All Things Stewart Springs
Independent tribute, watchdog & blog site since 2011
Inside look at Mount Shasta Vista's first 50 years: 1965 - 2015+
An informal history of the one-time de facto collective camp resort
and its futile efforts to grow into a standard community
by Stuart Ward
Note: This page obviously has nothing to do with Stewart Springs, which tribute-watchdog site it's in (only one that doesn't). It's about writer's long-time, same-elevation home front across the valley from the Springs, and it needed a home is all.
(To return to the Springs site any time if coming from there, click or swipe back-page function)
Shorter versions of parts 1, 2 and 3 were first published
in the now-zombied Mt. Shasta Herald on September 22 and 29, 2021
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The once-sleepy 50 year-old backwoods subdivision underwent a radical sea change in 2015. While the would-be rural community had already jumped down the rabbit hole ages before, "the Vista" was then to discover even greater depths, as a haven for unlicensed commercial pot grows. The following crazy-quilt retrospective by a longtime resident deep-dives into where the place was coming from leading up to that momentous year (which -- coincidence? -- coincided with its fiftieth anniversary). At the same time sharing events and personal experiences and briefly touching on post-2015 times, it hopes to explain why the remote development,
well, went to pot...on so many levels.
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"...the past is never truly past...it is always tugging up both
its treasures and its tragedies and
carrying them insistently into the future."
- Margaret Renk
[Part 1]
Wilderness condo, anyone?
The rustic wooden archway spanning the entrance bore the words “Mt. Shasta Vista” in hand-scrolled wooden letters. It beckoned, making your more whimsical first-time visitors driving under it imagine they were maybe entering some enchanted woodland realm or a charmingly rustic scout retreat. One sensed the hopes and dreams that had gone into it, how the place's earliest property owners -- initially only visiting summers from distant cities for extended camp outs and rendezvouses -- held a deep affection for the fledgling development, so neatly tucked in the high desert wooded foothills below Mount Shasta's northwestern slopes.
The sign, set back a ways from the blacktop and surrounded by trees on each side, now both long gone, had imparted a certain grace to the entrance of the juniper backwoods development, begun in the mid 1960s. It was located some fifteen miles out from both Weed and Grenada, off county road A-12, in the foothills of Mount Shasta's sleepy northwest side. The region reportedly long ago was one of the largest stands of juniper trees on earth; it was, appropriately enough, named Juniper Flats.
Happy campers become modern-day pioneers
So smitten by its charms were some among the flock of mostly older repeat vacationers -- many from the L.A. area -- that they decided to actually retire here. Collectively they'd segue their individual lots from simple first-generation recreational use into part of a thinly spread proto community of full-on retirement homes.
This wasn't as outlandish a move as it might've seemed, as the lots at the place's birth had been re-zoned by the county for single-family residency upon developer petition. No doubt the efforts launched by the few dozen landowners were in hopes that like-minded others would eventually follow suit, initially each covering their own water, electrical and sewage needs, like them, until eventually they could ideally build up some systematic, centralized infrastructure and transition the place into a standard rural community of financially-secure nature lovers (preferably fellow retirees, no doubt).
That was the starry-eyed vision. Alas, their initial gung-ho effort to add joint amenities beyond a few isolated power and phone lines and an informal community well was not fated to succeed.
Central among the reasons: contention surrounding the very land sale; a grand falling early on over a campaign to electrify the place; the high cost of drilling often very deep wells; and, later, the coup de grace: the arrival of those who blatantly refused to conform to county health and building codes.
Long story short, forces would conspire to torpedo the hopes and dreams of what instead proved to be only a short-lived code-compliant enclave of transplanted city folks. No more than some ten to fifteen percent of the parcels would ever get connected to the grid, and the cost of drilling individual wells often proved so prohibitive and iffy that, in time, an unabashed non-compliance by often less solvent, bohemian-leaning newcomers to the steep and costly county residential codes became commonplace.
The possibilities!
Not long after the brief honeymoon of the fledgling community, the place shifted gears -- strip gears is more like it -- to become a permanent bizarre limbo land, constantly at war with itself, an incongruous oil-and-water mix of code-compliant residences and decidedly code-challenged ones. Result: the Vista was frequently in hot water with county code-enforcement authorities.
It seems the developer had decided to play it by ear, initially not having any well-defined long-range plans or visions for the place (made transparent, anyhow) beyond serving as a simple -- i.e. primitive -- collectively owned and maintained, de facto recreational resort. Then, on the wings of the Vista's launch, Lake Shastina, a full-on residential development with infrastructure out the yin-yang, sprang up practically next door. Suddenly new subdivisions were starting up all over the place in the rural upstate California region.
It appeared the developer, along with a select group of owners who were thoroughly enjoying their extended annual camping visits here and falling under the mountain's spell, decided to get ambitious. They must've appreciated that it would take a critical mass of parcel owners -- many of whom it seems bought the lots only for being cheap and perfect for simple private retreats, or purely as investments -- willing to commit the necessary time, money and effort to manifest the infrastructure needed to bring such a massive transformation to fruition.
They'd surely crossed their fingers and hoped for the best.
It had first appeared to be little more than a Good Sam’s Club of sorts, tucked out in the boonies. An unassuming rural development offering weary city dwellers a mess of secluded, affordable, 2-1/2 acre-on-average parcels where every now and then they could enjoy some secluded camping, unwind from city cares and breathe fresh mountain air under the regal mountain's majesty.
The developer's apparent initial lack of any more ambitious financial commitment or vision plans was reflected by Vista's boilerplate ruling documents, or CC&Rs -- and the association status. It was a POA, or Property Owners Association, not an HOA, or Homeowners Association.
No nothing
At its launch there was no water, no electricity, no sewer system, no gas lines. Forget any paved roads or community center, public parks or playgrounds. It was nothing but a lot of lots, 1,641 of them (count 'em). Plus a labyrinthine 66-mile network of modest red cinder roads, aided by signage and a dauntingly tiny map, to access them all.
Called ranch roads by George Collins, the L.A.-region developer, they were fragile affairs built up of a loose rock base over often deep, sandy soil, with volcanic red cinder topping from a nearby cinder hill. As they were never designed to withstand constant heavy loads or frequent or fast traffic, a 15 miles-per-hour speed limit was set to both help preserve them plus keep the backwoods' relaxed, tranquil atmosphere intact and dust down. Ongoing maintenance was covered by the then-modest annual mandatory-membership property assessment informally called road dues.
A sea of turn-key, primitive wilderness camping condos, if you will, with initially only wispy dreams of maybe someday growing into something more; then again, maybe not. A number of lot owners -- the relative few who actually made use of the newly acquired properties, or those waiting until others developed the place a bit before jumping in -- imagined the possibilities, inspired by the secluded, affordable lots with the startling grandeur of their sweeping mountain views. Bear in mind this was during the late sixties through early seventies period, a rarefied, historic time of staggering mega social and political upheaval and growing spiritual awareness. The land had a pronounced dreamy quality. One that seemed to spark envisioning the sky as the limit when it came to the rural outpost's potential for growing into a thriving new woodland community.
Country comfort
Situated a few miles uphill and east of the soon-to-be exurb of Lake Shastina, many of the realm's parcels offered a profound sense of solitude (or mind-numbingly stark isolation, depending on one's mindset). Situated as most of the lots were between one to five miles off the nearest of the five blacktop entrances, with their subtle tranquility-eroding traffic wash, they could feel more like fifty due to their profound quiet.
The high-desert lots were spread over seven square miles of the juniper trees and sagebrush, with thin scatterings of tall pine. The development spanned nearly six miles between furthest points: Pilar Road at Perla Drive in its northeastern-most point to Trails End Road at Rising Hill Road in its southwestern-most point. National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands flanked several borders. Square-mile sections were platted into two giant clumps separated by a square mile of BLM land and the county highway A-12 running between the second, smaller clump of sections 23 and 13, near Pluto Caves and Sheep Rock respectively.
As often happened in rural subdivisions, the developers conjured up whimsical road names to try tickling the fancy of their target market: private vacation land seekers and impulsive casual investors. Evocative names, like Lost Mine Road, Zane Gray Drive and Happy Lane. Rich sounding names, like Silver Lode Road, Golden, and Bonanza. One was perhaps meant to evoke a classic movie line: Rosebud. Another was a shameless pun: Frankie Lane. A few were named after saints, like St. George Drive and St. Mary Road, perhaps lending the development an improbable air of being some sort of Catholic summer retreat. Two, Collins Drive and McLarty Road, were named after the developer and his main man, respectively; a third, Ragan Drive, was named after the local realtor who joined forces with them to move the sea of parcels. For all anyone knew, some roads, like Mildred Drive or Dottie Lane, were named after one's wife or the namer's mad crush from third grade.
Born amid controversy,
place became instant problem child
The development officially gave birth on November 3, 1965*. The brainstorm of developer George Collins's southern-California-based outfit, Pacific Shores Realty, it was land he'd purchased from a member of the pioneer descendant Martin family (likely a great-great-grandson or so), which laid claim to much of the wider region for ages. Longtime locals had grazed livestock on the land for generations, seasonally making cattle drives right on nearby sections of the then-sleepy highway; ancient cow patties still littered the writer's new parcel decades later. Also, the region had been deemed among the best hunting ground in the county for over a century. Before white settlers came, indigenous peoples seasonally hunted through the mostly waterless area; the writer found a complete obsidian arrowhead on his parcel the very first week.
The story goes that when Jess Martin sold the sprawling acreage to developer Collins, he hadn't bothered to first get permission from other family members. Big mistake. Apparently too late to stop the sale, they were apoplectic over the commercial nonsense soon set in motion on their now-lost ancestral holding. The region's other longtime residents shared in their livid outrage at the disruption to a long-established bucolic way of life and no doubt took concerns to the halls of local government. This was years before the handful of lot owner ever aspired to grow the primitive realm into a de facto rural retirement village and soon find themselves engaged in a take-no-prisoners war with the code-ignoring land buyers who'd dare horn in on the cheap into what, by then, the former would consider their domain.
The controversial land sale surely set the stage for the disaster soon to unfold. It had laid a faulty foundation for the world of ill will and vexation that came to define the domain.
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* According to the date formal paperwork was filed and time-stamped in Siskiyou county courthouse. This date was used rather than the earlier, yet to be filed, date of incorporation, August 18, 1965.
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Greenlighted by the county board of supervisors...
to their eternal regret
Locals grumbled how their longtime backwoods hunting, camping and grazing haven had been abruptly closed off just so a bunch of rich big-city folk could lollygag in their shiny Airstreams a few weeks each year.
Some of the county's then-four board of supervisor members no doubt sympathized with the aggrieved Martin family members and incensed locals; maybe they were initially skeptical over ever approving it. But due to Collins's persistence and earnest assurances plus his track record of having successfully launched subdivisions elsewhere -- and the board being budget-minded and living in California's third-poorest county -- they must've been ultimately won over. They were no doubt mindful of the fresh revenue stream 1,641 individually owned and taxed lots would supply (if, also, a world more paperwork).
Concerns had been raised over an apparent lack of water and the lots often being rocky, volcanic land that couldn't support conventional septic systems should owners ever want to build, and indeed the board insisted his team first dig several wells to show the land in fact did have sufficient water. They must've finally decided it at least appeared to maybe have enough -- and trusted that any future, would-be home builders, in exercising due diligence, would realize the cost of bringing in wells (and electricity) might be prohibitive and iffy -- and hoped that common sense would prevail.
Although the board finally approved the development in a three-to-one vote once other requested specifications, like enlarging the turnaround diameter of the cul-de-sacs, had been addressed, the one dissenting supervisor, a Mr. Jackson, remained doubtful. The well Collins drilled at the highest elevation to demonstrate there was water throughout if you went deep enough had only drawn five gallons a minute; he likely thought that wasn't enough to assure the place could always provide adequate (and affordable) water for vacationers opting to sink a well on their parcel to avoid having to haul water in. Or for possible home builders, for which an adequate water supply would be essential.
His skepticism would prove justified. He must've had to refrain from saying "I told you so" to fellow board members, assuming his dissenting vote wasn't just a sop to appease outraged locals. While many new residents would hit decent water at 200 to 300 feet in the lower sections, the depth required in the higher ones could be 700 feet or more. And even then, some wells were plagued with iron content turning white laundry pink, or worse, arsenic requiring expensive and laborious filtering systems to render the water safe for drinking.*
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*A retired couple on Gilman, the Kehners, living a mile from the writer, had drilled a deep well with water having arsenic levels within the then-acceptable health department limit when properly treated with rock salt filtration. Years later, they both died and not far apart. While writer never learned if arsenic poisoning was determined the cause of death or a contributing factor, not long after, the county health department would drastically reduce future wells' acceptable arsenic levels.
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Their faith in humanity to always be law-abiding and always do the right thing was about to be sorely tested. Over time there would evolve among county officials markedly shifting attitudes towards the beleaguered realm: initial thoughtful, cautious concern first gave way to frustration, then grew to exasperation. Then -- as things started really getting out of hand -- it turned to open hostility. Finally, as the county realized it had a perpetual problem child on its hands, it settled back into a stony, what-can-you-do-about-it? dismissiveness.
Although it was later events that would really aggravate the county, the initial downward spiral in sentiment beyond the grumbling locals, was no doubt indeed triggered by the sometimes serious lack of easily tappable water. It would lead, directly or indirectly, to most future problems. It was so serious, it caused countless future settlers of more limited means, especially those in the higher elevations, to openly ignore wealth and building codes. This in time amped the local government's scorn, derision and exasperation over the place through the roof. Its disregard for the place's eventual, seemingly hopeless dysfunctionality and its perpetually infighting residents, would spread to every county department clear down to dogcatcher (with, of course, the exception of tax collector).
An electrifying turn of events
Between the original owners' and regional residents' sour feelings over their lost stomping grounds and the scarce water, scarcer electricity, and often rocky ground realities making code compliance challenging, an already fraught situation was well on its way to snowballing out of control.
That handful of ambitious and adventurous lot owners -- after brainstorming the idea of settling and retiring as a congenial group of shared-vacation buddies to their respective properties -- were a scrupulously law-abiding group. Each first drilled an approved well, paid into a power fund to get electrical lines extended and installed a regulation septic system, thereby individually supplying their own infrastructure, needed before they could get a home-building permit. And that was issued only after submitting detailed construction plans, paying a fee, and agreeing to build to code and "in a timely manner."
Their generation, having weathered World War II, was used to toeing the line without question when it came to established authority. Though maybe a few were hands-on owner-builders who lived on the site during construction, most would hire contractors and live elsewhere until house completion.
At first glance, it looked like the place was maybe on its way to becoming a respectable -- if ultra-sparsely settled -- rural community. Telephone lines were extended for free, utility poles sometimes carrying both power and phone lines. But, significantly, the change would come at the price of ending popular first-generation use as the secluded retreats that many had bought them as being. Such owners likely had no plans of ever building on the lots; the region was too isolated and too water-challenged and non-electrified a location to even consider. They'd hoped things would stay primitive...and affordable: no mandatory assessments to try to "improve" things.
In their book, the land already had all it needed: simple road access. Though the lots were technically zoned for single-family residential occupancy, the place had been perfect as is for enjoying rustic getaways and retreats. You didn't mess with things, trying to turn it into something it wasn't really suited for -- especially if not enough fellow lot owners were willing to get on board with the huge effort and expense required to make a successful transition from primitive collective campground to standard community; one with all the bells and whistles city dwellers took for granted and were so shamelessly hooked on: central water, electricity, and waste disposal -- and, of course, paved roads.
Not another Lake Shastina
Hundreds of lot owners effectively protested what they saw as a capriciously changing of horses in the middle of the creek. The almost certain prospect of losing the pristine charm of the camping realm was now staring them in the face. Naturally they refused to chip into the voluntary assessment power and light fund spearheaded by Collins; camping out in view of someone's large living room window wouldn't have proven too enticing a prospect. Though the ambitious campaign to bring power to every parcel would fail, the thousand-plus contributions that were made would enabled\ bringing in power for the couple dozen or so retirement-couple members.
Flush with cash and feeling prosperous from selling their pricey city homes and champing at the bit to move onto the land they'd fallen in love with, they were psyched to create their own little Shangri-la. They anticipated luxuriating happily ever after amid the splendor of woodland solitude year round in their breezily urbane, transplanted So-Cal bonhomie.
