Old West Spirit Lives for Those in the Knolls : Lifestyles: Santa Susana Mountains community is changing as new residents move in.

The main roads are paved, but others are no more than dirt or gravel tracks that run smack up against houses or through front yards.

There are no sidewalks or street lights here. No tract homes with red-tile roofs. Nothing to disturb the community’s rural ambience or the brute beauty of the rock-studded Santa Susana Mountains that serve as its backdrop.

Residents of Santa Susana Knolls, a small unincorporated community on the southeastern edge of Simi Valley, prefer it this way.

“My first impression upon coming here was, ‘I’ll stay forever,’ ” said resident Marie Mason, who has lived in the Knolls for 21 years. “It just has a whole different feeling to it. It’s like the Old West.”

Indeed, until recently not much had changed in the more than 70 years since the area was first developed as a weekend retreat for Los Angeles residents.

While neighboring Simi Valley has been transformed into a booming suburb of more than 100,000, Santa Susana Knolls has remained a rustic--and some say “funky”--community of about 1,000.

“It is different,” Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said. “It reminds me of Topanga Canyon--away from it all, with different mixtures of people living in everything from converted chicken coops to very expensive homes.”

The chicken coops are slowly disappearing, though. The last few years have seen the community begin to change as more people have moved in and built lavish new houses.

“It’s definitely become more upscale since I moved in,” said Holly Huff, a resident of Santa Susana Knolls since 1972. “When I first moved in, it was mostly older and retired people. Now it’s younger people. It’s totally different.”

Michael Persico, another longtime resident and owner of the Olde Susana Saloon, described the area as “the Beverly Hills of the Valley.”

But Stratton is not so impressed. “Which valley?” he asked after pausing a moment to consider Persico’s comment.

Development

Santa Susana Knolls was first developed in the 1920s. Without regard to the rugged terrain, the area was subdivided into more than 2,000 lots--predominantly 30-by-50-foot “postage stamp” parcels.

Poor roads and inadequate sewage disposal limited overall development as well as the size of the cabins and bungalows that were built. Most of the homes ranged from 500 to 700 square feet.

But the real attractions for home buyers then and now are the commanding views of the Simi Valley floor and the surrounding Santa Susana Mountains.

To limit development of the mini lots, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors adopted new guidelines in 1980 that forced land owners with several contiguous parcels to merge them before constructing new houses.

New setback and height restrictions were also adopted to conform more closely with county regulations in order to discourage building on single parcels. County zoning now permits one residence per 10,000 square feet.

These new development standards and the installation of the area’s first sewer system in 1986 cleared the way for larger and more expensive homes to be built.

The result is an odd mixture of neighborhood streets with small run-down shacks on one side and large, lavish homes on the other.

“It’s definitely on the uptrend,” said Alva Conner, owner of Far Western Realty. “You have houses that start at about $120,000 and run all the way up to $2 million. And they’re all blended together. It’s a very unique community.”

People like the rural atmosphere and the seclusion that the Knolls offers, Conner said. “And the great advantage is that it’s close to Los Angeles.”

While it may not exactly be “the Beverly Hills of the Valley,” Santa Susana Knolls is rather affluent. Its median household income is $57,250, about $3,000 higher than Simi Valley. And 3.9% of Santa Susana Knolls residents live in poverty, compared to 3.6% in Simi Valley.

Linda White, an aide to Supervisor Vicky Howard, who represents the area, said there has been friction among residents over some of the neighborhood changes.

“It’s an old guard, new guard situation,” she said. “Younger people are moving in and wanting to upgrade the community. And there’s been some difficulty with people getting along. There’s some mistrust.”

Cari Caruso, president of the Santa Susana Homeowners Assn., said some longtime residents are wary of the new development.

“The old-timers don’t like to see any of this new stuff coming in here,” Caruso said. “The more development there is, the less they like the area. But there’s not much you can do about it.”

Caruso said others are less resistant and have even joined in the mini building boom.

Spurred in part by the new development, a growing number of longtime residents are renovating their houses or tearing down their homes and rebuilding.

Huff, for example, once lived in a small cabin with roof shingles fashioned from 1930s license plates. She recently built a two-story, three-bedroom house on her property.

“It’s beautiful,” Huff said.

In contrast, Caruso lives in a 500-square-foot cabin, which she figures was probably built in the 1940s.

“It’s a pretty nice little place,” said Caruso, whose house sits on a large lot. “I think eventually I will enlarge it a little bit. But I don’t know. I’m a clutterer. I don’t want too much to vacuum.”

Caruso said one of the top priorities of the homeowners group is to preserve the rural atmosphere of the Knolls. She said this means preventing property owners from building big houses on the 100 or more “postage stamp” parcels that remain.

In fact, the homeowners’ group won a major victory last week when Caruso’s neighbor lost an appeal for a zoning variance to build a two-story house with no yard on his mini lot.

“He argues that he has a right to develop his property,” Caruso said. “But we were worried that if he got a variance that this would have set a precedent. What we want to see in the Knolls is people build houses in accordance with county regulations.”

Illegal Building

But getting people to follow the rules is not always easy.

“On the weekends, you can hear the skill saws going all over,” said George Wight, who has operated businesses in the area for 17 years. “People will put up a room and paint it all in the same day, then swear it’s been there forever.”

The area has long had a reputation for illegal building activities, agreed William Windroth, director of Ventura County’s Building and Safety Department.

