THE OUTDOORS : IT’S A CHAIN REACTION : In Cerro Gordo, Residents Feuding Over Use of a Road

This town’s name means “fat hill,” and 120 years ago it was Fat City for silver miners who shipped their diggings off to the small pueblo of Los Angeles by steamboat and 20-mule team. Now it’s the site of a major controversy.

On one side is Jody Stewart, a woman who is restoring this little ghost town as a tourist attraction.

On the other side are Robbie and Harold (Swede) Carrasco, lifelong residents of nearby Lone Pine, who say that Stewart not only is locking them out but also is keeping out hang gliders, hunters and sightseers.

And somewhere in the middle are Inyo County officials, who hope to extricate themselves gracefully and settle the matter before the cross fire becomes reminiscent of the mining days, when the bullets flew freely.

Cerro Gordo is a group of weathered tin and wooden structures at 8,500 feet in the Inyo Mountains on the east side of the lower Owens Valley. It is reached via California 136 out of Lone Pine--13 miles to Keeler, then 7 1/2 miles up a steep and narrow gravel road.

Every drop of water there must be hauled up the hill.

Since Stewart bought the town and several hundred adjacent acres four years ago, the atmosphere has become charged with animosity. Inyo County Counsel Greg James said it reminds him of “the Hatfields and the McCoys.”

But Robbie Carrasco said, “It’s not just a couple of people bickering. The whole valley is concerned over this.”

Stewart says she has received personal threats and must drive 57 miles north to Bishop to do her shopping.

Once, she said, she was confronted by a local shopkeeper who asked her, “What’s a woman like you doing on that mountain, anyway?”

Stewart said, “After I regained my composure, I told her, ‘I really wanted to do something neat for this area. This is my way of giving something back.’ ”

The natives in small towns usually are wary of newcomers, but Stewart grew up in the Owens Valley. Then known as Joanne Hardin, she graduated from Big Pine High School in 1962 as “most likely to succeed” in a class of 15.

She went to Los Angeles seeking an acting career. But when it didn’t get beyond some commercials and failed television series pilots, she went into real estate, made some good investments and returned to the valley two marriages later with more money than most of the locals would see in their lifetimes.

If Stewart is resented for her success, she doesn’t understand.

“I’m restoring a ghost town with my own money, but I have been threatened, creamed and slandered,” she said. “Those people have cost me $25,000 in legal fees.”

She calls it “the Carrasco fiasco.”

It all started in 1986, Stewart says, when the Carrascos “built a cabin on property they say is land-locked by me and started using this road which is 17 feet from my kitchen window.”

No, the Carrascos say, it started after they built their corrugated tin cabin on their 19 acres in the spring of ’86. A few months later, Stewart locked a chain between two steel posts across the Castle Rock Road leading up the hill from the ghost town to Cerro Gordo peak, which passes a side road leading to the Carrascos’ property.

The Carrascos say it is a public county road. Stewart insists it’s a private road. Her road.

Stewart cited “dust pollution” and says the Carrascos “started bringing whole parades of people through.”

The Carrascos and the former county counsel, Dennis Myers, said she couldn’t block the road because in 1956 the county had been issued an easement for the road through what is now her property.

Swede Carrasco said Stewart not only was denying him access to his property but also was denying hunters access to “the best chukar (partridge) and deer hunting in Inyo County” and hang gliders access to 9,140-foot Cerro Gordo peak.

It was formerly a popular jumping-off place but is now used only as a site for a large array of communications installations for the Air Force, cable TV companies and the county, among others.

Later in ‘86, while Stewart was vacationing in Oregon, the county got a temporary restraining order to drop the chain.

But still later in ‘86, the Inyo County Superior Court issued an interim order giving Stewart control of the road, and she installed a new, more convenient chain gate 300 feet down the road, next to her house.

Anyone with a valid reason to use the road may sign a liability waiver, she says. The county and those involved with the communications equipment have a key to one of the several padlocks that hold the chain together.

