Ramona Wrestles With Question of Its Roots

Folks in Ramona know what happens when an immovable object meets an irresistible force: Traffic stops.

The stately eucalyptus trees that shade the main road into town from the south have long prevented the widening of California 67--Main Street to Ramonans.

“It’s sad, I know,” said Guy Woodward, a retired FBI agent who now tends the community’s historical museum. “Those trees were planted in 1909. Two thousand of ‘em. They stretched out along the road for about 3 miles. Now there’s only 264 of ‘em left. And some of them are going to have to go.”

Wrestled With Problem

With many shakes of their heads, Ramona’s community planners have wrestled with the problem. Does the exploding community of 24,500 want a modern shopping center or two at the expense of two dozen or so of the trees?

State and county road planners have long sought to widen the two-lane highway into Ramona from San Diego, but have been thwarted by community wrath at the thought of losing the colonnade of giant eucalyptus that hugs the roadside and advertises the inland community as a quiet, rustic retreat from freeway-oriented Southern California.

Commuters living in Ramona and nearby San Diego Country Estates, who probably are in the majority now, would like to see a wider, safer stretch of pavement ahead of them during rush-hour commuting. Businessmen, who have watched their customers play hide-and-seek among the sturdy tree trunks to reach the safety of parking lots, are of the same mind.

But now the issue has become a question of progress that affects every Ramonan. A proposed 15-acre shopping center on one side of the highway would require removal of 20 or 21 of the 80-year-old trees. Another shopping mall across the highway would mean the loss of 13 more.

Chamber of Commerce members have endorsed the project, which would bring a Big Bear supermarket, a Pay Less drugstore and other shops to Ramona. County planners and engineers from the California Department of Transportation have added their blessing, both to the Big Bear complex and a smaller K mart center across the road.

But what about Ramonans? Are they ready to make the quantum leap into the 20th Century?

‘Informational’ Meeting

That question may be answered tonight, when state Assemblyman Bill Bradley hosts an old-fashioned Town Hall meeting to thrash out the road problems of the fast-growing community.

Henry Ford, an aide to the legislator, hastens to add that Bradley does not have the answers to all of Ramona’s traffic woes. He bills the meeting as “informational”--a chance to dispel the rumors about what is and what is not going to happen in coming months, and to lay down the facts.

The trees are not on the agenda, “but I’m sure that the subject will come up,” Ford said. “We have left plenty of time for questions.”

One Ramona resident, who declined to give his name, said he considers any destruction of the row of eucalyptus “a crying shame” because it would ruin “the one thing that Ramona has to brag about.”

Another Ramonan, Tammy Romesburg, agrees. In a letter to the Ramona weekly newspaper, Romesburg called the trees “tall and stately, strong and everlasting . . . the eldest of living things.

“Whatever we choose to do today, we and our generations to follow will live with the benefits or consequences,” she warned.

But others point out that fast-growing eucalyptus trees could be planted at a distance from the two-lane highway and would grow in about five years to form another shady bower over a future four-lane road.

Developers of the commercial projects have agreed to replace each eucalyptus tree they remove with five mature ones, planting some at the shopping mart sites and others along the main street.

“They’ve been trying to get those trees out for 30 years at least,” said the resident who asked for anonymity. “If they win this time, it won’t be long before there are gaps all down the row and it will look like a smile on a Halloween jack-o’-lantern.”