Wandering the Top of the County

It begins in Surfer Heaven--a swell-blessed shoreline of Southern California legend where the waves break like clockwork year round.

It ends in the scratch and sage of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, a mere rattler’s strike from the Salton Sea.

For the 86 miles between, San Diego County’s norther border adjoins Orange and Riverside counties. It rolls from sea level to 4,000 feet and back again. On its mostly west-to-east path, it cuts a swath through 10 climatic zones, historic ranchos, a national forest, illicit pot gardens and a capricious tangle of mailing addresses, bureaucracies and area codes.

The line has changed since San Diego County, California’s first, was born in 1850. It was gargantuan, made up of present-day San Bernardino, Riverside, Imperial, San Diego and half of Inyo counties. The northern border moved steadily southwest as the state added counties, until 1907, when the creation of Imperial County finalized the boundary.

While San Diego County’s international border to the south gets attention from just about everybody--politicians, the media, artists, community activists--its counterpart to the north most often quietly goes about its business. Sometimes, problems born at the county’s southern border stretch to its northern border. A Border Patrol pursuit of suspected illegal immigrants this month ended in a tragic crash outside a Temecula high school that claimed six lives.

Two prime roadways cross the northern border--Interstates 5 and 15. A handful of smaller roads cross the county line, too, but the vast majority of the border is not accessible by car. It is home to wildlife and to homesteaders who prefer life off the beaten path.

Here, from west to east, is a look at life along The Other Border:

THE COAST

Waves, Produce and Little Christians

It’s a long walk, but hard-core surfers make it anyway. They shadow the county line, pass under a wooden railroad trestle and go down to the sea.

The Pacific is generous here. Summer and winter, it pumps long-breaking waves ridden by generations of surfers. From their bobbing perch in the ocean, they see to the north the San Clemente beach where a troubled President once walked barefooted in his business suit. To the south loom the twin spheres of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Plant. And ahead; the Santa Fe train trestle from which the spot takes its name.

The beachfront was once the domain of the Marines at Camp Pendleton, who limited access to a select few. But, thanks to the persuasions of Pat Nixon, then-First Lady and part-time San Clemente resident, portions of the shore were donated to the California Department of Parks and Recreation in 1972.

“She saw how fast the coast was being developed, and the beaches there (at Trestles and south at San Onofre) were one of the few undeveloped parcels left,” says Jody Borchardt, a ranger at the Pendleton Coast District. “People used to have to sneak in and risk arrest or citations. Now it’s open to everybody. Most people don’t realize they have Pat Nixon to thank for that.”

Tom Tenaka knows his situation is unusual. There aren’t many ranch managers who contend with tanks rolling around the perimeter of the strawberry fields, or who have had to arrange military passes for farm workers at harvest, which once coincided with wartime.

But, since he first walked on to San Clemente Ranch as a field hand in 1950, Tenaka has come to regard Camp Pendleton as a benign, if occasionally noisy landlord and neighbor. The ranch’s owners, Deardorff-Jackson Co., are among dozens of civilian lessees who farm or graze livestock on the sprawling, 196 square-mile base.

“There are a lot of little things you have to go through, like inspections and so forth, but you get used to it,” Tenaka says.

The ranch, roughly 1.5 miles square, fills the San Mateo Valley just east of Interstate 5 and south of Cristianitos Road, which parallels the county line. Depending on the crop and the time of year, the payroll runs between 125 and 400 employees.

“The climate is great, but we’re still limited in our cropping by the water situation to about 250 acres at any one time,” Tenaka says. “We have potatoes, cucumbers, strawberries, and tomatoes, but mostly the last two.”

During Operation Desert Storm, when Camp Pendleton was sealed for security reasons, getting workers through the guard gates was a full-time job for one employee, whose sole function was to arrange their passes.

But, since arriving at the ranch 42 years ago, Tenaka has come to understand the farmers’ role in this unique mix. He says he’s watched Orange County development creep steadily south, bumping up against the county line. There, palatial residences perch on million-dollar lots overlooking the ranch, the hills and the Pacific.

“I think it’s good for them we’re here,” he says of his northern neighbors. “This whole valley’s like a buffer zone between San Clemente city and the stuff going on on the base.”

It happened 223 years ago, and, were it not for a freeway exit, Los Cristianitos may have vanished from common knowledge. But the sign stands, and so their story remains.

It was July, 1769. Capt. Gaspar de Portola and his Spanish Royal Expedition were traversing what is now the northern edge of Camp Pendleton. It was a long, northward journey to settle a new land called Alta California with a string of Franciscan missions.

