The Year in Review: Revisiting the notable Valley events of 1994. : A Name for Itself : Efforts to Give Lake Los Angeles a New Moniker Dry Up--for Now

During 1994, this dusty desert town that has no lake and is nowhere near Los Angeles was supposed to get a new name. This community, some local leaders vowed, would become Desert Buttes, a more appropriate name that would improve the town’s image and earn it some long overdue respect.

But as the year drew to a close, Lake Los Angeles was still Lake Los Angeles, to everyone except some misinformed map makers at the Automobile Club of Southern California. On the club’s current Antelope Valley street map, this scattered, unincorporated community of 3,500 homes, about 20 miles east of Palmdale, is indeed dubbed Desert Buttes.

Town leaders say the AAA jumped the gun.

Desert Buttes did receive the most votes--194--in an unofficial November, 1993, election that asked whether the town’s name should be changed and if so, to what. But in early 1994, some die-hard Lake Los Angelenos challenged the validity of that election, sparking a community clash that has left the new name in limbo.

“I think it’s dead,” said Bonnie LeFebvre, a vocal name-change opponent, in a year-end interview. “Most people would just as soon leave it Lake Los Angeles.”

LeFebvre, co-owner of a local real estate office and a video store, was not happy about the costly prospect of changing all her signs, stationery, rubber stamps and video identification stickers.

She and other critics charged that the Lake Los Angeles Rural Town Council bungled the election. Opponents claimed the council did not count all the ballots that were turned in and mailed others so late that they did not reach residents until after the election.

Town Council members defended the election, saying they had mailed ballots to all 4,518 registered voters in the area. Of the 757 that were turned in, 55.9% favored a name change of some sort.

Among the names suggested, Desert Buttes was the top vote-getter, followed by Desert Springs and Saddleback, a reference to a nearby rock formation. A few residents saw the vote in a more whimsical light and wrote in suggestions such as Blowing Sands, Outcast Flats, Fools Paradise and Barking Dogs.

Fans of Desert Buttes wanted the Board of Supervisors to make the name change official. But opponents insisted the election results could not be taken seriously.

LeFebvre said local radio personalities made fun of the winning name by shortening it to Desert “Butts” and referring to its residents as “butt-heads.” She also said the election turnout was too small to justify a new name.

“I’ll bet you that everybody who didn’t come out to vote didn’t want it changed,” LeFebvre said.

Because of the uproar, the Rural Town Council, which makes recommendations to county Supervisor Mike Antonovich, put the name change on hold and vowed to conduct a new election in November, 1994, when residents would also pick four Town Council members.

But the second name-change vote was never held.

The Town Council said it didn’t have enough money to mail sample ballots to all 4,500 registered voters. And local leaders rightly predicted that the Town Council race itself would not bring enough people to the polling places.

“There were only four people running for four seats,” said Bob Keys, president of the unpaid, seven-member panel. “The turnout was extremely low--under 100 voters.”

With the election over, Keys said the Town Council has decided not to spearhead a new campaign to change the name of Lake Los Angeles because the issue is just too divisive. “If 60% want the name change, there would still be 40% who don’t and who would be quite unhappy about it,” he said.

Instead, Keys said, the Town Council will spend its time and energy on more pressing matters, such as curbing graffiti, luring a supermarket to town and drafting new planning rules to preserve the community’s rural character.

Even Barbara Crane, a past president of the Lake Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce who strongly supported a switch to Desert Buttes, said it’s unlikely to happen any time soon.

“So far as I’m concerned, it’s not dead; it’s on vacation. It’s taking a hiatus,” she said. “I still want to change the name and improve (the community’s) image, but it’s split the town, and I’m in favor of unity.”

That leaves Larry Shaw, Antelope Valley district manager for the Auto Club, out on a limb. His maps still show the community as Desert Buttes.

“I had nothing to do with it,” he insisted recently. “Somehow, the word got to our cartography department, and they changed it.”

Even so, only one caller over the past year has brought the error to his attention. “We hand out a lot of maps,” he said. “It’s funny that almost no one has mentioned it.”

Nevertheless, Shaw has sent a special memo to the Auto Club’s main office concerning those maps that label Lake Los Angeles as Desert Buttes. “Before they reprint it,” he said, “they’ll check with me.”