Trouble in Paradise : Plan to Sell Sites for Homes, Fishing Cabins on Bucolic Owens River Tests Neighborliness

As John Arcularias drives his pickup truck through his ranch on the upper Owens River, several deer browse in a stand of Jeffrey pines.

“Well, the mountain lion must be gone, because the deer are back,” he says.

Here, at the headwaters of the Owens, deer seem to know they have nothing to fear from Man. No hunting has been allowed on the ranch in recent years. Especially in hunting season, the 1,080 acres become their sanctuary.

Even the fish are protected by regulations Arcularias imposed on his five-mile stretch of the stream in the early 1970s, when catch-and-release was only beginning. Only artificial flies and barbless hooks may be used, and all catches must be returned to the stream.

Anglers are encouraged to respect each other’s space. Seeing two fishing the same pool, a visitor says, “They must be buddies.”

Arcularias says: “They might not be buddies for long.”

Does this seem like a man who “couldn’t care less about the fishery and the wildlife habitat in the Long Valley area,” as a Woodland Hills lawyer asserts?

Does this seem like a man who would desecrate the pristine valley a long-time neighbor describes as a “spiritual retreat”?

The neighbor is Tim Alpers, who with his mother, Alice, and sister, Kathleen, runs the 210-acre Owens River Ranch next door. The only developments on either spread are several small cabins rented to fishermen, some of whom have been coming to the valley for 50 years.

Now, Arcularias proposes to sell sites for four luxury homes on 80 acres overlooking the valley, and 35 “membership” cabins on the sagebrush plateau east of the present compound, which consists of 15 cabins and a lodge. He would build a tract of 30 “second homes” on another 80-acre parcel--the one the deer like to use--plus a small lodge for up to 20 guests and perhaps a “small restaurant/pub.” Also, he might redevelop an airstrip that hasn’t been used for years.

Arcularias says the plan would be similar to that existing on the next property downstream, the 1,240-acre Inaja Land Co., a private partnership whose 25 members have built 12 dwellings for their use. That is what causes concern.

Currently, only Arcularias’ paying guests are allowed to fish, but the proposed plan would be even more exclusive. Fishing privileges would be given only to members with cabins, and not to the homeowners. The 15 existing rental cabins, which can accommodate up to 75 guests, would be phased into the membership plan.

That, anglers say, would shut out the usual paying guests and divert an estimated 7,000 angler days per year to the nearby public Hot Creek, which couldn’t stand that much pressure.

Although it might boost the demand for Alpers’ nine rental cabins, he said, “The idea of having a 30-home subdivision down there . . . (In) the worst-case scenario, you’d have people in there raising families, and they’d be commuting over to Mammoth. People with dirt bikes. School buses. (It) could really change the character of this valley.”

Because of such objections, Arcularias is reconsidering the 30-home tract. And because of the outcry from fishermen, such as the local Mammoth Fly Rodders, who fear they will lose access to the stream, Arcularias also might allow guests of the new lodge to fish.

Said Arcularias: “You know one of the things that really got us started on this thing? Last year, somebody made us an offer--I won’t say how much--just for himself and his cronies. His retreat. We realized right then it was worth too much money to try to hold onto it as it was.

“Then we said: ‘But dang, we got a lot of people fishing . . . 1,800 on the register.’ We’d like to give the people some opportunity to have it rather than just turn it over to some individual and just flat boot everybody out of here.”

Arcularias’ grandfather bought their ranch in 1919. The Alpers have been their ranch’s only owners since Tim’s grandfather bought it from the son of the original homesteader, Andrew Thompson, in 1905. A small log cabin on the property was built in 1860. The lodge, with its slumping, propped-up roof, is a museum of frontier family artifacts, including the wedding photo of Tim’s grandparents from 1895.

But while Arcularias and Alpers are both third-generation owners, there the similarity ends, says Alpers’ mother, Alice, 78.

Arcularias, she points out, doesn’t live on his ranch, but commutes from Bishop, more than 50 miles south--and she adds: “He doesn’t fish, and his father doesn’t fish.”

Arcularias’ father, Howard, lives in a comfortable cabin on the ranch, but only in the warmer months. He, too, lives in Bishop during the winter. Tim Alpers doesn’t live on his ranch, either, but has a rural home near Lee Vining, 20 miles north.

“It’s just a different attitude,” Alice Alpers says. “I’ve known his father since he was 16, but they grew up in Bishop and don’t have the same feel for the land. My kids grew up here. They love the land.”

Arcularias says he is not insensitive to such things.

“If this were public property, there wouldn’t be anybody fighting over it because it would be worth about 14 cents,” he says. “It’d be fished out.

“We did a thumbnail environmental impact study. We took into consideration where the deer migrate, like that whole hillside on the other side. Super view. We’re not putting a single thing on it, because there’s deer hang up over there.”

Arcularias’ planner, Frank Haselton of Anaheim, says they will cut down no trees and allow only low-profile structures, with minimal visual impact.

The average fly-fisherman would give his left arm to spend his summers where Howard Arcularias does, with a premier stream virtually to himself. Along with Hot Creek a few miles south, this is the best fly-fishing in the Eastern Sierra.

A primer Arcularias gives guests says: “These are not ‘dumb’ hatchery trout,” but all naturally spawned fish. But it’s true--he and his father don’t fish.

“I really don’t,” Howard says. “When I was, I kid I never cared much for fishing.”

Howard’s father had three other children--Frank, Genevieve and John. Genevieve and her husband, Newell Clement, managed the fishing resort for 40 years until selling her one-third share to the others in 1976. Then Howard and Frank split, the latter taking some family property farther south and leaving Howard and John to manage the ranch.

“I guess they’d been partners too long,” John says.

Behind the desk in the lodge, there still is a skin mount of a 15-pound, 31 1/4-inch trout caught by Frank on Sept. 24, 1940. Bob Mueller of the Wilderness Fly Fishers recalled fishing there in 1948.

“Fibber McGee and Molly were staying in the next cabin,” he says.

After selling out, the Clements moved to Bishop, where they agonize over their nephew’s plan.

“We don’t have anything to do with it anymore, but we certainly don’t like it,” Newell Clement says.

Eight members of the family also owned 350 acres of the undeveloped Old Mammoth area on the outskirts of Mammoth Lakes until selling it in 1978 to Dempsey Construction Co., which built the Snowcreek development and a golf course. The first nine holes will open this weekend.

“The other side was open meadows,” Alice Alpers said. “Now, there’s 247 condos.”

Tim Alpers, who was a Mono County supervisor for 5 1/2 years, says: “They have a track record of selling off land to developers. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to John trying to get him scaled down a little bit.”

Steven Burton, a Woodland Hills lawyer who fly-fishes, has been trying to stir opposition to the plan, warning of “grave consequences” in a letter to the Mono County Planning Department.

Planning director Scott Burns has ordered an environmental impact report. “The project has the potential to degrade the quality of the local environment,” he said.

These aren’t the Hatfields and the McCoys. Alpers, 43, and Arcularias, 48, still speak. On a warm summer afternoon, they are found, with planner Haselton, sitting in the shade of the aspens in front of Alpers’ lodge. They seem amicable.

After Arcularias leaves, Alpers says: “John and I have been friends for a long, long time. I don’t want to take any of his property rights away, but this is too beautiful an area to let it go willy-nilly. I just hope he comes to his senses.”