But the expedition came to a sudden halt when the soldiers came upon a two sick Indian babies. Father Juan Crespi, the expedition’s scribe, wrote that several of the traveling padres took advantage of a nearby spring to baptize the children, who came to be called “Los Cristianitos,” the Little Christians.

Theirs was the first baptism in Alta California. In 1992, all that remains of their place in history is a road and a small wishing well constructed in their memory. Cristianitos Road follows the county line from I-5 east into Camp Pendleton.

CAMP PENDLETON

Californios, Cattlemen and Marines

In modern times, it’s known only as the largest Marine amphibious training base in the West--196 square miles, 39,000 Marines and enough military hardware to train each of them to be a lean, mean fighting machine.

But, before World War II and the U.S. government’s condemnation of land deemed necessary for a war effort, it was Rancho Santa Margarita y Las Flores, one of the oldest cattle ranches in the state and a remnant of gentler times. It’s first owners were brothers and noted Californios, Andres and Pio Pico, who took over the property after Mexico wrested from the Catholic church the lands that had belonged to San Luis Rey Mission.

When the Marines landed in 1941, the huge spread had been divided among three ranching families--the O’Neills, the Baumgartners and the Floods.

The Baumgartner section, which included the Talega and San Mateo canyons that run south along the county line, had been a favorite campsite for the vaqueros who ran the cattle herds. But that pastoral era came to an abrupt end on Sept. 25, 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the new base.

It was named in honor of a recently deceased Gen. Joseph (Uncle Joe) Pendleton--not a grizzled veteran but a beloved Marine Corps promoter who engaged in combat only twice in his 40-year-career.

Today, the Marines use the canyons and hilltops for live firing ranges and radio towers. Instead of beef cattle, tanks roam the backcountry, and the mortars, howitzers and helicopters occasionally rattle windows in nearby San Clemente, De Luz and Fallbrook.

CLEVELAND NATIONAL FOREST: Part 1

Presidents, Oaks and a Devil of a Canyon

Composed of three non-contiguous tracts covering half a million acres, Cleveland National Forest meanders through Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties. Two of its three districts, Trabuco and Palomar, span the Riverside-San Diego line. Adding to reserves created by Presidents Benjamin Harrison (1893), and Grover S. Cleveland (1897), Teddy Roosevelt combined them and established the Cleveland National Forest in 1908.

Like the toe of a wide green boot, the southern expanse of the Trabuco District pushes across the Riverside-San Diego line, stopping short at Devil Canyon and the back fence of Camp Pendleton. Dominated by the Santa Margarita Mountains, it is part of the 40,000-acre San Mateo Canyon Wilderness.

“Basically, the area was set aside to be left alone by mankind,” says Fran Colwell, assistant resource officer for the Trabuco Ranger District. “It is meant to be used as open space, for quietude.”

Within the wilderness boundaries, all mechanized vehicles--even mountain bikes--are prohibited. That leaves the 60 miles of recreation trails available to hikers, campers and equestrians.

The area is mostly hilly chaparral, punctuated by deep canyons and streamside bottoms. Although canyon and coastal oaks are common (and were once harvested for timbers to build Mission San Juan Capistrano), the wilderness is also the site of the northernmost stand of Englemann oaks. Roaming the landscape are bobcats, deer, raccoons, birds of prey and the rarely seen mountain lion.

Near Tenaja Campground, visitors are likely to encounter privately owned cattle grazing on the high grassland plateau. As with sheep and other livestock, they’re allowed by permits issued by the National Forest Service.

DE LUZ

Darkness and The Depression

For six years now, Jeanette Roll has watched city people come to her Catwalker Gallery in De Luz. Curious motorists pull into an oak-shaded dell on the San Diego side of the line dividing this and Riverside counties. Slowly, they emerge from their cars, leery of the goose roaming the grounds.

It’s always the same thing.

“They just stand there for a second, like they’re in shock,” says Roll, who has been here nearly all of her 48 years. “It’s the quiet.”

And, if they pass the afternoon in conversation, browsing among the native American articles that Roll creates and sells from the gallery named after her Blackfoot great-great grandmother, something else usually happens when the sun sets.

“They’ll be leaving, and they’ll stand by their cars and say, ‘It’s so dark!’ ” Roll says with a laugh. “People just aren’t used to the quiet or the space or the dark anymore.”

It’s one way longtime residents like Roll and her husband, Neal, are distinguished from the “new people” who have begun to build in this sequestered canyon behind Fallbrook and the Santa Margarita Mountains.

