Trabuco Canyon : Residents Who Cherish Its Peace and Scenic Beauty Hope Its Future Can Be Protected From Developers

Sherry Baerg and her daughters are rarities in California, where nobody seems to sit still. They’re fifth- and sixth-generation natives of woodsy Trabuco Canyon, which Baerg calls “its own state of mind.”

“Out here,” Baerg said, “family really means something.”

Baerg’s photo albums bear the likenesses of ancestors who did not move west from Kansas or Virginia or emigrate from Asia or Europe. They are all from Orange County. To be even more specific, they are all from Trabuco Canyon, dating back to the turn of the century.

In making almost any comment about Trabuco, Baerg summons up a family member and a shared memory, as she does in talking about development or the suburbs that seem to pull closer every day, like wild horses crossing the hills.

“All I know is how I felt when I was 10 years old, and I was riding in the car with my grandparents, and we wheeled around Cook’s Corner,” said Baerg, 39. “I said, ‘If I had all the money in the world, I’d buy all this property and not let anyone in here unless I wanted to.’ ”

But Baerg’s grandmother knew a thing or two, “so she told me a very wise thing. She said I could feel that way and never be content. She was right. I don’t care to upset my life with all that anger, because it takes away from the joy of living here, which is no small thing. To me, it’s everything.”

For a moment, Baerg looked longingly out her living room window, at a canopy of live oaks dancing in the distance and Santiago Peak rising like a pyramid.

“But,” she said, “I’m glad we have people who don’t mind fighting the fight. Because the truth is, we need them.”

More than any of the county’s wilderness enclaves, Trabuco Canyon is threatened by development, which has already altered its demographics and changed the shape of its natural theater forever.

Robinson Ranch. Trabuco Highlands. Hidden Ridge. Rancho Santa Margarita. Coto de Caza.

Each of these high-priced developments was, before being built, part of Trabuco Canyon, whose current configuration is defined as Cook’s Corner (the junction of Live Oak Canyon Road and El Toro Road) on the west; Trabuco Creek on the east; the 3,100 acres of O’Neill Regional Park on the south; and the vast stretches of the Cleveland National Forest on the north.

The boundary was changed in 1985, when the county-approved community plan affecting Trabuco Canyon was changed, in the words of local activist Ray Chandos, “to accommodate the developers, who wanted to put in--and did--what could never have been construed as ‘rural projects.’ ”

The presence of stucco and tile roofs has brought the outside world closer, which most--but not all--residents find threatening. The population of the canyon is about 500, according to the Foothill Trabuco Specific Plan, which governs land use in the area.

Residential development has “brought significant services closer,” said Susie Wiberg, 45, who misses “seeing the stars at night” since city lights have crept in closer over the years, brightening the sky.

“But now,” she said circumspectly, “if you have an Oreo attack at midnight, you can be in Rancho Santa Margarita in two minutes.”

Even so, Wiberg is one of those fighting to keep things largely as they are in Trabuco Canyon, where the elementary school is 118 years old, and kids still ride ponies up and down potholed, pebbled streets, many of which still aren’t paved.

“There’s so many trails around here, you can ride wherever you want, and nobody gives you a hard time,” said Ashley Robinson, 13, who was riding her horse, Billy.

*

Wiberg likes the fact that people at the general store still reminisce about El Toro Dick, a local character who died not long ago and whose ashes rest atop the highest counter, not far from autographed pictures of John Wayne and Gene Autry, who used to stop in.

That’s the store where the gas tanks outside bear the likeness of an Indian chief and the words, “Ain’t had no gas since ‘79!” El Toro Dick lived right across the street, in a rock-encrusted cave hollowed out of a sloping hillside.

“See ya in the mornin’! Good lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise,” reads the inscription in memory of Richard Simpson, otherwise known as El Toro Dick, a neighborhood fixture until his death in September 1995.

“He was an old rummy--very nice, totally harmless--who lived in that cave across from the Trabuco Oaks Steak House,” said Wiberg, feeding her horse as a rooster crowed in the distance. “That’s the place where Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo used to be regulars. You know, where they’ll cut your tie off if you wear one in. Well, the whole neighborhood just kind of took care of old Dick--El Toro Dick, I mean, not the president--and it’s that kind of spirit and kindness that makes this place what it is.”

Such spirit has also emboldened Trabuco residents and created what county planning director Tom Mathews calls “a political machine,” one that makes frequent emotional appearances before the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors in scrapping to maintain a quality of life that Baerg and her family have clung to for six generations.

One of the cogs in that machine is college professor Chandos, 47, a 13-year resident of the canyon and one of its most outspoken activists, who says, “You’ve got to be a bit of a militant just to keep living here.”

Militancy is needed, Chandos said, because Trabuco is far more threatened than Silverado or Modjeska canyons or any outback community next to Ortega Highway.

Trabuco’s big enemy, he maintains, is Orange County government, which he said “would develop every scrap of land it could find . . . dirt the size of a postage stamp,” if left unchallenged.

*

That is why Chandos and others here favor Trabuco Canyon becoming its own incorporated city or attaching itself to one in order to create a local government and keep the county at bay.

“It’s been a constant struggle to keep the encroachment of urban development from destroying the character of Trabuco that drew us all here in the first place,” said Chandos, who claims to spend much of his time at a computer terminal, drafting responses to environmental impact reports on developments.

His latest campaign is to stop a proposed gas station and 42,000-square-foot strip mall directly across from the Cook’s Corner bar that he contends would violate the Foothill Trabuco Specific Plan, the county planning document aimed at restricting growth.

Another project drawing heated opposition these days is the proposed Saddleback Meadows, a proposed 222-acre, 318-unit housing development now before the Board of Supervisors.

Two groups opposing Saddleback Meadows are the residents of Ramakrishna Monastery, a fixture in the canyon since 1949, and St. Michael’s Abbey, which has been here since 1959.

Richard Jennings--known as Swami Viprananda--said a teeming residential development built within 100 yards of the monastery’s nature trail “would have a devastating impact on everything we do.”

Those who live in the canyon, Jennings said, were “drawn solely by the rural quality of life. If you want the standard Orange County experience, you don’t come to Trabuco Canyon. If people wanted to live in an urban or suburban place, believe me, there’s plenty of places they could find.”

The monastery, which houses seven monks, is, like the abbey, the beneficiary of a stunning hillside setting, ringed by coastal live oaks and sycamores and offering a panoramic view of a valley.

“It’s imperative for such a place to have some degree of isolation,” he said. “It’s extremely quiet and peaceful here, and we hope it will always remain so. But these days, we wonder. And we worry a lot.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Trabuco Canyon

Points of Interest: 3,100 acres of O’Neill Regional Park offer freshwater streams and an abundance of wildlife. Area also includes the legendary Cook’s Corner bar, the Ramakrishna Monastery, St. Michael’s Abbey and a general store named, simply, the Trabuco General Store.

History: O’Neill Regional Park and much of the surrounding land was once part of Rancho Trabuco, granted to Santiago Arguello in 1841 by the Mexican government. The land eventually became the property of James Flood, a wealthy San Francisco businessman, and Richard O’Neill Sr., a former butcher and packinghouse owner. Both immigrated to California during the Gold Rush.

Key Issues: Residential and commercial development is a bigger concern here than in any of Orange County’s canyon areas. Several areas on the southeast fringe of Trabuco Canyon gave way years ago to subdivisions, and more projects are proposed. Some residents say the Foothill Trabuco Specific Plan, designed to limit such development, is in danger of being violated.