Due to the prohibitively costly process of extending power lines out to the remote lots, the earlycomers rapidly exhausted the fund which so many had chipped in on, expecting it to be there for them when they were ready to build. Or for those they might want to sell their lots to, in order to assure a better price and quicker sale. It's unclear whether it had been planned as only the first round of contributions, as far greater cash infusions would be needed to electrify the whole place -- unless the power company had maybe tenuously agreed to absorb some or all of the remaining costs provided everyone got on board. It would have been a likely indicator that there were a great number of new, energy-thirsty customers itching to move onto the land, as was currently happening in almost-next-door Lake Shastina (formerly known by the less euphonious name of Dwinnell Reservoir after its dam was built in 1927).
Trying to goose lot values
Crucially, beyond the handful of early house builders and mobile home installers -- and those thinking to maybe build sometime in the future (plus those lot holders who'd hoped to keep the place primitive for simple camp use) -- were others, possibly the vast majority. They appeared keen on the idea of seguing the giant checkerboard of infrastructure-bereft lots into an actual, by-golly community...but not for themselves (perish the thought). No, they were detached investors just hoping to goose parcel values; with electricity available at every lot, lot prices and sellability would more likely increase.
Regardless of what some owners thought about the abrupt shift in land use and the embryonic rural community suddenly emerging, the tiny handful of certain age -- having the mindset, bucks and resolve to move fast and build their own de facto, thinly spread rural retirement village -- had gone for it lock, stock and barrel.
Inevitably, tempers flared after they rapidly depleted the power fund -- and the power company soon withdrew its commitment. The company came to realize that there wasn't any huge drove of new power customers eager to settle the remote lands and get hooked up to their mainline supply of go juice.
Power grab
A giant chasm emerged among both fellow lot owners and towards the developer who'd so zealously pushed for the fund, confident he could get everyone on board and thus maybe get the power company to subsidize or absorb further line extension costs. Or thought that -- in a dime, in a dollar -- people would agree to more voluntary (eventually maybe even mandatory) assessments to replenish the fund and further build out the development.
The writer's not sure, but possibly the provider, Pacific Power, became wary of investing so much money in such new rural developments with their relatively small profit base, especially on realizing the rocky ground made for difficult pole setting in Vista's case, and so they jacked up the extension per-foot costs to protect their short-term bottom line from hemorrhaging. A friend who'd lived in the New York backwoods around the same time recounted how, soon after he got his lines put in, his local power supplier raised the next would-be customer's extension cost from fifty cents to five dollars a foot, a prohibitive ten-fold increase. If this was the case here as well, it would've created a double whammy: the fund exhausted and the power company demanding new, sky-high extension fees that shocked senseless any would-be home and cabin builder, mobile home installer, or remaining die-hard camp-trailer vacationer expecting an affordable power extension rate.
In any event, it turned out that over a thousand property owners had effectively subsidized the electrical hookup costs of a couple dozen. Tempers surely must've erupted to match that of the long ago spewing lava of the place's namesake volcano. Some might've jumped to the cynical conclusion that the developer had intentionally misrepresented the financial realities involved in electrifying the whole place just to aid the homesteading ambitions of a few he'd become cozy with, or had otherwise fudged the facts and promised something he couldn't deliver, or worse, had no idea what he was doing.
Lookin' for a home in the country;
when worlds collide
Into this growing hornets' nest of snafus, misgivings, and sundry disconnects already plaguing the development and handicapping the lots' potential market values then entered a wildly different breed of owner, destined to put the proverbial cherry on top: Instant homesteaders. Those serious back-to-the-landers who often bore rebellious spirits and little cash. With a full-court-press determination, they were destined over time to forever blur there being any clear, dedicated purpose for the place. Was it a primitive co-op camp resort, or was it a fledgling living community? It couldn't be both. Not without creating a world of confusion and discord.
The tumultuous mid to late 1960s through early 1970s period was, among other things, witnessing a phenomenal back-to-the-land movement. First sparked by the rapidly emerging counterculture fleeing Babylon (as some liked to put it), it soon cut across class lines. The first excited residents, likewise burned out on city living, had themselves gotten swept up in it. If untouched nature was so nice to visit, why not just live in it full time and be done with it? In the Vista's case, it was a luxurious notion perhaps only the comfortably situated could afford to pursue...if conforming to the steep and costly and then-enforced county health and building code regulations -- made far costlier for the lack of any easier water, electricity or sewage systems -- for establishing what the powers that be deemed an acceptable residence.
As anyone who lived through that historic period appreciated in spades, it was a time of astoundingly polarized social and cultural upheaval as well as dramatic spiritual awakenings. A growing stream of less solvent yet worlds more freedom-minded, non-conformist people -- a far greater number than the first Vistan settlers -- were also making the grand exodus from the city to country living. It was inevitable that they would soon find themselves gravitating towards the same generous-sized, secluded lots with their inspiring namesake views and jaw-droppingly low prices.
Game changer
Some, and eventually most, appeared intent on ignoring any and all of the silly and unreasonable codes, regulations and restrictions dedicated bureaucratic forces had come up with. Ones that tried insisting that one first drill what might prove to be a 700-foot well and then pay an extortionate price to extend power lines at so many dollars a foot before technically being allowed to stay on their own parcel for more than thirty days a year -- or build anything more than a fence without first applying for a permit.
Screw that. They figured what one did on their own remote parcel out in the middle of nowhere was their business.
As the first wave of relatively affluent residents hadn't seemed to mind too much meeting the exhaustive and super-exacting building standards demanded to become official residents -- it was, for better or worse, just the way things were -- the local bureaucracy must have gotten used to people willing to comply the full letter of the law. Maybe, too, they were coming under pressure from the state with new, far stricter standards for approving subdivision developments. Possibly some lot buyers had already been trying to drop anchor and casually live in trailers and motor-homes, and the county felt the need to get tough with a public that didn't always seem to respect their departments' chiseled-in-stone Rules and Regulations regarding what constituted acceptable living structures.
One story went around how a lot-owning couple early on had tried following the rules but then got denied a permit. They'd just wanted to pour a cement slab for their brief annual RV vacation visits. They were told no way; they'd first have to put in a well and septic system and hook up to power before they could ever pour that slab. Sorry, but it didn't matter if you only visited one month a year; the code was the code.
One suspected that the newly established dwellers, having gone through the mill, were all too aware that among the over thousand individual lot owners were bound to be some who would try to end-run the system, refusing to play by the rules and render unto Caesar. Maybe they'd put pressure on the health and building department by reporting even the tiniest infraction to discourage even such 'respectable' vacationers who were also now effectively intruding on the newly emerging residential scene by erring on the side of caution. Legal residents no doubt fully expected, and maybe even demanded, they enforce the exact letter of the law with which they'd complied, dammit. Fair's fair, after all.
However it all came down exactly, such draconian enforcement of rules and procedures on how to live on -- apparently, even just visit -- your own property out in the middle of nowhere had a predictable way of inspiring various people to view them as unreasonable and deserving of being ignored. As the poet Gibran said in The Prophet, "You delight in laying down laws, yet you delight more in breaking them."
So then enters stage left a flock of happy-go-lucky, freedom-minded back-to-the-landers, some of decidedly modest means, intent on planting themselves on their new-owned lots before the ink on the sales paperwork had a chance to dry.
That's when all hell first really broke loose in Mt. Shasta Vista.
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The Vista Thru Time
1965-2015
[Part 2]
Ephemeral dream community goes berserk
The place's already gnarly vibe, first from contention by locals and family owners by the sale, then over the electrification brouhaha, and now from an eruption within over a sudden emerging plague of non-compliant residents, went into overdrive. Compliant residents were unhinged, frothing at the mouth. A snowball of contentious forces was growing to such monstrous proportions, it might've seemed as if some demon had perhaps taken hold of the place.
This massive force-field of negativity was destined to bedevil the would-be peaceful realm for ages.
In a nutshell: Between (1) an embittered farming/ranching community coming to view The Vista's inhabitants through distorted fun-house mirrors as a weird invasive mix of imperious big-city exiles and irascible hillbillies; (2) teeth-gnashing, code-conforming residents on the warpath over the emergence of code-ignoring dwellers eroding the place's livability and property values; (3) disillusioned absentee parcel holders, most indifferent to the day-to-day realities of its relatively few residents, soon stuck with lots they could often neither enjoy recreationally or sell without taking a bath; (4) non-conforming residents taking heat from the aforementioned frothing-at-the-mouth residents and kicking back, defying a system they viewed as oppressive; and (5) the put-upon county authorities over time essentially giving up even trying to enforce health and building codes in a place many locals had resented being formed all along...add these together and the place never had (you surely knew it was coming) a snowball's chance in hell.
A querulous spirit had come to infect the backwoods like an incurable disease. A contentious force field hovered over the otherwise serene high desert woodlands like so many storm clouds forever threatening to rain on the parade of all: detached speculators, absentee property holders, code-legal residents and "outlaw" dwellers alike.
No matter how many future residents might dedicate themselves to try turning things around and salvage the development's seeming early promise, the place would never amount to being more than a stalled-out, de facto primitive recreational resort and soured investment boondoggle that failed to grow into a recognized community, its evolution arrested within a few short years of its unlucky start.
In realtors' sometimes stark insider parlance, the place was roadkill.
Down the rabbit hole
The more free-wheeling, non-compliant dwellers invading the briefly respectable preserve jumped down the rabbit hole into their own private worlds which the realm's rarefied energies so easily inspired. Soon enjoying wild Mad Hatter tea parties, all but oblivious to the outside world and its bothersome regulations that they ignored with pirates' glee, they dismissed as largely impotent the ravings the rants of the Queen of Hearts, in the guise of a largely-powerless property owners' board and its minions, who screamed, "They'll build to code or it's off with their heads!"
Expanding on this Alice's Adventures in Wonderland analogy a bit more: Standing in for the mischievous Cheshire cat was the spirit of rebellion that mocked dully accepted ways of a sometimes over-strict law-and-order mindset. And the hookah-smoking caterpillar? The stony, spiraling vortex energies of massive Mount Shasta; the backwoods development clung to its very foothills a half hour drive from any town's modifying influence. It was fully under its surreality-inducing sway, as if, like the hookah-smoking Caterpillar, asking everyone who ventured into its dreamy, topsy-turvy domain, "Who are you?"
According to one definition of vortex energy, given by Ashalyn, founder of the local outfit, Shasta Vortex Adventures, which encourages the exploration and embrace of the region's metaphysical energies for spiritual growth,
"A vortex is a confluence or coming together of planetary ley lines and guidelines. As these lines meet, they create a spiraling motion which can swirl down into the earth, up into the cosmos, or move in both directions at the same time. This movement increases the vibrational frequency of that area, making it easier to connect with the realms of spirit."
While some new-age thinkers went so far as to claim Mount Shasta was no less than the root chakra of the entire planet, most everyone at least agreed that it indeed emanated some subtle yet palpable, mysterious and powerful force. One that affected everyone within its field -- and not always in a good way. That's why American Indians never lived any closer to it; its energies were felt too strong for comfort and that living too close would show disrespect to Great Spirit.
In any event, being under the mountain's sway could induce some pretty wild fantasies, if not outright hallucinations. Add this to the Vista being such untamed land and it could easily erase from mind any pesky notions of following the dominant social order's wearisome, constrictive, sometimes seemingly arbitrary edicts.
To say code-compliant residents were upset when the bohemian, distinctly untoward scene took off, in almost spontaneous combustion, by people definitely not their kind, is putting it mildly. Their fledgling upscale-rustic community, one they'd banked such high hopes on and had poured tons of energy and committed time and money into establishing once burning the bridge to their former worlds was facing gravest peril.
Endangered wonderland
If they didn't scramble and stem the tide and demand the county enforce its own blasted codes, all would be lost...their nascent sweet-spot retirement village, gone with the wind. So, at the Queen's behest they summoned the Card Soldiers, in the guise of the county's health and building departments -- sometimes accompanied by a deputy should a situation threaten to be gnarly (and, in time, as a matter of course) -- to restore law and order in the now fraught and overwrought wonderland.
Time of course would prove their efforts a losing battle; residential code enforcement would be all but abandoned by county authorities after repeated efforts didn't take hold over the long run. And in yet later years, a hemorrhaging county budget resulted in eliminating the enforcement post altogether for a critical half decade. Code-compliant residents, stunned by the regional government's seeming inability and or unwillingness to enforce its own statutes -- ones they'd honored and obeyed and had deemed set in concrete -- were left spitting-nails mad, bent into pretzels, fit to be tied, twisted into knots, pick your metaphor.
In short, they wuz pissed.
Despite what had appeared such an auspicious start, first as a de facto popular shared vacation resort land, then a nascent rural retirement community, the latter would be only briefly enjoyed by a few dozen of the some 1,500 lot owners (allowing for multiple-lot holders) before it began its inexorable chaotic descent. It was to become a hopelessly sloppy mix of respectable code-approved homes and tumbledown trailers, tents, mobile homes and jerry-built dwellings -- all thrown together amid the vast sea of now-compromised recreational parcels. Confusion and uncertainty reigned. The occasional die-hard visit to still-uninhabited regions by those hoping to avoid heated politics and continue enjoying camping on their land no doubt led to mixed results.
The place became snared between worlds. Skitzy in its purpose, its very reason for being - was it a campground or a residential development? -- now fuzzy, all along it seemed an unwanted child, one bestowed with precious little 'parental' support from the county or surrounding community. Its residents and visiting parcel owners, scrambling for scarce potable water while almost unavoidably getting caught up in the marked polarization taking root between defiant newcomers and the strict law-and-order firstcomers, were left to fume and squabble and bicker and demonize each other til the cows came home.
Thus, the Vista, frozen in time and nursing a serious identity crisis, was deprived of ever finding a rightful place in te su
Emboldened by realm's remoteness
Despite such a crushing load of handicaps, over time there continued to be a steady trickle of buyers keen on moving onto the super-secluded, view-inspiring, incredibly cheap properties. Beyond long-term investors feeling stuck with holdings in the now-arrested development, disinterested speculators still hoping to make a buck, and those yet hoping to simply retreat on their parcels now and then -- beyond all these was that wild card always to be reckoned with: land-hungry people. People, often far from financially secure, burned out on the high cost and hassles of city living. They were attracted to the super-affordable lots like moths to flame. One month's city rent could cover the down on a generous-sized piece of undisturbed land they could then live on and tenuously call their own once scoring some old trailer or mobile or simply camp out -- and screw urban living with its soulless, overpriced ticky-tacks and greedy landlords.
They'd cross their fingers and hope to be left alone to exist between the cracks of society and its costly living standards that so often made making ends meet next to impossible. While some on tight budgets, including the writer, would grudgingly build to code, others, blissfully ignorant of -- or studiously ignoring -- the mundane city-centric regulations trying to be enforced so deep in the boonies, held more of a dismissive Building code? You're kidding, right? attitude. One really couldn't blame them. People, unless masochists -- even those preoccupied with their abodes being, first and foremost, investments and so willing to toe the line and do whatever was needed to get squared away -- would naturally prefer living scenes to be as simple and carefree as possible.
The succeeding waves of non-compliant dwellers were emboldened by several factors: (1) being historic times of a tectonic shift in human consciousness and lifestyles, with growing numbers wanting to get out of Dodge and back to nature; (2) the place's remoteness, making it feel like its own little kingdom, an outland far removed from any mundane downer regulations; (3) the all but abandoned -- but lingering in spirit -- first-generation camp-use-only once the proto community of approved homes emerged, creating enough chaos and uncertainty to take ready advantage of; and (4) the increasing lack of successful and sustained residential code enforcement by the county, despite the initial solid core of code-compliant dwellers, once its earlier enforcement forays had been largely fought and won.
The first wave of unauthorized builders -- variously labeled code violators, illegal residents and, perhaps the unkindest cut, squatters (on their own land, mind you; maybe a crude reference to not having toilets) -- would move in with a casual air of "Hey, what's the big deal? We're just building a little shelter on our parcel out in the middle of nowhere; c'mon, you can't be serious." Over time, learning something of the place's drawn out code-conformity battle but also of the increasingly spotty enforcement, other newbies made bold to go on the offensive. They pulled in their sundry derelict travel trailers and long mobile homes, or built ramshackle shelters on the fly, bearing openly defiant attitudes of "Hee, hee, what're you goin' to do about it, huh?" Or like screaming eagles: "Hey, this was still America last time I checked; this is my land and I'll do what I damn well please on it; back off if you know what's good for you."
