Home on the Range : In Leona Valley, Fears of a Paradise Lost

In this 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, a resident for 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.”

“The Valley today is the home of farm- and ranch-oriented families who enjoy the beauty of a quiet rural life,” reads the menu of Jackie’s Country Kitchen, a local eatery famous for its peanut butter pie.

These days, however, some residents are feeling a little uneasy, their anxiety fueled by everything from a proposed monster development on the edge of town to graffiti appearing on local 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.” Early settlers came from Germany in the 1870s, when the area was a staging post on the long route between Cajon Pass and the lower San Joaquin Valley.

About 1,800 people live on 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,” he added.

The valley’s economy is based almost entirely on agriculture. At the town crossroads are clustered 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),” reads a message from the owners. Leona Valley Pottery down the road is similarly casual. “Open By Chance,” its sign says.

According to local realtor Betty Hoskinson, about 80% of the population 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.

Two local ranchers have taken unusual directions. At the Pitchfork Ranch, Bob Mallicoat is raising llamas and, at Rancho Buena Vista, Dick White has his hands full with ostriches. “A kick from one of those can disembowel you,” White said, pointing to a fearsome male specimen. “They have four-inch toenails.”

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. This year, Big John is expecting a bumper crop from his orchard.

“There is blossom out there you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “Unless we get a freeze, I think we’re in good shape.”

Occasionally, Leona Valley’s community spirit is tested. Residents have recently blocked proposals to close the local elementary school and to build power-generating windmills in the area. “Have you ever seen them from an aerial view?” Hoskinson asked. “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. “That’s what I like about the valley more than anything.”

But lately, a current of unrest has ruffled the valley’s bucolic surface. Some feel the world “down below” is looming ever larger, threatening their cherished isolation. They point to the recent graffiti onslaught and several instances of intruders on motorcycles breaking through ranch 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 that development. The Ritter Ranch project--one of the largest pending in Southern California--would turn 11,500 pristine acres on the eastern edge of the valley into a community that would include 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 concerns over its economic viability.

The development has split Leona Valley like no other issue in living memory. “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 agreed.

Some 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 White, whose ranch spreads across 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 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, he suggested. 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. 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.”