps happy is his wife, Phyllis.

“Our business more than pays my part-time salary at the post office,” she said, explaining how one hand often feeds another in a small town--even if both hands are your own.

Up the road from the post office is the Mount Laguna Observatory, operated by San Diego State University. Burt Nelson, who oversees the observatory and teaches at SDSU, lives on Mount Laguna with his wife, four horses, a donkey and six dogs.

The observatory packs four telescopes, the largest having a 40-inch mirror. Part of the work is carried out by visiting scientists, who stargaze all night, mostly in the summer, then sleep in windowless rooms until it’s dark again.

“Some of the men never get used to not having windows,” Nelson said, “so when we add a second floor onto the sleeping quarters, we plan to put windows in, just to give them a choice.” Albeit a Spartan choice.

Choices are limited in small towns, and Mount Laguna is no exception. A local resident once wanted a few beers and a little night music. He wandered into a local tavern--he had two to choose from--and ordered beer after beer, while the jukebox played on. Suddenly, it stopped. He couldn’t get it going again.

Not used to the peregrinations of modern technology, he went home, fetched a shotgun and blew the poor thing to hillbilly heaven. The only one who didn’t laugh was the bar owner, who wasted no time in having his best customer locked up for a long night of drying out and ruminating on sin.

Estimates vary, but the population of Mount Laguna is maybe 50 full-time residents. The town, nestled at the top of a gently sloping mountain range (elevation: 6,100 feet), in the middle of the Cleveland National Forest, is 60 miles northeast of San Diego.

It might as well be a million--it is that different from San Diego and its one balmy season. Mount Laguna looks more like Oregon, Washington or the High Sierra. It has four seasons and snow in the winter, and that’s just part of its charm.

Local residents sometimes worry that it’s too charming. As San Diego and Southern California continue to boom, areas such as Idyllwild, Julian and Mount Laguna blossom in popularity as weekend getaways and recreational enclaves. So you moved to San Diego from Buffalo, and you want to see snow?

Sooner or later you’ll find yourself on Mount Laguna.

Vilaxy Thirakul came to San Diego from Laos six years ago. At 28, he works in a silkscreen shop, making T-shirts on a giant press. He comes to Mount Laguna for snow--for a wintry escape.

“Every year I come to visit here,” he said. “I can’t stay away. I’m like a swallow returning to Capistrano.”

Gloria Sanchez, 41, comes for the same reason. On a recent Sunday, she and her husband, Homer Sanchez, 45, and daughters Antonia, 15, and Patricia, 22, hiked and hurled snowballs. The Sanchezes live in San Ysidro, where snow is a fantasy.

“What I most like about San Diego is the ocean being just minutes from our house--and snow just an hour away,” Patricia Sanchez said. “Where else in the country can you go for that kind of variety?”

Carolee Galadora applauds the need for variety, but she lives on Mount Laguna--and can’t stop talking about it. Superlatives are her favorite weapons.

“It’s wonderful, so breathtaking,” she said. “You can hear the winds. It’s so peaceful, and people are so friendly. There’s nothing I don’t like.”

Galadora, who’s “over 21 but not a senior,” lived in Washington, near the Canadian border, before moving to San Diego. She couldn’t stand city life, even in mellow San Diego. So she moved to Mount Laguna.

“It’s so intimate, so romantic, so wonderful here,” she said, between shifts as a waitress at Armando’s Rancho Grande, one of the two restaurants in town. “People are so wonderful. I haven’t met anyone I don’t like.”

Galadora stopped and chatted at each table in the restaurant. A bellowing fire kept the dining room warm. The look of cedar and firelight, coupled with patches of snow on the ground outside, lent a ski lodge atmosphere. She smiled and spoke softly of the evils of urban life.

“The minute you go down the hill,” she said, “you see smog and dirt. The water in San Diego is terrible, some of the worst I’ve tasted. Here it’s from deep wells, and it’s good. I kind of get nervous talking about how great it is. We want it to stay small--to stay pristine. And we’re sometimes afraid that maybe . . . it will change.”

Bea Flores, 47, owns Armando’s and is Galadora’s employer. She has the kind of Miss Kitty charm and proprietary benevolence--”Oh, really, tell me about it”--that makes Armando’s appear like an Old West saloon.

Flores has been here nine years. She works in El Cajon a couple of days a week as a hairdresser. It’s an odd transition, hearing the woes of suburban ennui, then returning to the sound of the wind. Her stops in El Cajon, for more income and to see her daughters, make her determined to stay camped on Mount Laguna.

The only bad times (though they’re good for the restaurant) are when “snow bunnies” come from San Diego for the weekend.

“It’s a different class of people in the snow,” she said. “They’re all in a hurry, and they want their food fast. They get real irritated with the waitresses.”

Flores can’t understand the snow bunnies. She can’t fathom why they’re ga-ga over snow but won’t drive up, in nearly the same droves, for “stunning” fall color--the county’s only consistent hues of Wisconsin-like red, gold and orange.

Burt Nelson, 64, is from Wisconsin. He moved to the county in 1957, to Mount Laguna in 1978. He’s director of the Mount Laguna Observatory and a professor of astronomy at SDSU. He commutes to San Diego three times a week.

The observatory was opened in 1965. Three of the telescopes are for research. The fourth is for visitors. Five thousand came to Mount Laguna early last year to catch a glimpse of Halley’s comet. A few included elderly stargazers, hobbling on crutches and canes. Some had seen Halley’s on its previous passage, shortly after the turn of the century.