A law unto themselves
Increasingly, non-code shelter construction and living in utility-unconnected mobile homes became the rule more than the exception. Unapproved structures sprang up like mushrooms after a heavy rain. While some homemade homes were artful, others were void of any charm except perhaps to their inhabitants. It was almost as though dwellers had time-warped back to the pioneer era, when plains settlers built primitive earth-sheltered soddies and forest settlers threw together rude log cabins. As if, late in the twentieth century, the development had somehow magically become a latter-day frontier far removed from modern times and all its spirit-stifling rules and regulations for how one was supposed to live.
Though many such dwellings weren't ever officially "red-tagged" by the county (designated unlawful to inhabit), they still had a definite stigma attached to them. The disapproving and hostile reactions by others over the fact they even existed could make enjoying staying in them with anything approaching an abiding peace of mind a bit iffy for all but perhaps the thickest skinned.
In time, certain dwellers -- feeling light years away from any dependable, responsive law enforcement save for more serious matters (and even then, a forty-five minute wait time wasn't uncommon) -- would essentially deem themselves a law unto themselves. Feeling the need to act as citizen deputies, as it were, to keep the realm peaceable and law abiding according to their lights, the old guard residents patrolled the sprawling backwoods realm with an iron authority -- which more than a few found off-putting and ridiculous, if not downright scary.
Turning this abiding vigilante tendency upside down, one non-compliant resident, decades later in the late eighties, had taken some serious heat over being suspected of growing pot (he wasn't), a deed then very much illegal and vigorously prosecuted. A Sheriff's helicopter hovered dangerously (and illegally) close over the big truck tarp he'd stretched from the trees over his school bus for shade, suspecting he was trying to hide a verboten grow. Outraged at the invasion of space and not shy, he'd openly flipped them off. Naturally, they couldn't let that rude effrontery to their authority pass. Other members soon walked onto his land loaded for bear, pointing weapons at him as if just itching for an excuse to open fire. He decided to displace some of the resulting angst he experienced and equal things out by riding about on his motorcycle with a prominently visible sidearm and confronting various residents over things he disapproved of.
Buy in Haste...
No doubt many impulsive among the land's first buyers interested in actually using the land were at best no more than vaguely aware of the place's sundry handicaps and liabilities, any number of which would turn off your more circumspect land shopper exercising due diligence. They were giddy over being able to grab such a nice-sized piece of unspoiled land in such a popular recreational region at such a dirt cheap price. Eureka! It was practically the modern-day equivalent of history's Forty Acres and a Mule government giveaway (if with likewise-deemed marginal land). The parcels proved so affordable that any normally felt need of making a judicious assessment could fly out the window, aided and abetted by the mountain's powerful spell; parcels were snapped up like so many bargain basement steals.
Before the place's sundry disheartening realities at last percolated the grey matter, the would-be latter-day pioneers spun excited dreams and schemes of how they'd soon be enjoying their new, secluded woodlands, so nicely hidden away amid the maze of private country roads, blissfully beyond modern times' slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Add to them and the legal residents the more thoughtful, involved investors who, despite the discouraging unfolding realities, still clung to the idea that the parcels might still make good retreats, worthy of maybe someday at least building vacation cabins on; and the many parcel flippers who'd grab the lots imagining how easily they'd move them up the food chain as the number of code-legal structures increased, making easy money... Add these together and the overall property ownership was deadlocked in conflicting lot-ownership intentions, operating at hopelessly cross purposes, resulting in the Vista perpetually existing in a state of confusion and discord.
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The first-generation settlers had, themselves, at first been mere vacationing campers, wanting to enjoy pristine nature a spell, but some no doubt sussing the place's possibilities for settling. They preferred -- or were at least willing to make generous allowances for -- the pronounced absence of any infrastructure whatsoever beyond the fragile cinder roads.
While this had presented little or no problem during the first years of exclusive camping and simple retreat use -- trailers being self-contained and one otherwise resigned to making like a bear in the woods a while -- it would be flirting with sure disaster once assorted resource-shy, would-be residents rolled the dice and dropped anchor amid the new rural homes and never sought anyone's approval but their own. In proceeding to establish such primitive long-term camps and year-round ramshackle dwellings, the pedigree of Vista residency, again, began its long irreversible decline. (At least to the way of thinking of convention-minded lot owners who prized neat order, conformity, and blind respect for rules and regulations, whether reasonable or not.)
Over the decades as the Vista morphed from primitive camp lots to fledgling standard community to mongrel, anything-goes outback, it became the wayward realm the county would soon throw up its hands at in total exasperation. It appeared they'd allowed some dread Frankenland to be created. It was clearly becoming a village menace, an ongoing threat to orderliness. Officials despaired over how to resolve the growing anarchy and lawlessness emerging amid the thin scattering of code-legal homes.
Some no doubt took refuge in magical thinking, imagining it simply vanishing.
An onerous building code & the owner-builder
Unsanctioned home structures would increasingly flourish in the Vista through the 1980s and 1990s. More and more, buyers then eager to settle appeared to lack both the funds and willingness to build anything to code. Especially since one couldn't get a house-building permit before first springing for an approved well and septic system and, usually, a power line extension. As said, freer spirits considered such codes absurdly over-complicated and needlessly intrusive, besides being exorbitantly costly. As if maybe they only reflected the cushy living standard of the more affluent strata of society that insisted everyone dance to their tune. Or else.
Hoping to avoid such stringent codes -- and the inflated lifestyles of would-be upward mobiles, forever tempted to live beyond their means and soon drowning in debt -- was the very reason so many moved into the Vista in the first place: to get back to basics, to live more simply, in closer harmony with nature and within one's means. Of course, some were doubtlessly thinking short-term, intending to stay only as long as they could before taking heat over their non-copacetic shelters from uptight busybodies making the situation a losing proposition.
The train of thought of more reasonable souls went something along the line that while it was one thing to have a few commonsense guidelines in place to avoid getting unsightly, flimsy owner-built structures that might blow over in the first strong wind, plus to ensure critical hygienic standards, it was another altogether to demand one living on their own private land in the middle of nowhere construct a continuous foundation, have a minimum size, overbuild by a safety factor of five, install double-glazed windows, super-insulate the roof, install a fire sprinkler system... There appeared an extraordinary disconnect from reasonableness there somewhere.
In the 1970s, a grassroots effort came about led by a group of outraged Mendocino county, California, rural owner-builders to encourage the state legislature to establish less onerous building requirements for those building on their own land and for their own use. It resulted in then-governor Jerry Brown approving a Class K housing bill specifically with such rural owner-builders concerns in mind. But it got so watered down in 1981 by an apparently construction-industry friendly state assembly that it was left to each county to adopt or not.
Only three did; Vista's Siskiyou county wasn't one. Its building department, at home dealing with contractors who knew the drill in their sleep, seemed to be owner-builder hostile. They didn't want to waste their time guiding amateur builders through the myriad steps involved in conforming to the quagmire of regulations and specifications they were paid to rigorously uphold. "If you can't understand it, hire a contractor" was their dismissive attitude. They assumed -- not without good reason, given the code's incredibly far-reaching, pricey requirements -- that many owner-builders were only reluctantly conforming and so would try to 'cheat' the code at every given opportunity. (Over a decade after getting my own tiny house green-tagged, despite having indeed 'cheated' on a few minor things, I ran into the by-then retired head building inspector at the post office one day. (He came out once, at the very start of inspections.) Perhaps intuiting I hadn't fully toed the line and seemingly still wanting to take me to task, he asked warily, with knitted brows, "Did we ever sign you off?")
While such draconian requirements no doubt discouraged many earlier would-be non-compliant builders, in later times, with the once iron grip of regulatory bureaucracy's enforcement slipping, a rebellious spirit gained serious ground. People aspired to build rural shelter on their own land however they fancied, thank you very much, never thinking to get any Mother-may-I? permission from any blasted bureaucratic authorities and, adding insult to injury, have to pay for the privilege. Though on a much smaller scale, in some circles playing "beat the code" was as popular a cat-and-mouse game as "what pot laws?" of current times. Bound and determined to live on their bought-and-paid-for property and figuring possession was nine-tenths of the law, such Vistans' attitude was, "This is my property and I'll do whatever I want on it; go jump in a lake if you don't like it."
...regret at leisure
As the place's long-festering problems became all too clear to parcel owners, an intense love-hate relationship pattern with the land emerged -- most especially among those who'd hoped to affordably settle on their lots long-term and at last enjoy some long-sought rural solitude. It was "Buy in haste, regret at leisure"; over time it became a sad familiar song. Lured by the rural development's affordable remote parcels and what at first had appeared a refreshingly notable absence of any "Thou Shalt" authority, at least any with actual teeth, more than a few buyers dismissed the posted signs as little more than blustering Barney Fife bluff. But then, any buyer who leaned towards wanting to be law abiding realized, with sinking heart, that the signs sometimes really did mean business. If wanting to make use of the place beyond just camping up to 30 days a year and not risk the rug suddenly getting pulled out from under one, the lots' woeful lack of infrastructure would require shelling out a small fortune to square things away.
It was like ten-cent parcels had a hidden million-dollar spoiler attached.
For the same or related reasons, parcels seemed destined to become an albatross around the necks of countless investors, speculators, and would-be vacationers alike. With holdings no longer part of a simple de facto recreational development after homes and power and phone lines began cluttering the once semi-pristine domain, they were usually left unable to sell them at a profit as either vacation lots or building sites to anyone knowing the score -- which didn't take much sussing to discover. One had only to talk to your typical walking-wounded, teeth-gnashing resident; their ears would soon singe from the aggrieved party who, warming to their task, raked the place over the coals with almost demonic intensity.
It was a buyer-remorse pattern fated to become most owners' relationship with the most peculiar 1,641 parcel development.
But the subtle magic and simplicity of seeming affordable tranquil backwoods under the protective presence of a magical mountain, worlds away from noisy, over-wound city living, kept grabbing new flocks of both would-be residents and impulsive investors alike. While the latter of course only thought to flip the undervalued parcels, increasing numbers of the former came to ignore mundane concerns like conforming to the by then only sporadically enforced codes -- until out of the blue it bit them on the backside and they joined the full-throated, howling chorus of the disenchanted.
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Lots sold themselves
As mentioned, though the lots were technically zoned to permit building single-family residency, they were first marketed primarily as primitive vacation lands, simple recreational getaways. Maybe over time owners would get together to create something more ambitious. Maybe not.
It was all upfront and legal under then-existing California laws covering such rural subdivisions.
Essentially the lots were offered as simple places of retreat for weary city dwellers wanting to rough it a while, enjoy having a refuge with their own piece of relatively unspoiled, secluded nature. Tomorrow, who knows? The sky was the limit if you had the bucks to conform to code and liked the idea of living so far off the beaten path, amid natural seclusion.
Developer Collins had maybe sensed he needn't invest any more time, money or effort in the project to move than he did. If owners wanted to settle the place, let them take on what all was needed to be done; it was too dicey for him to risk pouring any greater fortune into it in hopes things would take off. If so, he'd been right. It appeared that enthusiasm over the chance to wing it and spend a little pleasant time amid the solitude of one's own bit of woodlands, majestic Mt. Shasta watching over big as life, proved contagious during those times with the back-to-the-land movement ramping up into high gear. With a bit of sizzling ad copy, the lots practically sold themselves.
After springing for drilling test wells and buying an already existing well with a super replenishing rate, just off Vista land, to satisfy the county that there was indeed water there, he was likely hopeful that every region of the elevation-varied realm might supply enough water should people ever want to actually settle on their parcels, or even just to visit and have their own well rather than have to haul every drop in. That said, he'd possibly downplayed the often extreme depth of the water table for bringing in individual wells with a healthy draw rate in higher elevations, instead talking up a happy picture of the unofficial de facto community well every lot owner was welcome to use.
Bottom line: he had created, at the very least, a simple, collectively owned wilderness retreat realm in a growingly popular vacation region. Each lot had well-maintained road access and had been platted to a fare-thee-well, corner boundaries marked by pounded-in, short red steel pipes and ribboned lathe sticks with exact scrawled bearings. Some ninety percent held enviable mountain views.
But the spiel and cheap prices naturally would attract many who had zero camping -- let alone building -- interest in mind....again, very likely the overwhelming majority. They'd snap up the parcels as long-term investments or short-term speculations, happy to have gotten in on the ground floor. They imagined how others -- not them, thank you, are you kidding? -- would soon be clamoring to enjoy camping on the secluded scenic properties, maybe even eventually shift gears to build homes or code-approved vacation cabins on them, both scenarios driving up lot values nicely.
Yet others, though primarily speculating, would maybe sample their untamed properties a time or two out of curiosity to discover what it was exactly that they'd snapped up, sight unseen. Some of these the land might've then grabbed and they decided to hold on to them long-term. They flirted with the idea of building dwelling structures if and when things progressed enough to enjoy visiting, maybe living in them a while or renting them out before finally selling at a tidy profit. (So many Americans, restless, rootless and frequently on the move, seemed to always view shelters as investments first and foremost; the notion of ever dropping anchor and cultivating a long-time residency anywhere, at least before reaching retirement age, was seldom even considered.)
A giant monkey wrench
The writer guesstimates that no more than maybe ten percent of the lots' owners continued entertaining any thoughts of building for any reason once the campaign to electrify the place had failed and sparked a major falling out among lot owners. The debacle had thrown a giant monkey wrench in the works, preventing any cohesive vision from ever coalescing. A group vision that was vitally needed if the place was ever to serve, long-term, the mutual benefit of the wildly divergent base of parcel holders.
On the surface, everything had seemed so hunky dory at first. One was in blissful ignorance of the festering behind the scenes storm clouds brewing over the place's very existence, of longtime locals' resentment over a bunch of high-and-mighty city folks crowding in and taking over their backwoods, crimping a long accustomed way of life.* Excited new lot owners couldn't know how the county, after lot owners started building on the often rocky volcanic foothills and struggling over the sometimes-scarce water, were coming to profoundly regret the decision to have ever green-lighted the dratted place, how they'd begun to view the forlorn development like a lemon vehicle they'd bought against their better judgement and were now stuck with.
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*As mentioned elsewhere, even into the early eighties local ranchers seasonally led cattle drives right down stretches of the Vista's highway frontage between range grazing areas. They seemed to enjoy pretending that the vehicle traffic impatient to get through wasn't even there, almost as if they were still living back in the pre-auto 1800s' Western frontier era. Git along, little doggies.
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Such distressing undercurrents were not apparent at first glance. Early nature-hungry city vacationers enjoyed their idyllic backwoods enclave with the lighthearted, even giddy and euphoric, spirit of the times. One had the convenience and luxury of camping on their very own generous-sized piece of secluded land for up to thirty days a year rather than pay daily to chance camping at some place with others maybe setting up twenty feet away with a passel of squalling kids. A mini-trend within the grand back-to-the-land movement was afoot. The majority of initial lot buyers came from the wider Los Angeles region, where the developer was based and launched his marketing campaign from; others hailed from the Bay Area and Central Valley -- purchasers merrily pitching their tents and rolling in their travel trailers and RVs and savoring the fresh air and quiet and serene mountain majesty.
The terrain was known as high desert woodlands: high, dry and wooded. Though powerful seasonal windstorms could prove treacherous and unnerving -- sometimes roaring through like a runaway freight due to the massive mountain displacing and condensing storm air currents in Venturi effect -- the place, like nearby Lake Shastina and Juniper Valley, otherwise often enjoyed an enviable banana-belt climate. It commonly offered pleasant spring and fall weather. While most summers were hot and bone dry, there were plenty of junipers trees, and on a select few parcels a few scattered pines, for inviting shade. Some years saw a summer thunderstorm or two to cool things down. Visitors to the west end of the Vista were a short hike away from a secluded cross-country irrigation canal to cool off in. And the mountain’s spectacular northwestern glacier-clad side could do wonders keeping one feeling cooler just gazing on its chilled splendor.
