At the Crossroads : Community: A proposed mega-development has split tiny, rural Leona Valley like no other issue. Most see the project as just one more encroachment from ‘down below.’

In Leona Valley, a town with no sidewalks and no stoplights, a stray goat boarding a school bus makes news, schoolchildren walk sheep along the streets, and locals wave at strangers.

“If you give a smile out, you get a smile back in return,” said Carolyn Meramble, who has lived here seven years. “It’s like Wavetown USA.”

Residents of Leona Valley like to think of their tiny community--nestled in the Sierra Pelona Range west of the Antelope Valley--as an island of rural tranquillity amid the suburban sprawl of what they call “down below.”

These days however, some residents are feeling a little uneasy, an anxiety fueled by everything from a proposed monster development on the edge of town to the graffiti that’s appearing on road and business signs. Could the tide of suburbanization be oozing over Godde Pass from the Antelope Valley?

“If all the projects go through, Leona Valley is going to be a suburb of Palmdale,” said Jeff Horwedel, a 33-year-old rancher who has spent his entire life in the area. “We want to remain unique.”

Leona Valley has been populated for centuries. Once home to Shoshone Indians, it was named for Miguel Leonis, a rancher known as “King of the Calabasas.” Settlers came from Germany in the 1870s, when the area was a stage post on the long route between the Cajon Pass and the lower San Joaquin Valley.

About 1,800 people live in the valley’s 35 square miles of rambling, country-style homes, orchards and pastureland. Many are urban refugees--Carolyn Meramble and her husband, for example, moved from the San Fernando Valley. “Big John” Mayfield came from Sylmar in 1958. “I thought it would be a wonderful place to raise my family,” he recalled. “The longer I lived here, the more I fell in love with it.

“I go down below, I come back with a headache.”

The valley’s economy is based almost entirely on agriculture. Clustered at the town crossroads are two restaurants, a market, a beauty salon, a used car dealer, a feed store complete with hitching post and a video store. The video store was closed recently. “Hi, Folks. Gone fishing for a spell. (We might even stay),” read a message from the owners. Leona Valley Pottery down the road is similarly casual. “Open by Chance,” says its sign.

Realty agent Betty Hoskinson said about 80% of the residents commute to the Antelope Valley or Los Angeles for work. “We’re roughly an hour’s drive from downtown L.A., if you don’t count the traffic jams,” she said.

Life is generally sedate--”We’ve never been sleepy, but we’ve always tended to be quiet,” Hoskinson said. The annual Cherry Festival and Parade in June stirs things up a bit as busloads of tourists arrive to pick cherries from the valley’s two dozen orchards.

Occasionally, though, Leona Valley’s community spirit is tested. Residents have recently blocked proposals to close the elementary school and to build power-generating windmills. “Have you ever seen them from an aerial view?” Hoskinson said of the windmills. “Horrible, ugly things. They scar the landscape.”

The conventional wisdom is that whenever there’s a cause, Leona Valley will unite. “The community really pulls together,” Meramble said. “They just don’t meet regularly.”

“If there’s a real cause, they all come out of the woodwork,” said Mayfield, recalling how he mobilized the community to get stop signs installed at the crossroads.

But lately, a current of unrest has ruffled the valley’s bucolic surface. Some think that the world down below is looming ever larger, threatening their cherished isolation. They point to the graffiti onslaught and several incidents of intruders on motorcycles breaking through fences and chasing cattle.

“We get influences from L.A., Palmdale and Lancaster,” Horwedel said. “We get garbage in here too.”

Most controversial of all is the Ritter Ranch project--one of the largest now pending in Southern California. It would turn 11,500 pristine acres on the eastern edge of the valley into a community of 7,200 homes, a golf course, seven schools, retail complexes and 17 parks. Not to mention stoplights and sidewalks. Although the city of Palmdale has annexed the land and approved the project, it is being held up by lawsuits and by concerns over its economic viability.

The development has split Leona Valley like no other issue. “It’s put friends against friends,” Hoskinson said. “People who’ve known each other for many years are suddenly on opposite sides of the fence.”

“It’s caused a lot of friendships to break,” Horwedel said.

Some people are opposed to development almost on principle--hard-line members of the Town Council, an advisory group, have filed suit to block the plan. At the other extreme, there are those who wave the flag of free enterprise and individual property rights.

“If somebody owns a piece of land and it’s zoned, they’re entitled to develop it,” said Dick White, whose ostrich ranch spreads over 240 acres. “That’s progress.”

Others are caught in an uncomfortable middle. “The reality is it’s going to be developed,” Meramble said. “So develop it, but do it so it blends into the community. We need to fight for having it done the right way.”

Horwedel said he would like to see some changes in the plan: lots should be at least two acres to reduce density and houses should be kept off the ridge tops. But looking into the future, he still can’t help feeling despondent. The rancher, who has two young sons, is even thinking of moving.

“I’d hate to leave,” he said. “It would be hard for me because I’ve been here all my life. But I will if it’s in the best interests of my kids and family.

“Leona Valley is not going to drive me out,” he added. “It’s just all the crap going on around us.”