Heritage Tour May Be Last for Crystal Cove Residents

In the nearly six decades since his parents bought a palm-thatched cottage in the tiny beachfront community of Crystal Cove, Bud Carter, 71, has been stockpiling stories.

Like the one about how, as an Air Force pilot during World War II, he would alert his folks ahead of time when he was planning to fly over the patch of coastline between Laguna Beach and Newport Beach.

“My parents would run out and put towels in the sand [spelling out] ‘Hi Bud’ as I buzzed them,” Carter recalls.

As part of the Laguna Beach Heritage Month celebration, on Saturday Carter will lead what may be the final tour of its kind of the Crystal Cove National Historic District.

The tour lends a bittersweet flavor to a month of events that will begin tonight with opening ceremonies at Tivoli Terrace designed to highlight local history.

The state, which owns the land, plans to eventually vacate the 45 cottages so they can be refurbished and rented to the general public for short-term stays.

While state officials say Crystal Cove may still be open for tours after the cottages are restored, Heritage Month organizers say Saturday’s event may be participants’ last chance to hear firsthand what life was like for the generations of families who have inhabited the cottages since the 1920s.

The state bought the land from the Irvine Company in 1979 and has been negotiating with the tenants over occupancy ever since.

The residents were allowed to continue staying in the cottages as long as they paid rent to the state.

A recent lease expired Dec. 31, but the tenants refused to leave, saying the state should allow them to keep and maintain the cottages until repairs begin on the homes.

Otherwise, the tenants maintained, the state would lose the nearly $40,000 that they pay each month in rent.

Tenants are being allowed to stay in the cottages on a month-to-month basis while plans for the historic district are being finalized, said Jack Roggenbuck, district superintendent for the state Department of Parks and Recreation’s Orange Coast District.

State officials would not comment on precisely when the residents will have to leave the cove.

Roggenbuck said the refurbished cottages probably will rent to the public for $75 to $400 per night.

While declining to comment on the controversial aspects of Crystal Cove’s transition, Carter said he is sad to think this might be the last tour he will give from the cottage that has been a second home to his family since he was 15.

This week, Carter’s 8-year-old grandson, Tristan Adamson was enjoying the same cove where Carter once played kick-the-can and warmed himself at bonfires.

“I feel sad for my children and grandchildren because they’re using it now like I did when I was their age,” he said. “It’s been a good life. . . . We’ve been very privileged to be able to live down there during these years.”

Other Heritage Month events include guided walks through Laguna’s downtown historic district on May 11 and May 25. Information: (714) 497-0320.