"Bye 'n' bye" came fast
Significantly, developer Collins -- no doubt responding to a growing enthusiasm among fellow repeat campers to the idea (or maybe having it in mind all along and deftly orchestrating the enthusiasm like a realty maestro) -- casually hinted how the place might make a dandy one to retire to "bye 'n' bye." He intimated this exact sentiment early on in the official newsletter periodically sent to every member and avidly read by the segment of co-owners actively interested in furthering their new-fledged, group-owned, recreational wilderness outpost. Located at the central top of the golden state with Mount Shasta, its regal crown, bestowing a blessing, it was hard for certain nature lovers not to fall in love with the realm -- enough for some to want to indeed settle down on their tucked away parcels on retirement (or even before and splitting time between two residences).
Since practically next door Lake Shastina was springing up (initially as a second-home vacation community), along with several other regional rural subdivisions, bye 'n' bye came fast. It gave the handful of so-minded Vistan landholders the impetus to follow suit, with a twist: building structures not as second homes but, as Collins had suggested, full-on, primary-residence homes for retirees.
Like Lake Shastina, the Vista usually got far less snow than nearby Weed or the City of Mt. Shasta due to the region's phenomenal crazy-quilt of micro-climates, again largely the mountain's doing. Usually there was just enough powder to enjoy a winter wonderland now and then without ever getting a sore back or frostbitten hands shoveling snow or needing to put on chains to get out of never-plowed roads. (Long ago, the place tried plowing roads after one of its rare heavy snowfalls; the equipment blade tore up the cinder roadbeds so badly, requiring expensive and laborious repair work, that it proved impractical; thereafter it was decided everyone was on their own.)
Con su permiso:
dealing with an exacting building code
Of course it was understood that it was up to each would-be resident to spring for the cost of drilling an approved well, installing a regulation septic system, and getting power lines extendedm, if need be -- all before the county would ever deign to issue a building permit upon submission and approval of exact plans meeting exhaustive code requirements, paying for it based on the square footage specified. Only then did one have the legal right to live on the land for more than thirty days a year. Once the permit was issued you could live in any sort of structure that served as a temporary on-site shelter during the construction period.
While building was expected to progress "in a timely manner," many, far from being in any real hurry, made a leisurely effort of it. The writer himself stretched out his own home-building project period to forty-two months, all while living in a tiny earth-sheltered hobbit home that was most decidedly non-code. It tickled me how the inspector always cast such a wary eye at it each time he strode by it to check on the building site just beyond; I sensed part of him was itching to red-tag it on the spot.
On completion, the post office assigned the new residence a legal street address (or technically, released the already existing number, long ago assigned by county planning to every recorded parcel in the county), thereby enabling one to receive mail at the blacktop entrance boxes. Such an address was also ostensibly needed to obtain a state driver's license, register to vote and qualify for FedEx and UPS home delivery.
As one might expect, the extensive health and building codes included endlessly detailed particulars about everything: a permanent, contiguous foundation; precise framing method; itemization down to the grade and variety of lumber and size, type and spacing and specific kind and size of fasteners; minimum structure size; thorough electrification; insulation; complete kitchen facilities; indoor plumbing; minimum water pressure... Any unconventional design like a geodome, earthship, cob house or earth-sheltered residence required hiring a qualified engineer to certify that the submitted plan would prove structurally sound and had to otherwise meet all general specs. As said, most early Vista owner-builders hired contractors to do most or all the construction and wouldn't move onto their properties until building was completed and given the official county blessing by being signed off after a final inspection, 'green-tagged' for legal occupancy.
Long focused on city building
Although the Uniform Building Code had been around in the U.S. since 1915, enforcement was undoubtedly relaxed to nonexistent for ages in rural areas. Primary focus was naturally concentrated on crowded cities with their close-packed structures built by detached contractors who'd never live in their creations and were often tempted to take shortcuts on building integrity that could result in shoddy construction and sometimes tragedy for eventual inhabitants. Overseeing rural owner building wasn't a concern as the founder of the UBC, Rudolf Miller, himself stated early on, never envisioning the new regulations being applied to rural owner-builders: “…[W]hen buildings are comparatively small, are far apart, and their use is limited to the owners and builders of them, so that, in case of failure of any kind that are not a source of danger to others, no necessity for building restriction would exist." His commonsense view was obviously abandoned as living densities increased and government’s bureaucratic, power-hungry, freedom-crimping regulatory powers grew exponentially.
For a long while, country property owners could no doubt more or less build cabins and cottages to suit themselves, at their leisure, maybe even play it by ear, overall design emerging only half-way through, if ever at all. It was their land, so of course they could build whatever they dang-well pleased on it. But with bureaucratic regulations' tendency to be adopted by ever greater numbers over time (some would say spreading like a cancer), until at last universalized, government authorities started insisting that the same exhaustive guidelines adhered to in teeming cities for indifferent contractors churning out cookie-cutter abodes for profit be followed by owner-builders deep in the furthest reaches of remote areas on their own property.
It was having such oppressive ordinances in place in the Vista (and no fine-empowered board of directors to keep a handle on things for the ostensible good of the community) that eventually caused a serious erosion of respect for certain areas of the rule of law by more than a few of its more free-spirited -- or, sometimes, simply desperate and cash-strapped -- inhabitants.
Priced to move
At its launch parcels in the Vista were indeed priced to move. Writer remembers reading in the old Vistascope newsletter archives how they first went for between $750. and $975. each. (In 1969 dollars; adjusting for inflation, that'd be nearly ten times more in 2024 dollars, still relatively cheap). The price varied according to parcel size, location, terrain features, and views (a few dozen parcels had no view of Mt. Shasta). The developer enjoyed relatively low overhead and obviously wasn't out to get rich off the project; he was already successful from urban development ventures and so could afford to be generous. And he appeared to hold a genuine affection for the land, as mentioned actually joining others in camping on the parcels the first few summers. He wanted the lot sales to feel like the feel-good bargains they were (such as they were).
There had been no steep infrastructure costs beyond putting in and maintaining the red-cinder roads, many traced over preexisting logging, livestock-tending and hunting roads; surveying and marking off parcel boundaries; erecting entrance and section corner signs; and planting first-generation, short four-by-four-inch wooden road sign posts, painted yellow with stenciled black lettering, many soon camouflaged by fast-growing sagebrush.
All sorts of first-generation buyers had purchased the lots for all sorts of reasons. Again, countless had grabbed them in pure speculation: "Hey, they're not making any more land." Many no doubt never even set foot on them, let alone ever camped on them. Though a small minority were indeed psyched at the prospect of enjoying having their own private campgrounds and thought of maybe someday building a home on the lots, arguably the overwhelming majority were just betting on the place...and the actions of others...hopefully a good number of others. They anticipated making out like bandits once the place grew in popularity, maybe becoming something like a giant KOA-style camp village loaded with amenities and services, attracting a flood of campers tickled at the prospect of having their own recreational properties, so nicely nestled amid the vacation destination region of Mount Shasta, maybe even launching time-shares on the more improved and most secluded lots.
That, or, as instead happened, the place segued into a thinly-inhabited, briefly standard community...one that might've actually succeeded and thrived, indeed driving up parcel prices, had every future would-be resident taken the responsibility of meeting individual infrastructure needs before then building to code, as had almost everyone among the first wave of transplants (as is no doubt always the case in your more populated areas with any new development).
Obviously they didn't. And so fortune passed the place by. Pouring heavy investment into such primitive, cheap land could feel counter-intuitive. Something maybe considered only by people reaching retirement age, flush with cash from selling big-city homes and bewitched by the enchanted wooded high-desert land they'd discovered and wanted to make their new home. Or those with the willingness (and then far-stricter eligibility) to take on major debt and, unless a contractor or hiring one, having the disposition and fortitude needed to learn about and deal with the time-consuming, niggling, hoop-jumping, exasperating process of conforming to the uber-exacting code requirements demanding to be adhered to by the owner-builder.
Understandably their vision didn't elicit any ringing endorsements from the later, worlds less solvent parcel buyers -- many of whom would move onto their new lots in a twinkling (hey, why else buy them?). They had maybe only enough to cover the modest down and score some ramshackle trailer, or throw up a makeshift shelter on the fly from scrap materials, or make a small lumber yard splurge, and call it okey dokey.
Place's primitive origins lingered
It often seemed cheap land and cheap shelters went together; it surely proved true in Vista's case. Since the lots were originally marketed and enjoyed as de facto simple camp lands and then not infrequently were later handicapped by the difficult water and rocky terrain, discouraging standard development, time would prove it difficult to impossible to ever erase the place's primitive recreational-use-only origins.
Earliest investors and speculators likely never anticipated the possibility of this major wrinkle cropping up. How a soon-emerging epidemic of non-compliant structures going up -- plus sometimes questionable land use -- would drastically erode their holdings' sellability and desirability as a place to either camp or build on...at least, again, for anyone the least bit convention-minded. Between hearing about the few dozen full-on code-legal homes springing up and developer Collins talking up a rosy picture over the place's bright future, they naturally assumed everyone would build to code.
Significantly, many speculators, on hearing the ambitious plans of a minuscule number of lot holders, were almost certainly misled into thinking there were far more property holders gung-ho on building out a full-on standard rural community than in fact ever existed. No doubt they'd started salivating like so many Pavlovian dogs, anticipating the place following Lake Shastina's lead and building out in a merry mad scramble and lots commanding ever-greater sale prices.
Congratulating themselves for having gotten in on the ground floor in what seemed almost guaranteed to be an easy slam-dunk moneymaker, parcel investors sat back and waited for things to take their course. Some would eventually join in and likewise build on properties, thinking to live in their new structures a while before then selling and thereby making a much bigger profit, or become likewise smitten by the land and, resonating with the retired dwellers' bonhomie, decide to actually stay. But most -- having little to zero interest in the day-to-day realities of a few scattered residents or the serious commitment needed by a critical number of lot owners to reach a tipping point that would grow the place into a functional community -- couldn't be bothered to even see the dots, let alone connect them. They just patiently waited for parcel values to take off like so many race cars in the Indy 500.
They'd only have to wait a half century.
In 2015, parcel prices began an astonishingly belated, dizzying flight to the moon. Long depressed values of unimproved lots would climb from $5,000 to over $150,000 by 2021. This, the result of a national red-hot realty market, combined with the place's discovery by unlicensed commercial cannabis growers, anticipating California legalizing recreational pot and what would -- perhaps predictably, given the new gold rush of anarchistic entrepreneurs flooding the state -- prove to be largely unenforceable grow regulations. For it would decriminalize unsanctioned commercial grows to a civil misdemeanor (the only western state to do so), and leave it up each county whether to allow regulated commercial grows in its unincorporated areas or not. Conservative Siskiyou County, a Reefer Madness mindset prevailing, would respectfully decline (while having to suffer incorporated towns like Weed and Mt. Shasta voting to allow pot dispensaries and possibly approve commercial grows). Even so, it often made the eventual sporadic busts often (but not always) little more hassle than getting pulled over for speeding.
Lots would thus sell like crazy for reasons totally unrelated to any infrastructure being built up, still almost nil; formal development plans, still nonexistent; or, for more than a few, a place to want to settle at long term once visions of building up a thriving, proscribed-grow-based community met with the usual chilly winds of mundane reality. This startling phenomenon proved in keeping with the place's chronic boom-bust nature. One that -- due to factors beyond the scope of this writing -- would cause unimproved lot prices to plummet in 2022, when there might be few takers at $10,000 to $20,000. ("Price reduced $80,000.")
The place's extreme boom-bust nature might be likened to a bone dry desert that experienced a major, brief flash flood every decade or two. A deluge of land hungry would-be country squires, "outlaw" pot entrepreneurs, and/or cagey realty speculators periodically rained down on the region, driving up depressed prices of the trey problematic parcels -- or tried to -- through the roof. Then, as things didn't pan out, market values quickly returned to their default bone-dry level, softer than sponge cake.
The more philosophical might've concluded that it was a singular wild land that refused to be tamed.
_____________________
Land, ho!
According to the Vistascope newsletter regularly sent out shortly after the place's late sixties' start, every last one of the lots was snapped up within eighteen months. This fact belied a later common assumption that the developer had gotten stuck with parcels nobody wanted.
People wanted them all right -- or thought they did, at first. The lots had sold like crazy during a time when back-to-the-land fever was sweeping the nation. It was only later that the hundreds of absentee owners and those they sold them to, realizing the ill-fated development had gone seriously cattywampus, couldn't get rid of them fast enough. But of course they didn't want to sell at a loss. So the odd lots, though at first charming to anyone who appreciated rustic seclusion and inspiring mountain views (and cheap price), had serious deal breakers attached to them and thus became a drug on the market.
Despite being offered for a song compared to other, similar regional properties, over time they often found few takers once their bizarre pedigree -- rife with an angry-native social climate, daunting lack of infrastructure, and prohibitive costs to gain code compliance -- became common knowledge to anyone who did even a little digging.
That was all in the future; at the Vista's inception, none of the stumbling blocks were obvious beyond the obvious stark lack of infrastructure. With the back-to-nature movement in high gear, that tiny minority of older Vistan parcel buyers, stoked at the prospect of moving onto their own bit of unspoiled nature in one of upstate California's popular recreational regions, happily became its first residents. The relatively well-heeled group had seen in the far flung primitive development the ideal makings of a low-key country retirement paradise for any and all kindred souls.
And they weren't alone in their feel-good enthusiasm and their optimism over the place.
Excited to have discovered such an affordable wonderland to vacation at, maybe someday move to -- at the least, a sure-fire investment -- it seemed everyone and their uncle was jumping down the rabbit hole.
The Vista Thru Time
1965-2015
[Part 3]
Mt. Shasta Vista was...well, different
In some ways the Vista, with its 1,641 two-to-three acre lots, was notably different from other rural subdivisions of the region forming about the same time.
And there were new rural subdivisions popping up all over the Mt. Shasta region. They included nearby Lake Shastina, 3,200 lots, averaging .2 - .3 acres each (one-tenth the size of Vista lots), started in 1968; the McCloud area’s Shasta Forest, 791 lots of 2-1/2 to 5 acres each, launched in 1966; practically next door Juniper Valley subdivision, some 240 lots of 20 acres each, exact founding date unknown; possibly Hornbrook region’s Klamath River Country Estates (KRCE), 2,050 lots of 1 to 2.6 acres each, begun in 1967; and Hammond Ranch, launched in 1969, some 430 lots of .35 to .55 acres each.
One big difference -- apart from the obvious water challenge -- was that it was the very first. Having formed in late 1965, a year or two ahead of all the rest, there was an as yet unproven market for such rural developments of such scale. The developer maybe sensed the lots had to be priced cheap to attract buyers and get the ball rolling. Being the first such developer, he maybe thought it too risky to invest in any infrastructure beyond basic road access. Maybe it would be thought too far from town to attract people who might want to actually live here; there was no telling. So developer Collins played it safe. He hadn't felt pulled to hammer together any sort of official master plan. Content to start it up as a simple de facto recreational development, he showed a perhaps bit sly, tomorrow-never-knows air over its potential to someday maybe becoming something more.
Even though he undoubtedly must've been well aware of the popular back to the land movement emerging then (coinciding with the-burgeoning counterculture that had likely initiated it) and sensed an almost-certain new realty market, he was clearly hedging his bets. He wasn't sure if the place would ever attract enough land shoppers to want to actually settle here, due to the deep water table and sometimes rocky and steep-sloping terrain and, again, being so far from town. Maybe, too, he sensed how the farming//ranching locals were so up in arms over its formation that he felt he should go slowly, giving people time to adjust, marketing the lots for seasonal camping only. Just visiting, folks, don't worry.
In any event, the wording of the Vista's ruling documents (CC&Rs, or Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions), were, again, only your basic general boilerplate. Once the place's first few parcel holders would drop anchor and render the original legal framework inadequate, in time it would spell out almost certain disaster without making extensive revisions. Such a re-imagined plan was crucial if the place ever hoped to provide some solid avenue for building out with rhyme and reason. Provide guardrails to steer the development in agreed-on directions by the volunteer board members and other involved land owners that would meet accepted living standards.
It might've created, for instance, the legal power for the volunteer governing board to fine owners for infractions to agreed on appearances and practices, as had some others, thus (ideally) working to maintain a certain caliber of lifestyle. This power enabled slapping a lien on one's ownership title for chronically blowing off payment for a ticketed infraction, and so established at least a grudging respect for the rule of law serving to discourage both non-copacetic behavior by property owners and attraction by land shoppers for inappropriate lot use.