“The first thing they do is put lights everywhere,” she says. “We go country-Western dancing, and we’ll come home late at night. The trees, the driveways, they’re lit up like daytime. Maybe it’s so beautiful they want to see it night and day.”

Roll can understand that kind of thinking. Her parents, Gene and Alice Brain, came to De Luz in 1941 on dirt roads. It had serenity. It looked like a good place to raise a family, so they bought 150 acres and found out it was.

“When I was a kid the rule was I could go anywhere I wanted as long as I took the dogs,” she recalls. From kindergarten to eighth grade, she attended De Luz School, occasionally making the 3-mile trip on horseback.

The school still stands. Though closed to regular classes, it’s used as a community center and ecological preserve run by the Fallbrook Union Elementary School District.

Other things have changed.

Elaborate homes are appearing on hillsides once tinged purple and orange with wild lilac and poppies. The trickle of undocumented workers who once hiked north through the remote backcountry to elude the Border Patrol has swelled to a steady stream. Illicit “gardens” of marijuana crop up each summer in creek-fed hideaways. And the two-lane roads to Temecula and Fallbrook are paved now, though winter and spring rains often render them impassible.

The last bothers Jeanette Roll not at all.

“We don’t say we’re rained in,” she says. “We say everybody else is rained out.”

They’ll never leave, she says, unless taxes get too high or too many rules are imposed or too many people move in. The Rolls and their three children lived 12.5 miles and a world away in “a small little tract” in Fallbrook for a while, and that was enough.

“They kept adding more houses and more houses--it was crazy--making,” she says. “Here, to be able to look out your windows and not see someone walking on your lawn or people yelling and screaming at each other, or whatever they do when they live too close--that’s important. What we have here is peace of mind.”

Theodora (“Teddy, please”) Garnsey is 84 years old, and came home to De Luz with her new husband, Felix, in 1934. They rode out the Depression on the homestead that Felix’s maternal and paternal grandparents staked in 1885. They’re still here, on 96 of the original 400 acres, more than half a century later.

Ask De Luz residents about history, and the response is unvarying--”You ought to talk to Teddy.”

“Well, there was an early settler, a Mr. Luce, who named his place ‘Corral de Luz’ and De Luz evolved from that,” Teddy explained. “That’s the agreed-upon story, anyway.”

Then there’s the old hotel, on the site of the Luce ranch, which opened in 1881 as Mr. Lemon Judson’s Judson Warm Mineral Springs. It’s up for sale now. In between, it’s been everything from a private residence to a women’s shelter

Teddy can tell you how thick the animals once were--the deer could wipe out eight rows of grapes overnight.

“So we had venison, and quail, and wild pigeon, or we’d go down to Oceanside and catch fish,” she said. “The (Garnsey) grandmothers taught me how to smoke and dry and can, and how to share. You always shared, because there was no refrigeration. You’d go around dropping newspaper parcels of meat or fish at your neighbors’ doorsteps. We ate well during the Depression.”

These days, they tend their pets and their garden as best they can, enjoying a long and quiet retirement.

“We don’t want it to get crowded,” Teddy says. “We just want to stay here and not have to go into a nursing home. I’s too lovely to leave.”

RAINBOW

Peace, Plants, Inmates and the INS

The small, hand-painted signs are everywhere--bright rainbows on a white background with a simple message in English and Spanish: “Rainbow’s Our Paradise--Please Don’t Litter.”

And as in any self-respecting paradise, vegetation is plentiful. Propagation is the name of the game in this tidy pocket of rocky knobs and fertile flats. Dozens of wholesale and retail nurseries have settled along this eastern flank of Interstate 15.

“The climate here is Mediterranean--moderated by breezes and virtually frost-free--which makes for good growing weather,” says Craig Ohlson.

An ex-Iowa farm boy, he stumbled across Rainbow two years ago and stayed on to sell real estate. Like the town’s namesake, 1887 homesteader James Rainbow, Ohlson felt he had found the storied pot of gold. His office is in a converted gas station that went up in 1921 along Old Highway 395--a major north-south artery before the advent of the freeway.

“It’s hard to believe a place this quiet and this beautiful is so close to everything,” he said. But, unlike the overnight “communities” mushrooming elsewhere along the I-15 corridor, Rainbow should remain at its current population of 1,400 for some time.

“We’ve got a 4-acre minimum to facilitate the septic system, so that doesn’t allow for high-density residential development,” he said. Meanwhile, residents are lobbying to get their own post office.

Of the California Department of Corrections’ 41 inmate work camps, the oldest in continual operation is Camp Rainbow, an isolated, 40-acre compound that now houses about 90 female felons who serve their sentences a stone’s throw from the county line. One of only three female work camps in the state, it’s considered a minimum-security facility. There’s a fence, but no guard towers or searchlights.

