Small Town Is Worth the Commute : Julian: Residents fleeing San Diego’s exhorbitant housing prices and congestion are turning this weekend getaway 60 miles from the city into a booming housing market.

You won’t find a movie theater or shopping mall in Julian. But with its famous apple pies, cool, quiet nights and small-town spirit, this mountain village roughly 60 miles northeast of downtown San Diego has become a hot real estate market.

Julian has long been a favorite weekend getaway for Southern Californians, but the new boom is due in part to a relatively new phenomenon. As a result of San Diego’s traffic, smog and exorbitant home prices, more and more San Diegans are buying homes in Julian and living there full time. Some commute an hour or more to work in the city.

The commuters seem to find the scenic country drive a small price to pay for a small-town, family-oriented lifestyle.

“The people are wonderful. You say ‘Hi,’ they say ‘Hi’ back,” said Kirby Winn, who lives in Julian and commutes to his San Diego barbershop three days a week. “The air is so fresh and clean and sweet, it’s like being on a camping trip all the time.”

Winn works four days a week as a realtor in Julian. Earlier this year, he and his wife, Barbara, sold their 3,500-square-foot home on a half-acre in Hillcrest, not far from downtown San Diego, for $268,000. They bought a $352,000 shangri-la in Julian. Although only half the size of their old house, it came with 28 acres, a pond and a tennis court.

Dan and Robin Ervin and their two teen-agers made the move four years ago, giving up their rented house in Mira Mesa in San Diego to buy a place in Julian. Every day, Dan commutes to El Cajon, east of San Diego, where he services heavy equipment.

“It’s an hour one way. Is it worth it? Sure,” he said. “You have to experience it. I go through Ramona, and the drive is unreal in the morning. I’ve seen deer, even mountain lions. In winter, you drive down and snow is everywhere. You can’t even hear your car.

“It’s a nice country life. It’s a better place to raise kids. There are some drug problems, but nothing like San Diego. We looked at custom homes in San Diego, and, at that time, it was $150,000 and $160,000 for what we wanted.” The Ervins’ custom home in Julian--four bedrooms on a quarter-acre--was $97,000.

Their 16-year-old daughter, Shawna, misses the malls of the big city, but 18-year-old Dan Jr., loves the back-country roads he and his friends travel on motorcycles.

This new crop of buyers has helped drive up property values.

“We had the highest (price) increases in the county last year, higher than even Rancho Santa Fe or La Jolla. Prices went up more than 48%,” said Andy Demers, president of the Julian Realty office where Winn works.

“Prices have doubled in the last three or four years,” Winn added. “When I first came up here, eight-acre parcels were $85,000 to $90,000. Now they’re $139,000 to $160,000. Little cabins were $79,000 and $89,000, now they’re $130,000 to $150,000.”

Half-acre lots range from $32,000 to $55,000. Homes are priced from $100,000 to $1 million. Even the least expensive comes with a quarter-acre, more land than you get with most city homes these days.

There are many reasons to love Julian.

The weather is mild--just over 30 inches of precipitation each year, including a few white winter mornings that almost always melt away by noon. At 4,235 feet, the town gets a little colder at night than sea-level San Diego, but the weather is still mild.

And even though the real estate market is jumping, Julian’s population has been about the same for years, according to Billie Rasmussen, head of the Julian Chamber of Commerce for 34 years. Julian proper has a population of about 500, and there are 2,000 more people dispersed among such surrounding communities as Pine Hills, Wynola, Kentwood in the Pines and a newer subdivision called Whispering Pines.

Pine Hills is known to locals as the Beverly Hills of the area, both because of its prices and because it’s where old line San Diego families have owned funky-but-chic cabins amid the big-coned Coulter pines for years.

Despite the constant influx of newcomers and tons of national publicity each year generated by travel writers who fall in love with the place, Julian’s lifestyle hasn’t changed much more than its population. Most old-timers don’t seem to mind the newcomers at all.

“During all the years I’ve been here, until recently when we put up a few new buildings on Main Street, I could count the new buildings in town on one hand,” Rasmussen said. “You drive out through the mountains and you see a new home going up here and there. As far as growing, I don’t think it ever will that much.”

“Certainly, the town has grown some, but the lifestyle hasn’t changed that much,” said Herb Scholnick, owner of Julian Drug, a downtown institution with its old-time soda fountain. “It’s not much different from the way it was five years ago.”

The Julian Community Planning Group carries its slow-growth message to the County of San Diego, which oversees planning and zoning matters in Julian, Rasmussen said. There is no such thing as tract housing in Julian, though there are a few custom-home subdivisions.

Main Street is the focus of Julian’s downtown. Julian Hardware & Mercantile is the kind of place where your dad or granddad went on Saturday mornings to pick up a pipe fitting or a light switch or a crescent wrench or a flannel shirt.

Despite its name, Julian Lumber, a few doors down, is known not for wood products but for its big selection of wide-bellied wood-burning stoves, as essential to the Julian life as apple pie.

Across the street, the Julian Cafe, with its wood-burning stove, apple-and-leaves stenciling on the walls and wood wainscoting and floors, is where locals order coffee, breakfast or a slice of pie to go with their chitchat.

Schools in Julian are small but generally well-respected, even though Julian High School students with collegiate ambitions have to go to a community college to pick up the some of the advanced courses they need.

Julian High students placed in the top 30% statewide in reading, writing and math in this year’s California Assessment Program testing of its 41 seniors. All told, the school educates 224 students in grades 9 through 12.

The United State Department of Education gave Julian Elementary School one of its National School Recognition awards this year for high test scores and an excellent learning environment.

Although apples are now the best-known local product, Julian was original settled as a mining town.

Julian boomed after gold was discovered in 1870 near the present site of the Julian Hotel. A city of tents and shacks grew as miners sought their fortunes.

Around the turn of the century, the rich veins of gold began petering out.

“When they saw there would be no more gold, they brought in apples. The climate and soil are perfect,” Rasmussen said. “James Madison and Thomas Brady brought in the first trees around 1900, and in 1907, five boxes of Julian apples won eight gold medals at the Jamestown exposition in Virginia--it takes seven years for apple trees to produce.”

Apples are harvested in September and October, and on weekends, the town is packed with tourists buying jellies, jams, dried apples and other apple products.

“We let tourists have it on weekends, then it’s our own town during the week,” Rasmussen said.

AT A GLANCE Population 1990 estimate: 3,389 1980-90 change: 26.3% Median Age: 38.1 years

Annual Income Per capita: $17,063 Median household: $30,029 Household Distribution: Less than $15,000: 25.5% $15,000-30,000: 24.6% $30,000-50,000: 28.3% $50,000-$75,000: 18.5% $75,000 +: 3.3%