Nelson, a thin, graying man with a reedy voice and the patient manner of a good professor, was concerned. Never had he seen so many potential accident victims groping in the darkness. Never had he seen would-be astronomers so closely resemble rock fans clamoring for a glimpse of the Rolling Stones. A few walked away without seeing even a rolling comet.

But it was exciting.

Never had so many crowded Nelson’s hillside, which is quite special. The view of spruce, pine and cedar and rolling meadow below conjures up images of the Austrian Alps. All that’s missing is the Von Trapp family and a few Sounds of Music.

Nelson said Mount Laguna is one of the best spots for star-viewing in the continental United States. He says its non-turbulent, dust-free air--a product of its proximity to the ocean--brings the most clear nights of any observatory in the nation. And on a clear day, you can see Point Loma.

A problem surfaced a few years ago when light from surrounding municipalities began clouding the view from the telescopes. Nelson and his colleagues appealed--successfully--to the San Diego City Council, as well as other civic bodies, for low-sodium street lights. He says they’re cheaper and just as effective, and because of their low yellow tint, don’t hamper the view that astronomers crave.

Nelson routinely spots Venus, Mercury, Jupiter and Mars. The biggest “show-stopper” is, of course, Saturn, with its colored rings.

But Saturn is just one attraction bringing visitors to Mount Laguna.

Tourists are often surprised that Mount Laguna is more accessible (from San Diego) than Idyllwild or even Julian. You can make it from Horton Plaza in a little more than an hour. It’s closer to Interstate 8 than the Cuyamacas or Julian, which are reached via slow-moving, meandering roads, often beset with city-like traffic (although the apple pie is better in Julian).

Only a few cars are allowed on Mount Laguna; the limit is tightly regulated by the California Highway Patrol. Once parking runs out--and it happens fast--the gates to Sunrise Highway (County S1), the only road linking Mount Laguna to the outside world, are closed. Even before that happens, conditions often mean chains on tires and slippery driving on ice and snow.

Limits are just part of what keeps Mount Laguna from emerging as “another Julian,” a phrase spoken with rancor all along Sunrise Highway.

Roland Robinson said Julian is “like New York City, compared to this little heaven.” Because Julian has room to grow and hasn’t sought to prevent it, it is, in Robinson’s view, losing a sensitive ambiance. He’s hopeful that Mount Laguna is immune from such effect, citing as reasons the protection of a national forest and traffic dutifully regulated by the Highway Patrol.

Robinson, 68, is a former field representative for the Agency of International Development, an arm of the U.S. State Department. His background includes state and local government, the Navy, aviation and, of course, harp-making. These days, he limits himself to selling--mainly by mail--plans, strings and hardware, as well as books, records and cassettes by harpists. It may be the biggest business in the history of Mount Laguna.

He and his wife relish the isolation and quiet of mountain life, and the sense of detachment that a mail-order enterprise affords.

“The social life isn’t much,” Phyllis Robinson said. “The volunteer fire department has a pot-luck supper every once in a while. The Blue Jay (the other restaurant in town) used to have a country and Western band on Saturday nights, but not anymore. The younger crowd goes to Pine Valley . . . and, well, that’s it .”

Clay Stuart knows more about Mount Laguna than anybody. Everyone else says so. Now 73, he lives in El Cajon but did live on Mount Laguna for 50 years. He keeps a second home here, and visits it often.

He and his wife moved to the mountain in 1936 as two of the very first residents. They were homesteaders. At one time or another, the Stuarts started or owned most of the businesses on Mount Laguna, including the main restaurant (now Armando’s Rancho Grande). He is also the former postmaster, a title his wife also held.

Stuart explained that Mount Laguna came into existence as a settlement near the end of World War I. Before that, it belonged to Indians or was used by cattle drivers as a stopping point.

“For a long time, it was heaven to folks from the Imperial Valley, who wanted to escape the heat,” he said. “Then air conditioning came in the 1930s and 1940s, and everything changed.”

After World War II, Mount Laguna was “discovered by coastal people,” Stuart said, with snow the chief drawing card. During that era, about 175 “land-leased” cabins were made available--many are still in existence--to serve as second homes for San Diegans and others yearning for a winter hideaway. You can still acquire such a cabin for less than $50,000, Stuart said, but you can’t own the land.

Most of that remains the province of the Cleveland National Forest, dedicated by President Grover Cleveland before the turn of the century. A few “islands” of private property exist, Stuart said, those being the old homestead plots. The cost of those is, of course, much higher. And the wish to keep Mount Laguna pretty much as is seems even greater among these people.

Not many on Mount Laguna are sad that the Air Force left, though they do miss the families and the children, and the fact that neither a full-time school nor full-time church remains. Pine Valley serves those needs.

The Air Force had set up a defense early warning (DEW) base, with a peak load of 300 people. It lasted from the 1950s to the early 1970s, and was replaced by newer, more sophisticated technology. The equipment that remains is used by the Federal Aviation Administration.

But the people are gone, and the future of the base is uncertain. Plans to make it a resort were defeated. When someone talked of making it a prison, the howling didn’t die for months.

So Mount Laguna is left with a small band of local residents--good people. From time to time, they graciously entertain “snow bunnies” and stargazers or anybody just looking for a Sunday drive. The rest of the time, they go to their jobs and keep to themselves.

They harbor some fear of change but, for the most part, feel protected.

“The beauty of this area, unlike so much of the United States,” Stuart said, “is that it can’t grow, can’t change. So it should remain as is. And ‘as is’ is how we like it.”