Of course, this was always a two-edged sword. As was pointed out in the periodical The Week, quoting reporter Sarah Holder, "About 74 million people in the U.S. live in community associations, mostly HOAs, [homeowner associations] which create their own regulations meant to keep behavior polite, aesthetics consistent, and property values high." But "...the rules can be capricious and penalties for violations steep...One Colorado couple, Jose and Lupita Mendoza, say that a series of minor violations, like failing to remove a dead tree, snowballed into the HOA's foreclosing on their home despite their never missing a mortgage payment."
In any event, without any overarching plan for residential growth and no vision beyond what little the general boilerplate gobbledygook provided, Mt. Shasta Vista was left to forever struggle swimming upstream against strong currents, always vulnerable to the vagaries of the place's latest resident owners' arbitrary druthers. Any effort by the few more civic-minded among the fitful, ever-changing flock of dwellers to transform the place from its primitive beginnings into an actual, by-gosh community, one dwellers might actually take pride in rather than simply use and tolerate, would usually prove a monumental exercise in futility.
Interest flatlines
With so many parcel owners absentee and seldom if ever visiting, from the start it seemed the overwhelming number of title holders really were just betting on the place and the expected actions of what would turn out to be only a few -- initially that minority of owners who fully enjoyed vacationing here, and later the even smaller number who actually dropped anchor, both of whom naturally felt inclined to work to further the place along, improving its livability (and maybe enhancing its lots' marketability). The former twiddled their thumbs and let others do all the heavy lifting, imagining busy worker ants building up the place's value before they either began enjoying the place themselves or -- more likely -- cashed in and made a respectable chunk of change for all their trouble.
It would of course prove far more trouble than they could have ever imagined. Holders were destined to lose heart in droves not long after the development's early burst of improvement efforts came and went and various snafus developed.
Water had always been crucial. By the early 1970s, visiting repeat campers and residents-to-be had briefly rallied, pulling together to develop the informal community well with its impressive flow rate on Juniper Drive. It sported a huge holding tank with giant overhead valve for rapidly filling 2,000 gallon water trucks and included a garden spigot, thus serving both campers and initially well-less home builders. (Collins, with his usual largess, sold the association a water truck for a dollar.) About the same time, many paid into the volunteer fund to get electric power lines extended to lots whose owners committed to building. A long mobile home was pulled in in which to hold the first few state-mandated monthly board meetings.
After this initial flurry of action, enthusiasm for common improvement efforts seemed to have completely run out of steam. New residents had switched gears and scrambled to each carve out their own little backwoods mini-kingdoms. It was all they could do to build up the place just enough to provide their own needs; other parcel holders, if they wanted to join their number, would have to generate their own infrastructure, the same as them.
As earlycomers built the first county-approved living structures, the place was momentously shifting from being a de facto shared camp land to the beginnings of an actual community. Albeit one spread so thin amidst the vast acreage that dwellings might've appeared surreally misplaced to any impressionable visitors who chanced to drive through the labyrinth of back roads, nothing but trees and brush forever, then rounding a bend and suddenly a full-on estate jumped out at them.
Former interest in enjoying one's parcel for camp vacations of course nosedived overnight; those who'd camped there were by then either themselves building homes, grumbling about those who were, or deciding to abandon ship and sell their parcels, hopefully not at a loss. To the recreationally minded newbies, the place had lost its charm: the one-time collective camping wilderness was now cluttered with the unsightly trappings of civilization.
Almost overnight, the place became neither fish nor fowl.
Fast forward and once various unapproved shelters of code-nonconforming inhabitants began flooding the scene, the realm's fledgling legitimate community -- one its residents had poured personal fortunes and much blood, sweat and tears into -- was, again, in imminent peril. Without updating the CC&Rs, or at least every future would-be resident agreeing to toe the line and meet the steep county health and building code requirements, the development's compliant residents faced one gnarly and insurmountable impasse. They'd be stymied at every turn, despite the most diligent efforts made to try to keep the place a recognized community.
At one point early on, the association's few residents did get it together so far as to appoint informal block captains for each of the seven mile-square sections. They worked to keep appraised of all the goings on in their respective domains, driving around and getting info on sundry matters of other residents and visiting owners, then relaying latest intel to board members to suss over at monthly meetings and deal with if any action was deemed warranted. This phase of organized grass roots government showed that, despite a growing set of unfortunate circumstances, there was a strong sense of public-minded cohesion among most of the earliest residents. Even if the primary motivation was only to try nipping in the bud any health and building code violations that might be afoot, it at least showed there was some civic-minded spirit, albeit one more intolerant, exclusive-minded than altruistic. One that might've served the place well in the long run, had it ever evolved beyond punitive, reactive law-and-order policing and into a more positive, fair-minded, live-and-let-live mind frame. But that wasn't going to happen.
This rudimentary organized grassroots effort switched into an informal phone-tree hotline setup once too many barbarians had started storming the gates to keep an effective handle on things at monthly meetings alone. Some older residents had by then already moved on. They were devastated, their fondest dreams of enjoying retirement years in the sweet spot of peace and quiet feeling dashed to hell and gone. They were unwilling to deal with the ongoing battles with the unruly interlopers now defiling the once-charmed realm with a Hail Mary effort to restore the place's livability. But as more and more lot buyers made bold to occupy parcels they'd snapped up, defying anyone to do anything about it, eventually the overwhelmed county enforcement officials appeared unable to stem the tide.
At some point they had pretty much given up on the place as a lost cause.
Result: the soon-minority, flying-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, shocked senseless, respectable legal residency that elected to stay, standing firm and braced for battle, found themselves between the devil and the deep blue sea.
The white elephant time forgot
With such a daunting series of snafus and resulting chaos growing like weeds, outside interest in the wayward development would flatline for decades. After it had outgrown its first-generation, recreational-only use and then stalled trying to be something more by accepted standards, parcel values were lucky to keep up with inflation.
The development became an unmanageable white elephant of odd lots, more trouble than they were worth trying to move and earn a measly commission on to the way of thinking of more than a few regional realtors.
Perhaps it was not too unlike other largely failed rural subdivisions various California developers hatched over time. Like the controversial 15,287 one-acre lots of California Pines outside Alturas, in the northeast corner of the state. Or California City, "America's Largest Abandoned City," about fifty thousand lots spread over 204 square miles (launched within a month of the Vista), all platted out and roads made in the barren, treeless Mojave Desert. Like them, the residency-challenged, one time de-facto rec-land of Mt. Shasta Vista seemed destined to become just another place time forgot...or tried to.
Eventually this suited its few actual residents just fine -- those who stayed despite all, or bought homes from those who'd bailed...or who had grabbed parcels and thrown together humble abodes on the fly. Various dwellers, doing their best to tune out the long-simmering, disturbing politics, grew accustomed to the rich solitude. They relished the park-like setting which had inspired its first incarnation as a happy-go-lucky, secluded co-op campground. So few residents amid so much nature proved delightful. But it was, of course, terrible for investors and speculators. They found it difficult to sell holdings no longer having anything going for them to entice would-be buyers besides being cheap and secluded properties with nice views. Such parcels, no longer optimal for camping yet requiring huge outlays before being able to live on them legally, found few interested 'respectable' parties.
Again, it didn't help sales efforts any that the place had from its very beginning gotten such a bad rap, resented by the locals for unsettling their long accustomed to, sprawling backwoods domain with their invasive urban ways, and soon to be seen as problematic by a provincial-minded county government. Many no doubt became soothsayers: "It'll be a disaster, mark my words; wait and see. Wanna bet? I'll give you three-to-one odds."
They would roundly reject the misbegotten child left squalling on their doorstep; the resulting tarnished image of the place could perhaps be sensed by your more present land shopper.
"Just a matter of time"
Many parcel owners held onto their apparent boondoggle, even so: in a dime, in a dollar. They doubled down, paying the piper in the guise of an ever-increasing annual road assessment through gritted teeth, determined not to take a bath on what they had first thought a sure bet. In denial, they needed to believe their investment would pay off some day, or it would at least become a nice place to build a vacation cabin at, so they might enjoy the camaraderie in being fellow part-time or full-time back woods dwellers.
After ages, convinced the place appeared to have zero chance of ever pulling itself together, many finally bit the bullet. As fed- up owners unloaded their clunkers en masse, resigned to taking a loss, cheap parcels flooded the market.
There were often few takers, even so. This despite, in the late 1970s, a modest $1,200 to $1,750 asking price and often easy terms. Those who did snap them up were often only themselves disinterested professional investors, making small side bets on the place and parking a bit of extra cash a while, confidant the right suc -- er, buyer -- would eventually come along. Or yet other uninformed casual investors infected with the latest errant round of speculation fever: "It was so cheap, I couldn't resist." Or, again, die-hard optimists, thinking they'd maybe enjoy the parcels themselves once the place finally got itself together. At the least they'd have something interesting and tangible to leave their families (and then let them figure out what to do with the buggers if things didn't pan out).
But beyond such calculated dice rolling, impulsive moves and hopeful "some day" thinking, there was that growing number of land buyers psyched at the prospect of -- novel idea -- actually moving onto the parcels. To them, the lots were pure catnip. Some wanted to make like Thoreau, living simply on the land and letting the rest of the world go by. Maybe in time they'd establish a home business or commute to work, as the place became a de facto bedroom community of sorts. A very few were still willing to build to code and thus fulfill an age-old dream of chucking urban life and becoming respectable country squires.
Others -- entirely too many to the thinking of the ax-grinding remnant of code-legal residents -- seemed only to be looking for a cheap place in the boonies to avoid city rent with its steep first and last plus security; or hide out, some probably dodging child support, maybe even have an outstanding arrest warrant or two. No matter if it meant drastically down-scaling one's standard of living and hauling in some derelict mobile home or trailer, setting up a tent, or fashioning a ramshackle structure from scrounged materials on the fly, generating cesspools at best for waste...and then have to haul in every drop of water. And either have to fire up a generator or go without go-juice. For even if a power line teasingly skirted their properties, it couldn't be hooked up to a structure without first satisfying the blizzard of code regulations.
It made for primitive living on a primitive land, but the freedom it allowed seemed to make it all worth it, at least for a while. They'd cross their fingers and hope the powers that be would let them be. With the eighties' still-prevailing authoritarian mindset and unyielding, strict code enforcement yet holding sway, there was fat chance of that.
Round and round...
And so the mirage of a Mt. Shasta Shangri-la, dreamy backwoods realm undervalued and under-exploited, proved irresistible to all sorts, for all sorts of reasons. As the land kept seducing detached speculators, hopeful investors and would-be residents alike, a definite pattern of owner relationship to the parcels would emerge.
Sporadic cycles of short-lived buying mania, with perhaps a curious camp visit or two, was followed by a long-term absence of any interest whatsoever, ephemeral fantasies that the dreamy land lavishly fostered having been played out -- this was often the Vista lot owners' dance. Even after decades, hundreds of parcels were -- apart from the occasional campfire stone ring and driveway roughed in, perhaps a dead tree or two cut down and some brush cleared, maybe an outhouse built or a soon forgotten trailer left -- still clinging to their relatively pristine states. And so they kept luring new impulsive buyers, always wowed by the land's subtle charms and dirt-cheap prices.
Similarly, a long succession of casual small investors and speculators routinely lost interest in the first-beguiling lots and any belief in their potential profitability or livability. Some parcels doubtless would change hands over a half dozen times over the half-century, always attracting a new flock of buyers powerless to resist grabbing such bargain properties in such picturesque settings...a place that to all appearances appeared magically hidden away from all the troublesome ways of so-called civilization.
Again, the massive mountain in the place's backyard emanated a powerful, almost palpable, yet undefinable force. Those leaning towards new-age thinking felt it worked to sometimes over-stimulate a person's upper chakras if not better grounded on arrival. The thinking went that such people had their imaginations and visualization powers over-amped. Under the mountain's enticing spell the mind reeled, bursting with excited fantasies of what all they'll do with the secluded properties they were lucky enough to have snagged for a song.
In a way, it was California dreamin' full tilt.
And so the luckless development kept spinning round and round on its little short-boom-long-bust merry-go-round. Riders reached out for the ever-elusive brass ring of easy country living, or fast turnover profits, while select realtors, trying to make their nut moving the low-end "road kill" properties, kept supplying the calliope's shrill yet hypnotic melody.
Stymied by disinterested speculators
and investors feeling nickeled and dimed
It probably can't be emphasized enough: competing with the place's massive host of other drawbacks -- water scarcity, lack of grid power, absence of development plans, often rocky soil and steep-sloping lots, locals putting a whammy on the place and the prohibitive cost of meeting code -- was the adverse effect such a teaming sea of detached absentee lot owners had on it. They'd invested in or speculated on the place and over time became disheartened, even bitter, many all along never tuning in to the nitty-gritty realities of the place and its essential needs if it was to ever grow as a recognized community. They were chagrined to realize they'd gotten stuck with soft-market lemons that required annually shelling out through the assessment. It left them feeling nickel and dimed to death, essentially just so a few might live there and fewer might retreat there now and then. Such a feeling of pronounced buyer remorse worked on the subtle plane, no less certainly than the pronounced lack of easy water, to undermine even the most determined efforts of its civic-minded residents trying to salvage the place's promise and move it onto some more solid footing.
For, other problems aside, how could the Vista ever evolve with so many of the ninety percent absentee ownership harboring such rank indifference, apathetic to the notion of doing anything to right-side the seriously floundering, would-be residential development? Not if it meant sinking a single penny more into it, through proposed special assessments, to fund community project proposals. Not even if such a project, like starting a community center, would work to increase parcel values by making the place more livable, the parcels easier to move and at an actual profit. That's how jaundiced and cynical so many had become towards the unfortunate rudderless ship of a rural subdivision.
Countless lot owners lost whatever faith they might've ever had for the place and its potential to be anything more then an essentially chaotic, sub-standard, infrastructure-shy disaster area -- which, again, perversely, many of its few residents seemed to prefer it being; it made for leaving a delightful embarrassment of undeveloped, park-like land all around them, the thoughtful, stuck investors having in effect subsidized the luxuriant buffer with their undeveloped, unsellable lots.
Not another red cent...
Those who opted to keep the parcels despite everything, or tried unloading them but couldn't at a decent price, along with the latest round of new soon disillusioned owners, all felt burdened with dud properties in a dead-in-the-water development. As it was, the annual assessment bite was often only paid amid much kicking and screaming and whines of "I don't even live there to drive on the roads, so why the hell should I have to pay for their upkeep? You answer me that one."
For what it was worth, the annual membership assessment was way cheaper than that of all other regional rural subdivisions except perhaps next door's Juniper Valley's. When the writer arrived in the late 1970s, it was only about $20. a year whether a lot was improved on or not. (By 2024 it had grown to $280; while having become a bit ouchy, it was still easily one of the cheapest -- nearby Lake Shastina's had become some $2,200.) No matter; they still felt bled, shook down for the latest assessment every fall, many no doubt feeling akin to trailer park mobile home owners, the structure theirs but having to fork over rent each month on the space it perched on lest it get grabbed through foreclosure, in the Vista's case by the Mt. Shasta Vista Property Owners Association.
Cynics thought the whole set-up smacked of being some sort of racket.
Left for dead
Perhaps predictably -- due to the many absentee parcel holders' pronounced disenchantment with the stuck-in-the-mud development -- left for dead in more of the realty world's humorous insider parlance -- the association often suffered late annual payments and non-payments. Initial optimism for the place having long ago evaporated and a growing share of absentee owners protesting having to pony up each year, the wording on the annual billing statement grew a mite testy. Key words in large boldface letters defied ignoring the association's demand for prompt payment: "PAY WITHIN 30 DAYS TO AVOID SEVERE PENALTY OR FORECLOSURE", it shouted. Things obviously were a far cry from earlier times' lighthearted communication tone with merry spiels of carefree vacationing and maybe retiring to the enchanted land bye 'n' bye; the situation had taken on a hard, no-nonsense edge. Reason: Board members were grappling with keeping enough revenue coming in to cover the constant maintenance needs of sixty-six miles of cinder roads that would otherwise return to nature -- and then have angry visiting owners hounding them to get on the ball or refuse to pay. They were in a pickle, damned if they did and damned if they didn't, stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Such chilly exhortations seemed to only encourage some to finally blow off paying altogether. "They're daring me not to pay, huh? Well hell, maybe I'll just take them up on that; they can have their damn parcel back...worthless piece of crap; why I ever bought into this screwy lotus land it I'll never know; 'FUBAR Acres' would be a more appropriate name for the place...mumble grumble..."
