Whose Woods These Are

David Livingstone was riding his bicycle one day in 1997 when he stumbled on a community that seemed out of place in Los Angeles.

The vegetation was exotic and abundant, and the smell of jasmine and eucalyptus was unmistakable. A gravel-lined creek made its way down the center of the hilly neighborhood, ducking under bridges along the way.

There were no sidewalks, no street lights, no picket fences. Residents were as likely to hear the croaking of frogs as the honking of horns. And at night, if the wind was blowing in the right direction, they could make out the sound of the waves washing up on the shore.

It was hard to believe that this woodsy enclave with the weekend-getaway feel was only a few minutes’ drive from Santa Monica’s bustling Third Street Promenade.

From that day on, David Livingstone never considered purchasing a house anywhere but in the Rustic Canyon section of Pacific Palisades.

“He wouldn’t look in another area,” said Sophia Livingstone, laughing at the recollection of her husband’s stubbornness. “He kept saying, ‘I want to live in this canyon.’ ”

Technically, Rustic Canyon encompasses a large area that starts with Mulholland Drive on the north, then winds its way down between Will Rogers State Historic Park on the west and Riviera Country Club on the east, finally reaching its southern border near Pacific Coast Highway at Mesa Road, where a ridge separates it from Santa Monica Canyon.

But to the people who live there, Rustic Canyon really consists of the 250 or so homes in the lower portion of the canyon, from Sunset Boulevard south.

The quaint, unassuming nature of the community belies the expense of the real estate. Betty Lessing, a Palisades Realty agent who has lived in the same Rustic Canyon home for 41 years, remembers when she sold the area’s first property for more than $1 million, in the mid-1980s.

Now, she noted, it’s nearly impossible to find a home for less than $1 million and not uncommon to see listings for two or three times that.

“It’s an extremely desirable area,” said Penny Negrin of Fred Sands Realtors in Pacific Palisades. “There are very few homes for sale, and when they come up, they sell very quickly.”

The Livingstones bought one of the area’s smaller houses, paying $765,000 in January 1998 for a two-bedroom, three-bath 2,000-square-foot lodge with high ceilings, balconies and a bedroom that sits on a platform overlooking the living room.

“We feel very lucky to have found this place,” said Sophia Livingstone.

The fact that Rustic Canyon previously escaped the attention of the Livingstones, who had been renting in another section of Pacific Palisades, isn’t surprising to longtime residents, who marvel that so few Southland residents know about their community. They would prefer to keep it that way.

Rustic Canyon has been a hideaway throughout its storied history. The site of a U.S. Forestry Service testing station in the late 19th century, it was developed in the early 1920s by a group of wealthy and eccentric members of the Los Angeles Athletic Club who had formed their own social group, which they called the Uplifters.

During Prohibition, the Uplifters Club--whose membership included legendary producer Hal Roach, “Wizard of Oz” author L. Frank Baum and other entertainment luminaries--built ranches and cabins that they used to host raucous parties at which alcohol flowed freely.

(“Uplifters” referred both to the group’s desire to “uplift art” and to its conviction, expressed by Baum, that “nothing has been found more elevating than a cocktail: except perhaps several of them.”)

“This has always been a place where you could hunker down and not be seen,” said Randy Young, a publisher who grew up in the canyon and whose 1975 “Rustic Canyon and the Story of the Uplifters,” written with his mother, Betty Lou Young, chronicled the area’s past. “For the Uplifters, this was their own Utopia.”

The group went broke during the Depression and disbanded in 1947, but physical reminders of the era remain, from the “Uplifters Ranch” sign in the community’s center to the three remaining log cabins, built by the early residents to achieve the “rustic” look.

And, of course, the dense landscape of towering old trees--oaks, sycamores, acacias, eucalyptuses--continues to be revered by the residents, who strongly resist any homeowner’s plan to cut one of them down.

“The priority has been trees first, houses second,” said Young. “Houses are built around the trees.”

