ROSE VALLEY : Forest Service Seeks to Keep Phones

Rose Valley resident Herman Kopf has become dependent on two public telephones that were installed on California 33 in Rose Valley in December, the only phones on a 25-mile stretch of mountain highway.

When the Ventura County Sheriff’s Work Farm closed recently, Kopf heard that the phones might be taken out. The phones are powered by a generator at the farm across the highway. Signals are transmitted by a microwave dish on Sisar Peak.

“It would be quite a shame,” said Kopf, the 81-year-old caretaker of the Rose Valley Gun Club. “In the months since they’ve been in there, many of us have grown quite accustomed to them.”

With the work farm gone, Pacific Bell officials told U. S. Forest Service officials last week that they are concerned that no one will be around to monitor the generator 24 hours a day, because the power could go out and the phones would be out of service, rangers said.

But Ron Bassett, district ranger for the Forest Service, said he worked so hard to get the phones put in that he doesn’t want to lose them. He told the phone company representatives that he will try to find someone to watch the generator around the clock until he can find a new organization to lease the seven-acre work farm site.

“Essentially, we got our facility back and are trying to figure out how to keep the thing running,” Bassett said. “It took us almost a year and a half to get (the phones) in there and it’s something that a new tenant moving in would want.”

The Forest Service is asking for proposals from any group that wants to lease the work farm site, but the group must be equipped to do what the inmates did--rebuild trails, make signs and move brush.

About five families live in Rose Valley, a mountain community where residents have no electricity, television or radio reception, or running water.

“We pretty well keep to ourselves,” Kopf said.