Sometimes iffy roads
As more people moved in, legally or otherwise, and the endless fragile cinder roads got more wear and tear, the one-man road crew often became unable to service them all in a timely fashion. And perhaps none anywhere up the immaculate zen standards of earlier, simpler times of far fewer residents, when the country back roads were pleasant to drive on at a mosey while drinking in the unspoiled tranquil scenery. (And so irresistible to mischievous kids to gouge deep donuts in on their chainsaws on wheels known as dirt bikes.) Regardless, one good gully-washer of a rainstorm could wash away the loose cinder topping and cut hazardous mini canyons in the sand underneath on downhill stretches, even if carefully groomed just the day before.
Again, this caused more owners to protest paying for roads that weren't being kept up -- leastwise not theirs -- the lion's share going to the most heavily trafficked. Like, far and away, the most problematic one: the long steep uphill stretch of Perla Road at the front of Section 13, by Sheep Rock. It could routinely gobble thousands of dollars a year to maintain. Most sparsely settled and non-settled regions might not see the road truck for an entire decade or more -- and then finally often only after some visiting owner, having driven hundreds of miles to vacation on their remote parcel only to get stuck in deep sand on the home stretch and forced to call a tow truck, raised a royal ruckus. Rightly furious, they held the association board's feet to the fire, demanding they cover the tow bill. Such ire would at last bestir the harried board members to pay attention to the neglected road stretches in the more remote hinterlands -- and raise the annual assessment fee to cover the increased work load and rising material prices, wages, insurance, workman's comp, gas...
Problems like these seldom made for happy campers.
This, in dramatic contrast to the first visiting owners who'd so thoroughly relished visited their lands, many of whom soon moved onto them in infectious high spirits. That was, again, during the extraordinary "God is alive, magic is afoot" times of the late 1960s through the early 1970s -- a time when waves of feel-good euphoria might wash over one out of the blue even if one's only drug of choice was aspirin or a good stiff martini.
Raise high the roof beam, carpenters
At its start, many Vista lots felt almost pristine. (Some still do.) Sure, some bore old rotting stumps from lumberman Abner Weed’s harvesting the area’s tall timber early in the twentieth century. And bulldozing needed to make the new networks of roads marred the front of some lands. (The KRCE development, northeast of Yreka, was born similarly, recycling tree-harvested lands into rec lots for solitude-hungry city folk.) But a substantial number of parcels, largely left undisturbed for ages, were part of a rich, fragile, high-desert woodlands ecosystem. They could feel enchanted to anyone appreciating their subtle, almost primeval, charms, those who didn't need towering trees and crystal streams before embracing nature. The land held inviting groves of old junipers, some with almost DayGlo-green moss growing on north sides; furry lichen growing on deep-shaded rocks; riots of tiny colorful wildflowers in spring and early summer; occasional stands of stately pine; and dramatic rock outcroppings, sometimes perched on by a mountain lion, on the lookout for deer that occasionally meandered through.
All had lent many areas something of a rarefied atmosphere inviting one to wax poetic over. It struck some as an extraordinarily rare and special place, a realm where time stood still.
Fresh high-desert air, balmy sunshine, often-profound quietude, plus a giddy sense of freedom for being in such secluded backcountry, reigned over by a majestic mountain...all had combined to inspire excited repeat vacation visits from homes often some 600 miles distant. Enough so to move a select handful to finally chuck city living and retire here to enjoy the tranquility and seclusion of country living year-round. And so it was that the place (if ever so briefly) had become a respectable residential Shangri-la to every nature-loving retiree making the bold exodus...and having the bucks to build according to their accustomed lifestyle, which happily more or less dovetailed with the county's then rigorously enforced health and building codes.
That said, rumor had it that the very earliest comers in the mid to late sixties -- among them one structure on White Drive by two old brothers from San Francisco, and another, far more ambitious, the Spencer place on Heinzelman Drive -- didn't even need building permits to construct the simple cabin or full-on, multi-story home, respectively. Code enforcement had apparently yet to establish a solid foothold in the more remote hinterlands of sparsely settled regions. If true, this possibly set a precedent for subsequent owner-builders to feel they needed no more than their own permission to build on their lots, thank you. And the building department was left forever stuck playing catch-up, saying in effect, "Hey, you really do need a permit now...no, we mean it. Seriously..." (And maybe in an aside: "I don't necessarily agree with the policy, but, hey, it's my job.)"
No more sketchy subdivisions
In the early seventies, California would pass a flurry of landmark regulations covering future subdivision starts.
“...[A] new attitude of comprehensive planning and environmental protection emerged,” wrote realty attorney James Longtin. The Vista barely got in under the wire before vast regulatory changes made it impossible to any longer spin out such bare-bones, quick-buck, often-problematic rural developments like the Vista.
After 1974's Subdivision Map Act, developers were required to first get local approval and make legally binding commitments to provide all basic infrastructure for any new subdivision proposed. Plus over time they or owner association directors had to spring for public improvements like parks, playgrounds and community centers. It seemed that our place, though grandfathered in under the earlier, far more lax, requirements, came to feel intense pressure from the county -- in turn under the gun of the state with its new exacting standards -- whenever an owner wanted to build an approved shelter on their one-time campground parcel in the primitive improvement so unabashedly bereft of infrastructure.
Would-be Vistan homesteaders had to jump through all kinds of complicated, time-consuming and expensive hoops to earn the right to legally live on their lots...the first and perhaps most daunting being, before anything else once passing a perc test, bring in an approved well...often a fairly deep one...sometimes a really deep one...and hitting water...hopefully good water. And then installing a septic system and often having to shell out another big chunk of change to get electrical lines strung to one's property. (If memory serves, code at the time allowed the option to build without having to hook up to the grid if the construction site was over a quarter mile from existing power lines, but then still wiring the structure to code. Such was the writer's case, by a few yards.)
Who’d want to live in the middle of nowhere anyhow?
To build or not build community
Maybe county officials had crossed their fingers, hoping there'd never be any who for some strange reason actually wanted to live on such raw, bone-dry lots out in the middle of nowhere. For each new building permit okay-ed would mean several long, time-consuming drives to inspect and sign off each of numerous completion stages, and they had better things to do.
Jumping ahead decades, residents had better things to do than foster any dubious notion of an organized community. Polarized energies bearing uber-cynical, short-tempered attitudes came to discourage it at every turn -- and bowling alone was in, anyhow. More people were moving here expressly to do their own thing and be left alone: hermits united (or disunited). Often they'd at most only reluctantly work together. A visit to a monthly board meeting, where the place's varying chronic buzz-saw, contentious dysfunctionality, or apathetic, what's-the-use? mindset was on full display, offered a fast cure for anyone nurturing some misbegotten notion to try helping the place along somehow.
Any vision beyond the usual volunteer fire department and rummage sales and such to support it and maybe working to get a grant to fund making the area safer from wildfires just didn’t seem to go along with the dirt-cheap lots with their total lack of infrastructure. One of course paid dearly for such added features in your more developed subdivisions -- paved roads, electricity, water, gas, sewage, fire department, security... When you bought land cheap, though, expectations were low to nonexistent. And some people, craving natural solitude, had bought here expressly because it lacked such civilized baggage. To their thinking, any hum of structured rural community, residents working to get on the same page, too often resulted in everyone getting in everyone else's business, cannibalizing one another's energies, keeping the quest for the solitude of simple stand-alone rustic living an elusive dream.
Not so for those affluent modern-day pioneers of yore. Bewitched by the realm’s unspoiled charms during simpler if more rigid times, enough to invest their sweat, fortunes and fondest hopes. Early Vistans had been stoked at the prospect of working together to carve out a rustic retirement community. Both for themselves and any others who liked what they were doing, enough to muster into the emerging rural enclave of old-fashioned respectability. It thus briefly became an embryonic hideaway sanctuary of decent folk, far from the madding crowd. A haven where one could enjoy retirement years in peace and quiet deep within the bosom of nature. As a song lyric went, they hoped they were “...going where the living is easy and the people are kind."
Kind of something, as it would turn out.
______________________________________________
The Vista Thru Time
1965-2015
[Part 4]
"Welcome all!"
vs. "Up the drawbridge!"
Some among the mostly second waves of new residents truly felt blessed. Swept up in the grand pioneering adventure of it all -- living on newly opened land with so few others around -- they were eager to share their good fortune with whoever else was there. They'd offer cheerful assistance to new arrivals, eager to see the fledgling backwoods community grow and flourish. To them, each new denizen of the sparse backwoods settlement was a welcome addition in those heady late-frontier days of the early 1970s, helping further settle the realm (such as it was).
Others, mostly among the first wave, weren't anywhere near so live-and-let-live. Since there were no real guardrails in place through a fine-tuned master plan or CC&Rs to guide it along, each new arrival would be summarily vetted by them, Bearing an "our-way-or-the-highway" mindset, each newcomer was quickly judged by them as one that would either fit in with their regimen and foster the upscale-rustic nascent community along or stick out like a sore thumb and undermine the upscale-rural scene. The latte needed to be dealt with a post-haste gloves-off manner that brooked no nonsense.
Oftentimes the more altruistic souls were residents of homes whose original inhabitants had left screaming after the charm of Vista living had lost its luster and what they'd once deemed an absolute gem had morphed into cheap costume jewelry in their eyes. These second generation newcomers hadn't experienced the latter's ordeals of complying with strict codes only to have others blatantly ignore them, or the earlier vandalism and theft by irate and malicious-minded locals during the camping-only years. They were more in the moment, live-and-let-live, happy-go-lucky. Some might invite newcomers to share an afternoon 'drinky-poo' on their porch, or offer to freeze water in repurposed milk jugs to help them weather a heatwave -- even offer to let an unprepared newcomer winter in their simple vacation cabin, as happened with the writer.
Whereas others had done all the heavy lifting and paid some heavy dues indeed, newcomers were in dramatic contrast free to relax and enjoy the fruits of their labor, savor the moment and appreciate the rich seclusion and those around them, regardless of a newcomer's circumstances or intention. There was still a sense of euphoric pioneering spirit filling the air that the more inclusive-minded tuned into -- a wonderment and sense of gratitude for having found such a tucked-away and affordable place with a subtle yet pronounced charm and located not too far from town.
Instant homestead
Not so the others. They were seething mad and bent into pretzels by the endless trials faced, just when they thought they could finally relax and enjoy their golden years in peaceful tranquility, far from the madding crowd. Unlike their former neighbors who'd fled the unraveling scene, they dug in hard; they were here for the duration, come hell or high water. Strict law and order folks, they scrambled to pull up the drawbridge post haste and throw away the welcome mat (even as existing entrance signs weirdly continued to welcome one). Huge, foreboding signs snarled everywhere. They were bound and determined to try reversing the situation and salvage the scene: kick the riff-raff out and keep them out.
But again, having to legal enforcement powers through fining for infractions, they were forced to totally rely on Siskiyou county's residential code officials to protect their rural outpost from being overrun by the misguided souls with the audacity to have tried invading their would-be respectable rural enclave on the cheap...especially those revved-up younger folks of threadbare means...most especially the pot-smoking hippies and beer-guzzling bikers, and that peculiar new hybrid, the pot-smoking, beer-guzzling redneck-hippie, that they thought they'd at last left far behind in the teaming cities.
They knew such lot buyers and hopeful instant settlers would be worlds away from ever respecting and following their conventional, solidly middle-class ways, and so prove disastrous to their established order of things if they didn't scramble to get them evicted. Leaping into the fray, they took on the sea of trouble with a flinty, full-court determination: damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. In no uncertain terms they demanded that every property holder earn the right to live on the land, just as they did, end of story. They had to meet all health and building code requirements no matter the cost, time or effort. If you couldn't afford it or didn't want to go down that path, well then, the place obviously wasn't for you...so don't even think about it, buster.
But word about the cheap secluded parcels had gotten out nationwide. The floodgates of land hunters opened wide once realtors advertised the embarrassment of lots for sale cheap on coast-to-coast multi-listings. Despite their best efforts to deter any threadbare newbies and have various existing miscreants thrown off by county authorities, it soon became a losing battle. The home guard sailed clear around the bend; they became like so many crazed Don Quixotes, tilting at windmills.
Some among the pretenders to the realm no doubt had the bucks to build a respectable little shelter for hopeful low-key stays of varying lengths and did so without ever bothering to seek the tax-obsessed county bureaucrats' blessing; why sink a fortune onto cheap land? Others, of more modest means, simply erected long-term tents or pulled in humble trailers and mobile homes or built tumbledown structures from scrap material scrounged at the dump and hung up their hats and figured they were home, sweet home.
They were all deemed a viral infection to the first wave's health and happiness that must be eradicated at all cost.
Brazen newcomers
The brazen newcomers, in turn, appeared either oblivious or indifferent to what a few scattered retiree residents might think of them and their sudden presence amid the giant checkerboard of private lots that had so long gone begging. It was either, "Hey, what's the big deal?" or "Mind your own damn business." Many clearly didn't appear the least bit concerned over the county ordinances they were willfully ignoring or in blissful ignorance of, tuning out the barking signs as no more than toothless desperation. It seemed being out in the middle of nowhere on such remote and secluded land could easily dull any perceived need to conform to such bureaucratic nonsense born of over-complicated city-living mindsets.
The happy illusion of one's remote Vista property being a stand-alone lot existing independently of any outside control whatsoever -- rather than in fact one among 1,641 lots, all ostensibly subject to a sea of regulations -- was just too seductive not to succumb to. It might've been said that one's sense of well-being depended on it.
So it went that the growling No This, No That, and No the Other Thing signs thrown up were dismissed as mostly unenforceable bluff by a few well-healed, uptight residents who were selfishly trying to bogart the place for themselves, demanding everyone conform to their living standards or not live here at all. So more and more newcomers went their merry way, "doing their own thing", that vital watch phrase from the rebellious sixties' being taken to heart by greater numbers of people with each passing year as people left behind a former times' fading stiff, authoritarian-leaning mindset of blind conformity, the lingering military vestige of the monumentally devastating World War II era that had seriously bent the planet out of shape.
When they were rudely awakened, after an unpleasant confrontation or two with compliant residents gone nuclear or the all-business county code enforcers they summoned, it did little to make them ever want to comply even if they could afford to. The firstcomers in their scramble to preserve the La-la-land-ish, country club enclave from rack and ruin had taken such a furious zero tolerance stance against newcomers ignoring the codes that the more free-minded land buyer, scoping their over-wound headspace, thought, Well, screw 'em, I'll take my chances.
Fraught, distraught, and overwrought
It was unfortunate, but that was the way it was. The place was so dysfunctional it beggared belief. But while the modern-day pioneers had conformed to all legal residency requirements and fully expected every future would-be resident to do the same, soon it would seem as though such rules didn't even exist. Practically overnight their fledgling safe-haven backwoods retirement community had turned into its own madding crowd.
Not all newcomers were such brazen anarchists, of course; maybe actually very few at first. Some of lesser means were, by and large, law abiding and only nurtured similar hopes of living out their own, simpler visions of contented country living. But they didn't have the bucks (or, often, inclination) to conform to code. They couldn't believe the sign's warnings of strict code regulation were actually enforced in such wild backwoods. Or that some could get so up in arms about how people chose to live on their own property. While they had no real intent to buck the system per se (at least its reasonable rules), their fondest dreams were nonetheless soon getting dashed to smithereens once receiving an antagonistic 'unwelcome wagon' visit from their hitherto unknown neighbors from hell. An overbearing delegation of high-and-mighty hard-asses swooped down on them out of nowhere and read them the riot act.
Others were thicker skinned. More rebellious and less concerned with rendering unto Caesar, they dug in hard...and kicked back hard. In the early 1990s, an unsanctioned neighbor with such pronounced confrontational tendencies had been given his walking papers. One day he spotted the current board president driving about and aggressively tailgated him for miles along the otherwise empty back roads, sticking like glue. While the man was no doubt alarmed on looking in his rear-view, realizing he'd somehow gained the ire of some apparent crazed madman, one might've concluded he was only reaping what he and earlier board members had sown for holding such a cold, zero-tolerance stance in a realm where it seemed a peaceful calm naturally wanted to prevail.