“They have the opportunity to run away, but they’re classified carefully before they come,” says Camp Commander Gene Karl. “If they do go, they’ll never be eligible for camp again, and it’s another 16 months (in custody).”

Since most of the inmates have less than two years left before their parole dates, few take the risk. According to Karl, it’s been two years years the last escape.

Those who do qualify for work camp find it less confining than other prison facilities. The setting is much like a kids’ summer camp, with dormitories and a dining hall. The trade-off: five days a week of labor at public conservation projects at state beaches, parks and freeways. During fire season, the inmates use their California Department of Forestry training to fight wildfires.

“They take the same assignments as the male crews, carting 20-pound packs in brush fires,” Karl says. “They’ve done very well.”

The complications incurred by the county’s southern, international border are very much in evidence at its northern extreme.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Temecula checkpoint marks the county line on northbound Interstate 15. A companion checkpoint, just south of the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant on I-5, marks the Border Patrol’s coastal presence.

In addition to substantial activity on the freeways, INS patrols routinely pick up undocumented workers who avoid the checkpoints by negotiating the backcountry surrounding them.

Last year, an average of 30,000 cars a day crossed at the Temecula checkpoint, according to an INS spokesman. Between Oct. 1, 1990, and Sept. 30, 1991, Border Patrol agents made 22,517 apprehensions at the inland station. They seized 2,045 pounds of marijuana, 199 pounds of methamphetamine, 572 doses of methamphetamine and a smattering of cocaine and heroin.

Although the San Clemente checkpoint has about 2 1/2 times the apprehensions and seizures, it is the fatal high-speed chase originating June 2 at the Temecula crossing that is now drawing attention nationally. The crash claimed the lives of four Temecula high school students, a parent and one of the immigrants in the fleeing vehicle.

A number of officials and residents are calling for a review of pursuit procedures; others want the entire checkpoint closed. Policy-makers in Washington have said they are reviewing the incident and issues associated with the operation of the checkpoint.

PALA-TEMECULA ROAD

Fresh Starts and Sad Endings

The more hectic life got in Fullerton, the more serious Hunt and Dian Brannen became about finding a getaway. Three years ago, after combing the back roads of Valley Center and Fallbrook, they came over a rise on County S-16, the Pala-Temecula Road. It stood mere yards south of the Riverside County line.

“I saw the old stone building, and then I saw the For Sale sign, and I said, ‘Stop right here!’ ” Dian recounted. Although it had already been sold, Sierra Oaks Ranch eventually fell out of escrow and into the Brannens’ hands. They promptly changed the name to Old Oaks Ranch in honor of the venerable trees on the 3 1/4-acre parcel.

Basque rancher Jacque Escallier built the house in 1891, using rocks he quarried while clearing the homestead. Its restoration will be the couple’s retirement project. Meanwhile, they happily occupy a smaller, more modern house behind the original structure.

Dian, an attorney, says that the area’s slow pace doesn’t mean boredom.

“There’s a lot of excitement,” she says. “Just the other day, we were walking, and a hawk flew up right in front of us with a snake in his mouth. That’s what we came here for.”

The Brannens have pieced together a colorful history of the place after talking at length with Jacque’s son, 90-something Pete Escallier. According to Pete, the family called Sierra Oaks home until 1895, when, to benefit the children, they relocated to Temecula. Jacque kept the ranch, however, and his elderly aunts from the old country lived out their days in the stately rock house.

The ranch was eventually sold to a man, who, during Prohibition, took full advantage of the vineyards the Escalliers had planted decades earlier. With his illegal wine-making operation in full swing, he put a handyman in charge and left on a business trip.

During his absence, Revenuers raided the vineyard, and the employee was arrested and sentenced. But when the fall guy was eventually released from prison, according to Escallier, he exacted revenge by torching the house where his ex-boss still lived. The fire gutted the place, leaving only the rock shell. And so it has stood for more than 50 years and a procession of owners.

“We’ve got some sketches based on Pete’s memories,” Dian said. “The house had a very steep roof and three dormers, and there was a staircase up the middle. We’d love to find some old photos but so far haven’t turned up any.”

Jacque’s imprint endures, however. Over the burned-out double-doorway, carved into the block, one can still make out “J. Escallier, 1894.”

Sometimes, the remoteness of this place makes headlines, as on March 9, 1991. That was when all hope was lost for 7-year-old Leticia Hernandez of Oceanside.

