Isolated Living Calls for Reliance on Neighbors : Topanga Canyon: Nine-mile winding road links area of peace and privacy to outside world.

Thirty-five years ago Jack and Barbara Rice watched from their Mt. Washington home as the smog climbed farther up the hill each day. That was enough of an incentive for them to find another place to live.

They looked at Chatsworth and Tujunga, and then Barbara Rice remembered a visit to Topanga Canyon made many years before.

“It was one look and we knew this was where we wanted to be and raise our children,” recalled Jack Rice, a building and masonry contractor.

Today, as Jack Rice looks out upon the Santa Monica Mountains from the open, airy living room of his home in the Old Canyon section of Topanga, the sunlight shimmers with a pristine brightness. The original one-room structure he bought on an acre of land at the top of a steep, winding rise for $8,500 has since been remodeled many times and expanded to 1,800 square feet.

While the 10 or 12 families then living along Skyline Drive has grown to 50 or 60, it remains an area difficult to saturate because of the terrain, he said.

Like most families who are drawn to the community of almost 8,000 because of its natural setting, the Rices were soon surprised by another aspect that has become equally important.

“There is something very wonderful about going down to the market and being greeted by 30 people in five minutes,” said Barbara Rice. “People need each other in an area like Topanga. Their relationships become more meaningful.”

Located to the northwest of Santa Monica and south of Woodland Hills, Topanga Canyon is an unincorporated area of Los Angeles County. Its connection to the outside world depends upon a snaking, two-lane, nine-mile highway that starts at the Pacific Coast Highway and ends at the Ventura Freeway.

Homes scattered throughout the canyon, some barely visible, are sheltered by oaks and sycamores. The effect is a peace and privacy cherished by residents. It is the reason Topanga has long been a refuge for artists and writers, along with numerous professionals who work in the film and television industry.

Several varying neighborhoods with distinctive climates make up Topanga Canyon. Directly adjacent to the state park, the prestigious Post Office Tract with its cooler temperatures boasts expensive homes on large lots. Because of its proximity to the coast, Fernwood has similar marine layers while homes on smaller lots span a subdivision that is more congested.

In contrast, quiet, rustic Old Canyon, a region that follows the creek bed, becomes much warmer in the summer and colder in the winter; here, many homes on view lots look out on dramatic country. The heat rises in Sylvia Park and Glenview and continues north to Viewridge, Topanga’s only tract, where sidewalks and street lamps suggest the suburbs.

Prices begin at $300,000 to $360,000 for a 1930 to 1940 two-bedroom, one-bath home between 900 and 1,100 square feet, said Eric Nelson of Rainbow Real Estate. At the top of the price scale, he cited a four-bedroom ranch house on 23 acres with a guest house, a couple of barns and horse facilities that recently sold for $1.5 million. The median home price is between $450,000 and $550,000.

Cabins have been Topanga’s architectural mainstay, said Santos Flaniken of Prudential Rodeo Realty. Over the years builders and homeowners have done a lot of retrofit remodeling to upgrade these cabins into full-time residences.

Another unique feature of Topanga, he pointed out, is the range of architectural styles within a particular neighborhood, everything from Abraham Lincoln-type log cabins to high-tech and classic Victorian homes.

Building their own home made Topanga affordable for Gretchen and Nesdon Booth and their four children. Actually, they built two. Three years ago, the Booths bought eight acres of land in Sylvia Park and began construction on two 1,200-square-foot homes at a total cost of $350,000.

The French country cottage was Gretchen Booth’s idea; the high-tech look of the second one was her husband’s design.

She explained: “Rather than building one big house, we split it up--the noisy house and the quiet house. Big noisy family activities, video games and musical instruments, all that is in the noisy house. The quiet house is for quieter activities, family gatherings. It works great for us.”

From their vantage point at the end of a quiet dirt road, the family can hike easily into the state park.

Gretchen Booth, who is a special education teacher, is no less enthusiastic about the Topanga Canyon Elementary School where her daughter is in the second grade. Consistently high test scores are one measure of its excellence, she noted.

Unlike most Los Angeles city schools in recent years, Topanga’s only public school has been spared the impact of funding cutbacks. “The parents raise huge amounts of money every year for supplementary programs: Getty art programs, computer programs, library programs, language classes. These are people who are really into their kids and go out of their way to enrich their school experience,” she said.