Stewart also won the latest round on Aug. 8 when the court denied the Carrascos’ petition to modify the order and move the gate up near the peak, so the case now seems headed for trial at an undetermined date.

Myers resigned last year--at least partly because of the current situation, insiders say--and the county did a U-turn on the Castle Rock Road.

James, the new county counsel, said, “The county, frankly, is not interested in opening the road to the general public.”

He cited reasons of potential vandalism to the communications equipment and county liability for an accident on the steep, one-lane dirt road, which is carved into the side of the mountain and has no guardrails.

But James also said, “The county is not in the position of denying the Carrascos the right to use the road.”

Only Stewart is, and she seems firmly dug in amid the historic old buildings and mines.

Robbie Carrasco said she hasn’t been into the cabin since last Aug. 31.

“We went in to clean, then went out to get more water and couldn’t get back in because she (Stewart) denied access unless we signed the waiver. We wouldn’t sign because the county can’t be in a private agreement with one person.”

Another road, the Morning Star, leads to the Carrasco property. It switches back sharply from the Cerro Gordo Road about 100 yards before reaching the ghost town--so sharply that no vehicle can make the turn without continuing into the town and coming back.

But it is far less precipitous than the Castle Rock Road--and runs through a corner of the Carrascos’ land. Why don’t they just use it and forget the feud?

“That road is on the north slope of the mountain,” Robbie Carrasco said. “There is ice and snow there 5 or 6 months out of the year. The Castle Rock county road is open to the sun.

“Also, we have to maintain that road ourselves. Why should we have to do that if the county has a road that is maintained?”

As for the “parades” of guests Stewart says roll past her house, Robbie Carrasco said they were hosts of an outing for the Eastern Sierra Museum Society in July, 1986, but “other than that, we never had more than 20 people.”

That same month, Stewart obtained waivers from 40 hang gliders who wanted to launch an international meet from atop Cerro Gordo peak, but she has kept it closed to them since.

Swede Carrasco says he has 25 or 30 signatures from hang gliders on a petition seeking access to Cerro Gordo peak. But most of the hang gliders now use Horseshoe Meadows on the west side of the valley.

Larry Tudor of Santa Ana, who has set several world records in the valley, said Horseshoe Meadows is more readily accessible but Cerro Gordo peak “always was a premium hang-gliding site before it got shut down.”

Stewart said: “I don’t have the time to be here every day to sign these guys in and worry about the liability.”

Rob Kells, owner of Wills Wing in Santa Ana, said, “For record flying, Horseshoe Meadows is a better launch.”

As for hunters, Mike Patterson, a Lone Pine building contractor who is helping Stewart restore the town, said that few hunt in the Cerro Gordo area anyway.

“There’s a good reason there isn’t any game south of here,” Patterson said. “There’s no water.”

Tom Lipp, a game warden now based in nearby Independence had the Cerro Gordo area until eight years ago and says that most of the meaningful hunting is to the north. Department of Fish and Game figures show that only seven deer were taken in the area last year.

“But it is a traditionally popular spot with a lot of people, mostly locals,” Lipp said.

Robbie Carrasco says there is game.

“We have oodles of chukars up there,” she said. “We have deer that come through the property.”

Stewart lives in Cerro Gordo with her uncle, Cisco Smith, two dogs, four cats and an injured chipmunk she is rehabilitating in a bird cage on her sun porch. One of the dogs, Molly, is part coyote.

The restoration is proceeding nicely, and care is being taken to preserve the 156 bullet holes, reminders of the Old West, in the floors and ceilings of the guest house.

Like Stewart, Swede and Robbie Carrasco keep busy planning their legal strategy, supported by most of their neighbors.

They are angry. All the Carrascos want is access to their cabin.

Stewart is angry.

“I’ve spent a small fortune in the restoration, which I’m not sure was so smart. It hurts. It hurts a lot. I’m really sensitive about all this nonsense.”