One word immediately comes to mind to describe Rustic Canyon architecture: eclectic.

Though many of the homes stay within the rustic tradition, the potpourri ranges from the Uplifters cabins and Craftsman bungalows to spectacular and often daring modern structures, including the works of well-known architects, among them Raymond Kappe and Frederick Emmons.

“Just walking through the neighborhood in the morning can be a feast for the senses,” said Jim Jennewein, who bought a four-bedroom, three-bath ranch-style house on Hightree Road with his wife, Allison Robbins, while she was pregnant with their son, Jake, in 1995.

To Jennewein, one of the community’s strengths is the mixture of older and younger families, bringing a variety of sensibilities that results in the blend of architectural styles.

Rustic Canyon has always been popular with entertainment industry professionals. Robbins, who writes for television, and Jennewein, a motion picture writer, weren’t the first members of their field seduced by the area’s privacy and unique character.

“It’s probably easier to borrow a Cross [pen] than a cup of sugar around here,” Robbins quipped.

The couple’s first year in the canyon was what Jennewein calls “tragicomic.” Expecting tranquillity, they moved in to find that two adjacent houses were undergoing major construction.

“Here we had this colicky baby, and it felt like we were living in a war zone,” Jennewein said. But, he added, the idyllic setting, in close proximity to some of the most scenic hiking trails in the Southland, ensured that there would be no regrets.

Aside from the noise, many longtime canyon residents worry about what they call the “mansionizing” of the neighborhood.

“You can hold back that tide only for so long,” said Young. “The property values are too high for someone to keep a little Craftsman cottage.”

But for the most part, the new and remodeled homes have retained the motif that attracted Brian Webb to the neighborhood in 1968, a style he calls “individual and unpretentiously informal.”

Webb and his wife, Grace, raised three children in a home they bought for $72,000 near the corner of Latimer and Haldeman roads, just across the narrow street from the neighborhood’s public park, the Rustic Canyon Recreation Center. Two of their daughters have started families of their own, and they frequently bring their children back to the canyon they love.

“We first saw Rustic Canyon as a rural oasis in the middle of the big city,” said Brian Webb. “And that continues to sum up this area.”

Canyon residents pride themselves on their strong sense of community, and the Rustic Canyon Recreation Center is the focal point of that spirit. Every Monday night throughout the summer, the park is the site of a neighborhood potluck picnic. Once a year, streets are roped off for a block party.

The community has also banded together in times of crisis, such as when heavy rain has caused the mountain-fed stream to flood, taking with it pieces of houses that were built too close to the banks.

But more than anything else, the residents are united by a desire to maintain the integrity of their treasured community. When they perceive that it is threatened--if trees are about to be cut down or overbearing architecture is about to go up--they make themselves heard.

One longtime Rustic Canyon homeowner recalls a time many years ago when the federal government sought to turn the natural stream into a concrete basin channel.

He joked: “We met them at the roads with guns in hand and told them, ‘You’re not coming in here.’ ”

Among the many residents who feel strongly about the importance of preserving Rustic Canyon’s charm are Ernie and Judy Kaplan.

Some 30 years ago, they began to visit the area frequently, hoping one day to be able to afford to call it home. In 1971, they were finally able to purchase an empty lot on Latimer Road.

“We would picnic on the lot, plant flowers and dream of the house,” recalled Ernie Kaplan, founding partner of a commercial real estate firm. Four years later, the Kaplans were able to build the house in which they raised their two sons, a five-level, 3,000-square-foot wood-and-glass structure that has to be seen to be appreciated.

Today, when Ernie Kaplan talks about Rustic Canyon, there’s no doubting that the dream lives on.

“Sometimes I’ll just lie on my back and look up at a sycamore tree that’s 200 feet high with limbs going in all directions,” he said. “And I’ll say to myself, ‘I’m in the city, but wow!’ ”

Dan Gordon is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.