About 1 mile south of the Riverside County line, scattered down a steep canyon along County S-16, the partial remains of the child kidnaped 15 months earlier were found by a caretaker. Leticia was identified through dental records.

Despite a nationwide search replete with TV coverage, and 18 purported sightings from Florida to California, there were apparently no witnesses in that silent ravine just 22 miles from her home.

“As far as we’re concerned, the case is still very much open,” says Bill Krunglevich of the Oceanside Police Department.

CLEVELAND NATIONAL FOREST: Part Two

Fire, Water and Regeneration

Somebody started it in July, 1989. The fire began near California 79 and the Riverside-San Diego county line. It raced into the Angua Tibia Wilderness and took what it wanted. After a week, firefighting crews got the upper hand, but not before the blaze ate up nearly 7,000 acres of chaparral--almost half the reserve.

What’s come next has a textbook example of how nature heals itself.

“We’re getting all kinds of wildflowers and unique, pioneering vegetation,” says Roger Wong, resources officer for the forest’s Palomar District. “Species that had been crowded out by many decades of growth are reappearing. The ecological process is starting all over again, and you don’t often get to see that.”

While many visitors content themselves with a campsite at the Dripping Springs Campground on the Riverside County side of the district, there are trails throughout the 15,600-acre wilderness. Several lead to Agua Tibia Mountain, which, at 4,780 feet, is a physical challenge.

Named for the small, seeping warm springs common to the area, Agua Tibia was once home to bands of Native Americans who moved through the rugged terrain by following creekbeds through the mountains.

These days, however, law enforcement officials urge hikers to avoid using similar routes. Running creeks in isolated canyons are occasionally tapped by marijuana growers, who don’t hesitate to defend their illicit “gardens.”

OAK GROVE

The Stage, Bureaucracy and The End of the Road

John Wentworth is fourth-generation Oak Grove. His great-grandfather was James Scott Bell, a Texan who came to California after the Civil War and eventually landed in Julian with the gold strikes of the 1870s.

“When the valley here was opened up for settlers, he came over and got 160 acres,” said Wentworth, a 25-year veteran of the U.S. Forest Service.

Among Bell’s holdings was the historic Butterfield Stage Station. The main trail between Yuma and Los Angeles once ran through Oak Grove, although by then the stage line had ceased operation. When the property passed to Wentworth’s cattle-ranching grandparents, they used the station as a residence, living there until 1937.

Wentworth spent his childhood in the small community on the back side of Palomar Mountain, where cattle ranching was and is the main occupation. For necessities, the family headed 32 miles into Hemet. As for the rest, Oak Grove residents have always been good at providing their own entertainment.

“There was a sign up for years that said, ‘Oak Grove: 100 People and One or Two Grouches,’ ” he recalls. “I was gone for six or eight years, going to school and getting started, and I missed the area. It hasn’t changed all that much from when I was a kid.” He and his wife, Rosemae, moved back to Oak Grove in 1964, and stayed on to raise their two children.

“For me, it’s always felt like home,” Wentworth says.

Kraeg and Ann Kraegel followed their hearts and found themselves in business in Dameron Valley, the northernmost settlement on California 79 in San Diego County. Their operation, The County Line Feed and Liquor, evolved from their dream of living in the wide open spaces.

“We’re into horses, and we wanted to live in the country, and we didn’t want to work for anybody else,” said Ann, momentarily between customers. “It doesn’t sound very smart, but we picked the location where we wanted to live, and decided the rest would work itself out.”

“The “rest” did. They bought a former fencing store at the front of their property and converted it to a feed store and small grocery with meats, liquor and staples.

That was two years ago, and Ann says they haven’t regretted a moment. Their only problem has to do with the bureaucratic entanglements that come with living so near the border.

“Our mailing address is Aguanga, which is Riverside County,” she says. “Even though we live in San Diego County, we have a 714 area code. And, when it came to things like the liquor license, or dealing with alcohol distributors, or even when you call 911, you have to argue with them to convince them you’re really in San Diego County.”

It’s a small price to pay, however.

“It’s wonderful for our two girls to be growing up here,” she says.

Perhaps Oak Grove native John Wentworth puts it best when he talks about living along The Other Border.

“We’re kind of at the end of the line for a lot of things out here,” he says. “That’s probably why we stay.”

East as the crow flies, the rest of the county line is first the province of grazing livestock and then, as the altitude drops and the temperature rises, of the tenacious flora and fauna of a great desert called Anza-Borrego.

It ends there, overlooking the Salton Sea in the lonely Santa Rosa Mountains, nothing like it begins.