Home in the country
Back to the early to mid 1970s... After the first wave or two of settlers settled following a few late sixties' early birds, a sprinkling of maybe thirty or so year-round, mostly compliant, residences were dotting the landscape. While the code defiant trend had yet to gain a substantial foothold then, momentum was growing. The genie was out of the bottle: there was cheap Mt. Shasta region land just waiting to get snapped up. Various and sundry would soon be leaping at the chance to make the Vista’s sprawling juniper boonies their home, too. In the bigger picture, the notion of one not just visiting but actually living in nature was taking off in the public's imagination. “Head for the hills, brothers!” was the clarion call as more and more city-weary, nature-hungry souls of all sorts were joining the back-to-the-land movement then ratcheting into high gear. For some, it would be a few years' respite from urban living; for others, a permanent new way of life.
As people's interest soared in making the grand exodus from urban living, the Vista gained something of the air of a time-release Oklahoma Land Rush. In leaps and bounds, excited new arrivals discovered the tranquil, affordable backwoods and settled in -- or tried to. With the place having no master plan and the once iron handle on code enforcement soon enough slipping, each newcomer was going for it and winging it, flying blind on their own private bit of terra firma. The land experienced fitful, frenzied bursts of shelter construction, some still to code but more often not; sounds of hammering and whining circular saws and power generators filled the air. Writer guesstimates that by the mid to late seventies, maybe sixty to eighty residences, now of markedly varied degrees of ambition and compliance, were sprinkled over the roughly seven square miles of remote high-desert woodlands -- a woodlands that often seemed to be existing as its own special world.
Those opting to ignore code requirements and play it by ear in the mad scramble were intent on getting a good toehold while the getting was good; it was always worlds harder trying to tell someone they couldn't be there after they'd fenced off the property, built a full-on shelter, posted their own signs ("Private Property -- No Trespassing" being popular), and moved in, lock, stock and barrel.
It was territorial imperative writ large.
With so many hypnotized by the land, in a way often eclipsing any practical concerns, a strange wonderland at increasing variance with mundane realities was emerging -- despite the most dedicated, frenzied efforts of outraged residents to arrest the insufferable trend.
CC&R revision effort busted
It's unknown if some of the seriously invested first wave ever thought to try getting the CC&Rs revised. Conceivably this might've enabled a more orderly growth into a standard community, one in which things were spelled out so each would-be resident knew the score in no uncertain terms beforehand. Before doing anything more than visit, one would realize they had to first bring in an approved well (or share one with up to three adjacent lot owners); usually pay to have power lines extended; and install an approved septic system -- all before then applying for a building permit and conforming to the exhaustive health and building codes. This, for better or worse, was the accepted reality of places like nearby Lake Shastina (and, of course, most any American city and suburb).
Not in the Vista. Though first settled by solid law-abiding citizens, it was during the rebellious sixties; it was predictable that the extraordinary era's spirit of Anything Goes would merrily burst their staid, convention-locked, happy bubble. Perhaps things were aided and abetted by the early vacationers themselves for having built up such an exuberant (if fully law abiding) spirit on the land. Even so, one wonders if even such a CC&R revision could've assured the place would gain a solid footing and grow as a 'respectable', recognized community...one that in time might gain at least a grudging respect and acceptance by the surrounding community and county authorities.
All a moot point, of course. With ninety-eight percent of the property owners absentee and living all over the nation, many already nursing serious buyer remorse, the heavily invested residents would've realized they'd never get the two-thirds vote needed to tackle such a monumental and costly legal re-structuring. Besides, they were retirees; their days of heavy lifting were over once building their new homes was a done deal.
Or so they'd hoped.
Bogarting Shangri-la?
A more cynical view might've held that the first year-round residents realized that constructing full-on homes amid a sea of raw parcels that had in its first years been such a popular camp retreat was surely bound to create certain thorny problems. But they didn't care. They had theirs, for whatever remained of their time on earth; let the chips fall where they may. Hey, they said, the lots are zoned for single-family residency, so what's the problem? Camping was just an ephemeral, first-generation use of the parcels. Some must've hoped others would get enthused about the evolution of land use they spearheaded and would follow suit, while others, less public-minded, thought that if they didn't and some ninety-five percent of the raw parcels stayed undeveloped (as in fact happened), now compromised for camp use and property values stagnating as a result, oh well...buyer beware.
The way they saw it, they'd earned the right to claim the place as their own community after lifetimes of hard work and then complying with every last nit-picky, pricey, time-consuming legal residency requirement the bureaucracy threw at them. And besides, it was the developer himself who'd suggested retiring here "bye 'n' bye" in the first place. Blame him if your parcels no longer serve as the backwoods retreats you bought them to be.
And blame him they would -- but them too, for having effectively bogarted and repurposed the one-time camping paradise.
Not unreasonably, the new tax-paying homeowners expected timely enforcement response by county ordinances to keep things copacetic. Later, while still loaded for bear even after the system had begun failing them miserably, their resolve switched gears into, "And if we can't get you out, we'll to do our damnedest to make your lives here a living hell."
For better or worse, the emerging neither-this-nor-that place was all along essentially left a blank canvas. One to be painted on and painted over and painted over yet again by whatever the latest in an ever-changing succession of residents (and still-visiting campers) aspired the Vista to be, if anything. Each among the more dominant and involved inhabitants during a given period advanced their own notion of how they thought things should be. They tried convincing others that it was the best way, or the only way, to go. The situation was akin to excited kids building sandcastles on the seashore until the high tide rushed in and in a twinkling their most ambitious efforts was erased. Later, new castles were built by others, likewise unmindful of the inevitable next high tide. Or like creating an image on the then-popular Etch-a-Sketch toy, then with a flick of the wrist even the most elaborate designs were shaken away, returning the screen to a blank slate.
While legal requirements for homebuilding ostensibly fell within the bounds of county, state and federal authorities -- which ordinances and codes the development's future parcel owners were, again, technically obligated to conform to as a condition for the place ever being greenlit -- these were never easy to enforce by the sparsely populated county's undermanned staff tasked with overseeing such things. A tiny dwelling amid a sprawling, sixty-six-mile labyrinth of private unpaved roads out in the middle of nowhere was not easy to track...or be aware of even existing, short of pouring over satellite photos (which in time, of course, became standard procedure by the county to tax lot improvements). Or livid code-compliant residents burned up the phone lines screaming bloody murder over the latest noncompliance outrage they discovered and demanded swift response on, like the fate of the world depended on it (as indeed the fate of their world, at least, actually did).
But it was a tall order. With the heady sense of freedom living in the secluded back-country enclave gave newly rusticating dwellers, compliant and 'outlaw' alike -- often with no one else living within a quarter mile or more -- in a county too poor to hire enough manpower to effectively enforce its own codes, should people opt to ignore them, something of a pronounced libertarian, even anarchistic, spirit emerged. Especially among the minimalist-lifestyle baby boomers. Fast on the wings of earlier waves, they'd felt irresistibly pulled to the magic mountain like a tractor beam in Star Trek: The Next Generation. They discovered the plentiful dirt-cheap parcels in the sleepy buyer's market as more and more property holders finally cut their losses, shaking loose of what had turned out to be the worst investment they'd ever had the sorry misfortune to get involved in.
Parcels were going for a dime a dozen. Excited buyers wouldn't stop to wonder much why they were going so cheap. It maybe struck them as one of the last few bargain land deals around and they'd been lucky enough to discover the gems before someone else. While it might've seemed an extraordinary bargain almost too good to be true, land-hungry buyers maybe liked to believe such pricing only reflected the way things should be: affordable living...what a concept.
Doing one's thing
Such a free-wheeling spirit might’ve been fine had the place from the start built a solid foundation of infrastructure support and appropriate CC&Rs. Obviously it didn't. Cheap land really could create cheap intentions. The place's recreational use had run its course and the varied crowd of instant homesteaders pouring in were psyched to do their thing and be left alone. None for one moment ever bought into the ephemeral retirement community's sedate mindset of how things should be according to their lights.
During the radical late '60s to early '70s -- as different ages, headspaces, lifestyles, incomes, awareness levels, land-use intents and varied respect for the rule of law were all thrown together in the giant cookie-cutter of a primitive wilderness subdivision -- it seemed the only common ground that could ever be cultivated was everyone agreeing to disagree with everyone else.
It's safe to say that it was the unwillingness of so many to build to code, aggravated by the high cost of supplying one's own water, power and sewage systems, that became the main deal breaker holding the place back from evolving into a recognized community. The ensuing rebellion from the perceived-as-oppressive building codes would tear to shreds what little of the place's threadbare social fabric and community sense was knitted, sparking the long pitched battles between the staunchly compliant who'd stayed, braced for battle, and the merrily (and not so merrily) rebellious who arrived and dug in overnight. The former viewed the latter as invasive illegal residents deserving no less than the bum's rush; the latter viewed the former as uptight control freaks with too much money and a serious need to chill.
Zooming out to look at matters from a wider perspective, enough factors had combined to make for a place festering with irreconcilable differences. A place built on such a shaky footing, lacking water, electricity and supporting CC&Rs, 'What code?' attitudes; and an overwhelmed county's inability and/or unwillingness to better enforce them; a place rife with contentious energies aimed at it by disgruntled locals bearing festering resentment it even existed...all were baked into the place. Such a laundry list of hindrances guaranteed that whatever elusive hopes more civic-minded residents and concerned property holders might've nurtured to try turning the place around were doomed from the start six ways to Sunday.
Property owners board: hardball with a vengeance
Reflecting and amplifying the place's many woes was the property owners association's member-elected board of directors. Formed to fulfill the ongoing obligations of a nonprofit public-benefit corporation that the Vista was, the board, composed of six volunteer land owners, each serving staggered two-year terms, was required to meet monthly. At first it was mostly only concerned with road maintenance and signage and, for a while, appointed a "sunshine sub-committee" to send get-well cards to any in their aging, shrinking circle ailing. Since all members had to live in approved structures and be in good standing (i.e., pay the annual dues) or at least be a member in good standing if living elsewhere to be eligible, the board of course led the charge in declaring war on the rank scourge of noncompliance.
Significantly, universal health and building code conformity in the Vista was critical if a legal resident decided to move on and hoped to sell the place at a decent price. Once realizing the good ship Vista was sinking fast by the bow, their outrage was magnified for circumstances hitting the raw money nerve. They knew they'd lose out getting a decent return after all their hard work and expense creating full-on legal residences, as the place had lost its brief pedigree of offering respectable city-weary souls an enviable rustic place to live in. Indeed, maybe it was this as much as (or even more than) being insufferable law-and-order zealots per se that triggered their unrestrained anger.
In any event, infuriated board members, in doggedly reporting of every last violation spotted by dedicated policing, created a stony policy of scorched-earth overreach and ruthless hardball action that became the downer gravity center of the realm.
Building a fence without a permit? Report the bugger. Thirty-two days camping out? Get the lawless interloper thrown off. In the course of such efforts, they of course alienated everyone who hadn't made similar commitments to comply. Sometimes they upset even those who'd bought approved homes and were soon nursing serious misgivings for having moved into such an uber-contentious scene, one in which it almost seemed normal for everyone not busy getting drunk to be gnashing their teeth over some grievance or other. They lamented, "What on earth were we thinking, moving here?" For decades the place experienced what was in effect a mini reign of terror. Various board members and their minions went about with an oftentimes balls-out ruthlessness, trying their damnedest to stamp out the affliction plaguing their once-was-and-by-damn-and-by-Jesus-will-be-or-should-be-again, serene backwoods enclave of upright, respectable, law-abiding citizens...and everyone else could go to the devil.
No great surprise, such furious intolerance made the place more than a tad less desirable to want to live in for more than a few. It doubtless scared off some of your like-minded, would-be code-compliant owner-builders from ever settling, having heard war stories from sullen or spitting-mad residents they approached to ask how they liked living here, or getting weary sighs and rolling eyes from health and building department workers the second they uttered the dread realm's name.
While time ultimately proved the code conformity battle a lost cause, a Whack-a-mole effort that did little to stem the tide of unsanctioned building in the long run, it nonetheless remained a cause celebre kept simmering on back burner. "The law's the law" remained the hardline stance, for all the good it did. The issue swept up everyone into the fray or tried to; there were no innocent bystanders. Those who refused to take a side -- "Sorry, we didn't move out here to get mixed up in any squirrelly local politics" -- were scornfully dismissed as do-nothing enablers and so part of the problem.
Manning battle stations
The enforcement system they depended on failed them spectacularly: It had allowed barbarians to storm the gates...and stay. Shocked over their dreams of tranquil retirement and living among kindred souls in the bosom of nature evaporating like a mirage, some indeed seemed to take a certain grim, warped-out satisfaction exacting a pound of flesh from every transgressor they encountered by threatening dire consequences if they didn't toe the line. Even when they knew such threats had become mostly empty bluster, they must've felt that venting their spleens with such open hostility would make at least some feel so unwelcome that they'd want to start packing just to get away from such whack job "neighbors".
Indeed, some of your more unwitting transgressors, having no stomach for such testy confrontations, gave up and moved on, shell-shocked and devastated. (The writer almost became one.) And a few, who knew they were probably courting trouble but weren't attached to the lots so cheaply gotten, would leave, muttering, "Oh well, worth a try." But others, having thicker skins and more combative natures, dug in hard and escalated right along with the zealous enforcers, daring them to do their damnedest. They'd fence off their places and post their own gnarly signs. One of the more chilling: underneath a crosshairs symbol were the friendly words, "Warning: If you can read this you're within range." Others, perhaps having too much time on their hands, actually seemed to enjoy taunting the enforcement crowd; it was a peculiar cat-and-mouse pastime that gave them something to do and in some ways defined their residency.
There was yet another reason the code compliant manned battle stations, Klaxon horns blaring to wake the dead. Since the Vista was technically a nonprofit mutual benefit common interest corporation and its volunteer board of directors legally mandated by the state to make a good-faith effort to have its association members abide by all county, state, and federal laws and ordinances, technically they could be held legally liable if neglecting proper enforcement efforts. Board members could actually be sued.
As if to show there could be no doubt whatsoever that they weren't shirking their duties, they reported every last infraction incessant searches unearthed.
Short of extra-legal vigilante efforts, the place was fully at the mercy of the county powers-that-be to keep things on track; once Vista's situation started seriously derailing, it was still on them to try to make things right. As taxpayers and association members with no legal fining powers, the old guard had insisted that the stretched-thin county enforcement agencies address the insufferable situation and return the realm to 100% code compliance...no matter how much effort or how long it took.
For what earthly good were such ordinances if they weren't actually enforced? Failing that increasingly impossible dream as the overwhelmed, underfunded, increasingly under-motivated enforcement system broke down, at least then it'd be on them. (And then maybe they'd get sued.)
Instantly radicalized
While each land buyer signed an agreement to also abide by all aforesaid applicable laws, regulations and ordinances on purchasing of their parcel, it was of course buried in a boilerplate sea of legaleeze fine print. So, beyond the more flagrant law breakers of latter times were those who, in the rush to pursue elusive dreams of tranquil country living, remained blissfully ignorant of the fact they'd ever agreed to any such thing. They were therefore shocked when told -- often with a fire-breathing intensity -- how you couldn't do this or that and don't even think about doing the other thing. People came to feel foolish and misguided for having responded to the siren call of cheap land with great views and settling in what at first blush had seemed such a delightfully low-key, charming, affordable place (apart from those weird barking signs), but for some unfathomable reason appeared hellbent on giving fresh meaning to the phrase 'going off the deep end.'
Such hardball tactics radicalized one against the local powers-that-be in a heartbeat.
The more cash-strapped, instant-sanctuary sort of newcomers hoping to buck the system only knew they'd snagged a miraculously affordable piece of rural California and were psyched to do their own thing and be left alone. Maybe over time they'd try for a well; maybe not. They connected with kindred souls who'd advise them, "Just ignore the board; I do -- hell, everyone does; It's just a toothless tiger, buncha retired power-freak busybodies with nothing better to do than try telling others how to live. Screw 'em and the horses they rode in on."