Five years ago, Herb and Joan Petermann moved to Topanga as a way of combining the best of both worlds--country living within convenient reach of Los Angeles. At the time, Joan imagined they would find a custom home among the oak trees. However, a 2,400-square-foot tract home with a pool in the Viewridge development met their needs at a price they couldn’t pass up. They paid $200,000.

If the idea of a tract is incompatible with most Topangans’ aesthetic sensibilities--it was fought in the ‘60s--life in one hasn’t hampered the couple’s pleasure in the community. In fact, Topanga makes going to Los Angeles almost unnecessary, said Herb Petermann, a consulting engineer.

Added Joan, “You’ve got Theatricum Botanicum. It’s real interesting theater because it is outdoors--kind of a toss-up between a picnic and a play. You’ve got a great restaurant, an art gallery, a newspaper. Topanga Town Council acts like a city council. You name any group that a small town has, and Topanga has that group. It has been a wonderful aspect of living here because I’m never lonely.”

Since the early ‘50s when it was founded by the late actor Will Geer as a haven for black-listed actors, the Theatricum Botanicum has become one of Topanga’s most beloved traditions. In explaining the enduring link between the nonprofit theater and cultural center and the community, Ellen Geer, Will’s daughter and a member of the Theatricum’s board of directors said:

“Our community needed us because they supported us in ways that actor-type people don’t know how. The preschool fathers built our stage in 1984. Many organizations that need a fund-raiser use our space and either we entertain or help them find entertainers. It’s family.”

Kathryn Penny recalled most of the homes going in as weekend cabins when she and her husband, Melvin, built a small cabin in the Sylvia Park neighborhood of Topanga Canyon in 1933. This was 18 years after the county built the first road going through from the coast to the valley, a milestone in bringing increased settlement to Topanga Canyon.

In the ‘20s the growing subdivisions replaced most of the big homesteads that had formed the canyon in the latter part of the 19th Century. Still, the conveniences of modern civilization were slow in getting to this remote area.

Electricity would not arrive until 1927, and the first telephone (party) line would wait until 1944 for installation. Until 1962, residents relied on wells and problematic water systems. However, the introduction of water through the Metropolitan Water District that year allowed for the first big jump in property values.

Although Topanga Canyon’s real estate market has caught up with today’s prices, the ever-present threat from fire and flood remains a familiar fact of life. In the case of fire, its dry chaparral landscape ignited by a blaze and fanned by a strong Santa Ana wind can be an unstoppable foe.

For Jack Rice, who has lived through several canyon fires, the memory of the 1980 flood is particularly vivid. With Old Canyon closed from both sides for a week there was little to do but walk around and see what help could be given a neighbor. It was “people pulling together,” he said.

This creates a way of life that seems cut from another time. “You really have to know your neighbor,” underscored Susan Nissman, who has been a homeowner in Topanga since 1975. Herb Petermann commented: “It has many of the qualities of old California. You have a spirit here.”

For the last 13 years Topangans have tapped that spirit in their fight to block the Montevideo Partnership from developing 662 acres of Upper Topanga Canyon Watershed. Although the proposal, which originally involved one championship golf course, a heliport, a hotel and 250 homes, has been considerably modified, it still violates the Santa Monica Mountains-Malibu General Area Plan calling for minimal alteration of the terrain, said Susan Nissman, acting president of TASC (Topanga Assn. for a Scenic Community).

However, now that the Montevideo Partnership is being liquidated because of a Chapter 11 reorganization plan, the opportunity to acquire the acreage as parkland has refocused the issue. “Before, we couldn’t get on any acquisition list because there wasn’t a willing seller. But now that there is this willing seller, it reopens the door for us just as much as it does for a Japanese developer (one was interested in the golf-course proposal) or anybody that comes in,” said Nissman hopefully.

Topangans, though, are the first to admit that it is not a community meant for everyone. Artist Teri Starkweather recalled the reaction of her father shortly after she and her husband, Lee, made an offer on their 2,500-square-foot home in the north end of the canyon:

“He thought I was crazy to want to live here. His ideal home is in Encino. Everyone has one tree in their front yard and it’s well-groomed and really neat. Suburbia. What I like is looking out my bedroom window and seeing the sun set on the Santa Monica Mountains, seeing a hawk up in the sky.”

At a Glance Population

1991 estimate: 11,193

1980-91 change: +16.9%

Median age: 40.1 years

Annual income

Per capita: 32,489

Median household: 70,173

Household distribution

Less than $20,000: 10.9%

$20,000 - $40,000: 16.3%

$40,000 - $75,000: 26.4%

$75,000 - $150,000: 32.8%

$150,000 + 13.6%