“The people who live up there have a different philosophy,” Windroth said. “The reason they live in an area like that is because they like the seclusion, and they want to do what they damn well please. It’s the old pioneer spirit.”

He said his office receives 10 to 20 complaints a month about construction violations. But with only two inspectors to cover the entire county, Windroth said it’s nearly impossible to keep a handle on problem areas like Santa Susana Knolls.

And residents are not always respectful of building officials when they show up.

“We’ve had several people run off at the point of a shotgun,” Windroth said, referring to the Knolls and nearby Box Canyon.

Over the years, about a half dozen property owners have been taken to court for not complying with county building regulations. “Three or four of them have done time,” Windroth said.

Aside from illegal building activities, Santa Susana Knolls has no serious crime problems, said Lt. Larry Reynolds of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, which is responsible for patrolling the area.

“It has its share of burglaries, family fights and car break-ins, but no more than other places,” Reynolds said. “It’s not really a high crime area.”

He attributed this in large part to the fact that it is next door to Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, which have consistently been rated by the FBI as among the safest cities of their size in the country.

Reynolds said he has one patrol car assigned to cover Santa Susana Knolls and Box Canyon, just to the east, with Simi Valley police as backup in emergencies. However, he said Simi Valley police will respond to emergencies if needed.

Reynolds said while he would like to see street lights installed to help officers patrol the area, he did not think their absence increases the potential for crime.

As for the residents, Caruso said they would rather “see the stars at night.”

The Knolls’ narrow and windy roads also pose their own set of problems. The local sanitation company had to design a special trash truck to navigate through the neighborhood, said White, Supervisor Howard’s representative.

“That’s why trash pickup is more expensive in the area,” she said.

Cable television is also new to the Knolls. Until last December, there was simply not enough people who wanted the service to warrant the cost of installing the cable lines.

“It’s difficult to get a consensus on a lot of things,” White said.

Business District

Even though it’s a small community, Santa Susana Knolls has its own, unique business district.

Strewn across one side of Santa Susana Pass Road is a church, a biker bar and a radiator repair shop; on the other side, a saloon and restaurant that serves up “buffalo steaks,’ a bottled water company, a hypnotherapist’s office and a newly opened tattoo parlor.

“It’s an altogether different world,” said Whalene Matthies, the proprietor of Wallie’s Hide-Out, where the Southern California Chapter of the Modified Motorcycles Assn. holds its monthly meetings.

Matthies said she has lived in the Knolls for 30 years and has owned Wallie’s for six.

“We support everybody we can,” she said of her neighboring business owners. “The people here are very friendly, like family. That’s the way the people are in the Knolls.”

Persico, who owns the Olde Susana Saloon across the road, said he recently hosted a horseback wedding for friends who live in the area.

“They didn’t have enough room in their back yard, so I offered them my place,” he said.

Persico, who worked at Wallie’s before taking over the saloon last year, said he’s “barely cutting it.” But he said he expects business will eventually pick up as more people discover the area.

Persico said he welcomes everyone from bikers to horseback riders. The saloon features a water trough for horses, and Persico said he makes regular hay runs.

Across from the saloon is Susana Mountains Water Inc., a distillery owned by Wight, who also rents space to a hypnotherapist and a private investigator.

Wight’s business has evolved from a health food store to a solar panel company to a drinking water establishment over the last 17 years.

The Knolls business district may be a bit different than the average strip mall, but Wight prefers it that way.

“It’s a little piece of heaven,” said Wight, a Simi Valley resident. “In Simi Valley, you look out the front door, and you see the roof of the guy next to you. Here, you look out and you see the mountains.”

Old West

If Santa Susana Knolls looks like the Old West, it’s because it was immortalized as the Old West in hundreds of shoot-’em-up Westerns filmed in the area from 1937 to 1967. Corriganville, a movie ranch and amusement park located across the railroad tracks in Simi Valley, had been idle for three years when its famed western movie sets went up in flames in 1970.

Claudene Timmons Fowler, who has lived off and on in the Knolls since 1937, said her father, a county firefighter, used to work part time at the movie ranch. She said she often stopped by the ranch when he was working and recalled one particular visit made when she was 13.

“I was walking around and I came upon a big guy in long underwear pulling on his pants. He looked right at me and winked, and I ran like hell,” Fowler said, laughing. “It was John Wayne.”

Fowler said she lived in Santa Susana Knolls from 1937 to 1949 and moved back in 1983.

She said she has always had a special attachment to the area, noting that her parents first visited the Knolls during an outing with relatives on July 4, 1929. “I was born four days later,” she said.

Fowler makes her home in a trailer parked on land bequeathed to her by her mother. She said she has mixed feelings about all the changes that have taken place in the last few years.

“I don’t want to regress,” she said. “A sewer system is more sanitary than having a cesspool. That kind of progress is good.”

Fowler pauses for a moment before speaking again.

“I’m certainly for change,” she said. “I see it will come. But I will resist it with a lot of vigor because I still like to hear the chickens and, even with the flies, I still like to see the horses.”

SANTA SUSANA KNOLLS PROFILEPopulation 1,020

Racial Breakdown

White 84.1%

Latino 8.7%

Asian 4.7%

Black 1.9%

Other 0.8%

Education (residents 25 and older) High school degree: 21.5%

College degree: 28.7%

Median household income: $57,250

Residents living in poverty: 3.9%

Average commute time: 15 minutes

*Does not include Box Canyon