The very nature of any good-sized rural subdivision, a crazy-quilt gridwork of myriad lots tucked way out in the boonies, could make them problematic even with supporting infrastructure and CC&Rs. While it enabled any so inclined to buy a bit of rural land affordably -- rather than, say, shelling out for a worlds pricier stand-alone ten, twenty, forty or eighty acre parcel and then have to deal with road access and maintenance on one's lonesome -- the hidden costs of cheap rural subdivision lots could be steep. One found themselves living amid a potluck assortment of strangers concentrated together in the middle of nowhere and mandated by law to cooperate, yet isolated from the high-density town and city lifestyle that made the same plethora of rules and regulations feel normal...and abnormal when living out in the hinterlands.
It was that crowded, super-regulated urban reality so many wanted to get away from that led them out here in the first place.
Sharing the fantasy
The fact that people wanted their own land -- a place where they could live in closer harmony with nature and a respectable distance from others -- made it difficult, due to the contentious forces afoot, to ever warm up to the reality of others sharing the land with them, despite being a far thinner density than your typical urban scene. While you often couldn't see another house from your property, lending the illusion you maybe had a larger area all to yourself, everyone, for better or worse, was on the mundane level inextricably bound together by an overarching legal structure with its endless edicts. It was the bureaucratic city mindset surreally superimposed on the untamed countryside. As a result, thinking the place would offer independent country living could often prove no more than a cruel illusion.
Steve Dockter, a late neighbor of the writer's whose laconic manner of speech and wit bore a striking resemblance to that of actor Sam Elliot, once noted drolly that "people need to learn to share the fantasy." While many could feel as if they owned maybe twenty or forty acres, or at least had one heck of a buffer zone surrounding their two- to three-acre parcels, they needed to enable others to enjoy the same feeling, by being considerate and mindful of their needs and rights as well as their own. Otherwise, the potential for ceaseless territorial squabbling and indifference could -- and often did -- result in a chaotic wild-frontier social climate that ruined it for everyone.
The Vista's laundry list of neighborhood grievances at times indeed at times felt endless.
Between barking dogs, roving packs of the same, discharging firearms, blasting stereos, gunning vehicle engines, driving too fast and recklessly, vandalizing and stealing road signs, burning toxic materials in one's backyard rather than haul them to the dump, tree poaching epidemics, juvenile dirt bikers roaring about and tearing through the unfenced lots of absentee owners, epidemic roadside littering and mindless garbage dumping, strong winds blowing one's property detritus to the four corners with zero concern over it and despoiling the landscape... Between all these there was usually always something or other to raise one's dander (whatever dander is).
In sheer exasperation, residents kept complaining to the mostly powerless board, usually to no avail. And to county authorities. They in turn were often so caught up in the swamp of slow bureaucratic procedure and reflecting an older populace's set rural ways and often feeling hostility or indifference to the development their predecessors had the poor judgement to approve, that they might also feel powerless and/or disinclined to work to try resolving its chronic problems. Among the more benumbed and burned out on elected public service were those practiced in the political fine art of the two-step avoidance dance in response to constituents' wails of "Can't you do something?!" It seemed the buck never stopped anywhere, but instead circled endlessly: "Well, unfortunately there's not a whole lot we can do"; "Sorry, but it's not our problem"; "Ya see, it's complicated"; "You might give Neighborhood Watch another go"; "You could try suing"...
Beyond that element in local government wary of or indifferent to the Vista's ongoing trials and tribulations, for others it possibly wasn't so much not caring as it was that the county's rural population -- embracing a relaxed stand-alone country lifestyle and the Code of the West championing rugged independence -- hadn't any inclination to play cop over fellow residents; they thought people should work out their problems on their own. Many in government beyond actual law enforcement seemed to lack the disposition one cultivated living in your denser, often more stress-filled, urban climates to grab the bull by the horns and confront thorny problems of the kind routinely faced by those living out in the boonies that were seriously eroding the dream of easy country living.
Authorities depended on the vast majority being law-abiding. The largely rural county didn't have a big enough treasury to enforce its own ordinances should enough for whatever reason choose to simply ignore them.
If that happened, it could be in deep doo-doo.
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The Vista Through Time
1965 - 2015
[Part 5]
Subdivisions weren't organic settlements
For anyone whose imagination could sometimes take a surreal bent, it might've seemed that the state, in approving such rural subdivisions which each county would then oversee, was perhaps employing social scientists to conduct some weird social lab experiment: trying to determine how many strangers could live together in the middle of nowhere for how long and deal with a given load of rigid rules and regulations before it drove them all nuts. "Hey guys, I think we have a new contender here..."
People moved to the country for peace and quiet; to enjoy fresh air and the quiet and live more simply...and be left the hell alone. They didn't want to deal with any blasted bureaucratic mandates. Naturally, they did their best to ignore them in the Vista -- even if thereby possibly creating unintended consequences: encouraging an infusion of perhaps less law-abiding lot owners, attracted to the wayward place as a promising hideaway. Some might say the very word 'subdivision' handicapped such developments from ever becoming more-thriving communities; the word itself sounded so...well, divisive.
Historically, when a settlement was founded by one or a party, unless a boom-town it evolved slowly; there was an organic process at work. New residents gained a sense of belonging and measure of empowerment within the slow-growing community in which each played a role. The Vista, in stark contrast, was founded by a realtor who lived over six hundred miles away; he had every last bit of land cookie-cutter-platted into 1,641 lots before the first parcel buyer ever set foot on the place. It was his creation, such as it was, initially aspiring to perhaps be no more than simple recreational lands, a place where one could enjoy roughing it in nature a few weeks a year. When it tried evolving into an actual community, the creation of a systematic residential growth avenue had been handicapped from the get-go. It lacked -- forget infrastructure -- crucial cohesive guidelines, collective determination, and an abiding pride for being part of a budding, 'home-grown' community. Instead, its approach had seemed to be a casual, "Let's see what might develop if enough of us can get on the same page."
Of course, nowhere near enough ever did. It soon became clear that an incredibly diverse ownership was not only reading different chapters, but different books.
Vista's already trey iffy situation was made iffier still after various one-time residents started leasing their residences once the blush of Vista living was off the rose for them. Such lessees as non-owners had zero say in how the place was run as far as board eligibility, even if in time one might've felt a strong vested interest and wanted to get involved to try helping the place along beyond joining the volunteer fire department or doing fundraisers for it, or spouting one's two cents' worth at a monthly meeting (if even allowed to).
The place's many problems, again, were exacerbated by the legion of disinterested absentee parcel owners that long constituted over ninety percent of the association's membership. They dwarfed the minuscule number of actual residents yet held equal voting power on any formal proposal. To many of the purely speculative it was nothing but a gone-sour investment they'd sell the second they got a halfway decent offer. In the meantime, they'd scream and holler over every cent of annual due increase right along with the few scattered residents, many of whom had themselves become indifferent to the outlandish notion of ever trying to help the one-time wilderness condo that had obviously long ago lost its way past the point of redemption.
Why bother?
The professional association management in time hired by the volunteer board was relied on to take care of mundane everyday matters, especially legal, billing, and budgetary concerns. But by then things had been going wrong so long, many felt there was nothing meaningful anyone could do other than nurse along the wobbly operation the way it was and hope for the best. The cynics included long-established residents who had their own social scene wired, thank you, and were all too aware how steeply the cards were stacked against the place ever managing to turn around. They'd reject as naive if well-meant the pipe dreams of those who wanted to try making the place more livable.
Frustration and cynicism ran so deep, hope had become just another four-letter word.
A prime example of how endemic the lack of civic-minded spirit could get: One day in the 1990's, dozens of orange plastic bagged phone books were dropped off atop the busy Juniper Drive entrance's mailbox complex -- and promptly swept to the ground by one irate resident, no doubt resenting their being piled on their boxes. They stayed there on the ground for weeks. While it created an obvious eyesore for everyone each time driving by, over a month went by and still no one bothered to deal with it. The disbelieving writer, who didn't live in that part, held off, waywardly fascinated by such monumental indifference. (Finally, I gathered them up for recycling.) No doubt many had grumbled to themselves how someone ought to clean them up, but never thought to be that someone. Disheartened and disgusted the place was so untogether, they no doubt got a perverse rush every time they drove past, raking the board over the coals for being so discombobulated it couldn't even deal with such a simple matter. The place really was like a rural condo, its one-person road management expected to keep things tidy, not us; earn your damn keep, slacker.
A more far-reaching example: In 1981, a majority of association members would overwhelmingly defeat a proposal made by then-board president Eric Prescott. He'd envisioned the Vista building a modest multi-use community center on one of the hundreds of empty lots for the mutual benefit of every resident and owner-visitor at a time when the place, still predominantly code-abiding, was growing fast with new residences. Even though it would’ve only involved a modest extra assessment for two years to fund, its cost being spread out among so many owners, and undoubtedly would benefit myriad parcel holders over time, fostering a better sense of community and therefore likely increasing lot values, the sea of disinterested, disillusioned absentee parcel holders kept their blinders firmly in place and chorused their favorite refrain: Not One Cent More!
Many embraced the notion that once they'd bought the land, except for annual property taxes -- some newbie landowners no doubt weren't even aware of that recurring expense -- they were home free. So, as noted, they took strong exception to having to feed the parking meter every year for road maintenance on roads they never drove on lest their property get towed away by the Mt. Shasta Vista Property Owners Association through legal repossession...for resale to the next, possibly equally clueless buyer. The situation fostered a festering resentment by absentee owners, some of whom never even set foot on the place, towards residents who were routinely driving on roads that they as well then had to pay upkeep on. It all seemed grossly unfair somehow.
Sweet someday...
Not that there weren't also a few absentee owners who, despite all, treasured the land and felt nothing but kind regard for its residents who'd made the grand leap to secluded country living. They held wistful hopes that its promising beginnings might someday be rekindled. Some no doubt entertained notions of maybe moving here once it finally, at long last, pulled itself together. Or even as-is and hoping for the best. And a few others still enjoyed periodic camping retreats on the lots located far from the busy arteries and established homes that were often found clustered along the the few power lines, within a mile or two of the blacktop.
But such sentiments faced the constant headwinds of all-is-futility from the long entrenched detachment, indifference, and even bitterness of lot holders who felt stuck in what proved to be a loser investment. And it seemed most owners -- jaded residents and disillusioned absentee owners alike -- became cynical towards the fanciful notion of the place ever pulling itself together. Especially if it meant one more penny pried from wallet or purse. Obviously there was no hope for the outlandish basket case of a failed subdivision, so why bother?
Many thought that surely some portion of their annual assessment fee could be used to go towards funding whatever civic improvements the community-minded thought might help the place along. But the budget was almost always stretched to the breaking point over the high cost of maintaining sixty-six miles of fragile roads. Plus, the board was repossessing parcels of defaulting owners that couldn't be resold readily, and so their annual county property taxes were absorbed by the association until finding a buyer, further eating into available funds. Then there were vandalized and stolen road signs needing frequent replacement (back when it was still done, and in a timely manner). And skyrocketing insurance rates. And thorny legal matters with potential lawsuits requiring keeping a pricey attorney on retainer. And...
Disinterested association managers &
board presidents with conflicts of interest
In the 1980s, the association started shelling out for the annual salary of the professional association manager. Things had gotten too complicated and time-consuming for volunteer board members to deal with alone. Most were not enough well versed in legal matters to grasp the intricate procedures required for running the development according to Hoyle, especially after the state legislature in 1985 enacted the flurry of new regulations for subdivisions known as the Davis Stirling Act.
It would add insult to injury when one of our salaried managers (the place had had two) -- whom residents naturally assumed would work for the good of the place, it being a nonprofit public benefit corporation -- actually brokered lot sales by working as a realty agent on the side. Jumping on the realty boom, in 2015 he joined the flurry of realtors hustling to sell to a flood of parties intent on turning aforesaid tranquil lifestyle upside down and inside out in the mad scramble to cash in on California's new gold rush of legalized recreational pot and the all but unenforceable regulations for growing it on a commercial scale.
And while some, maybe even most, volunteer board presidents, themselves residents, tried to keep the well-being of the residency in mind -- balanced with valid concerns of the vast majority of absentee parcel holders -- one who shall remain nameless was actually part of the most ambitious realty effort that aggressively pushed parcels to the aforementioned for the commission fees. They'd send out letters to every parcel owner, inviting them to sell, knowing that many who'd felt stuck with unsellable lots for ages would jump. She had always held that it was the right of each property owner to do with their lot whatever they wanted. ("One has the right to cut down every last tree on his parcel if he wants to", she once said at a board meeting, stirring ominous feelings of dread in the writer.) In her book, it trumped any consideration for the well-being and quality of life of the community. With such a mindset, willing to expedite pulling the rug out from under the place's long-established way of living in order to make a fast buck, established residents could be left feeling like expendable pawns on the realty market's chessboard.
Though the development was, again, ostensibly a nonprofit public benefit corporation, there was so much blatant for-profit, make-money-anyway-you-can-off-the-lame-ass-dead-in-the-water-parcels hustling going on by self-interested parties, it beggared belief. It made your average for-profit concern look like a piker in comparison.
No there there
Many residents had had low to no expectations going in and so accepted that there wasn't more there there. Nothing beyond the junipers and sagebrush and simple roads amid the scattering of dwellings of starkly contrasting stripes. Maybe even relieved, as it suited some just fine. Various parties used the place as a temporary perch, a transition spot, ready to move on if and when something better came along. Again, to the thinking of many, the idea of trying to foster any actual sense of community seemed to hold nothing but potential for becoming an intolerably intrusive force.
Many people the realm attracted indeed seemed far from your conventional sort (if there was such a thing). They'd moved here to get as far away from over-complicated, peace-eroding bureaucratic urban forces as possible yet be not too far from town. As one late section 13 Pilar Road resident, then president of the Siskiyou Arts Council, said gleefully of the place during a public radio interview, "We live out in the middle of nowhere and we love it!"
Those who'd conformed to code requirements, or bought places that had, ostensibly had the peace of mind with which to enjoy them for being fully law-abiding. But even those who hadn't and were hunkered down hopefully under radar seemed to feel they had the same inviolable right to enjoy their parcels any way they chose and not get hassled -- while at the same time ignoring any and all laws and ordinances that didn't seem fair or appeared unlikely to be enforced.
Handy place to perch
The Vista, as an arrested de facto recreational subdivision that failed to segue into a recognized community past its brief early incarnation, for long decades mostly remained an embarrassment of empty lots. The situation struck all kinds of refugees from urban living as making for a dandy place to land: cheap and remote, but not too remote. The code-compliant among them could enjoy simple stand-alone country living, while the non-compliant could more than likely get away with not conforming to code, or suffer singed feathers at worst. Both paid the mandatory annual dues (usually) and as a popular idle pastime demonized the volunteer member board as the source of all evil. With a shortsightedness living in the place often seemed to cultivate, it was the fly in the ointment interfering with any more carefree country living.
The more cynical felt the board setup was bogus, probably illegal. Corrupt as hell, anyhow. "Someone oughta sue", "Why I ever moved here...", "This place would be just fine if it weren't for...", "They can't do that, can they?", ad infinitum. Idle rumors of corrupt board members dipping into the treasury were rife.
Though such gnarly energies weren't always evident, it often felt that way. There were in fact respites, pleasant lulls when the dread fire-breathing beast of contention appeared to slumber. During such times -- especially during gentle springs and balmy summers -- a peaceful, laid-back spirit prevailed over a land that, despite all, felt blessed with a rich and rare tranquility. Grateful denizens relished the solitude for living amid such a sunshiny, largely unspoiled habitat, the polarized energies checkmated and a tenuous live-and-let-live attitude prevailing.
Such idyllic periods, alas, seldom lasted long.
Perennial joker in the deck:
Intolerable years of the mid 1970s through mid 1990s
While there was something to be said for the place making everyone feel like a king or queen of their own bit of wild land, their own little backwoods hideaway bought for a song, one had to keep tuning out the perennial joker in the deck: the never-ending battle over code compliance. It could make said would-be royalty feel instead like serfs, under the yoke of the oppressive overlords who'd met the county's legal residency requirements and were heavy-handedly vested in upholding pricey living standards for the place -- sometimes succeeding, other times coming off like Barney Fife.
This joker, like a rude Jack-in-the-box, kept popping up to crimp the lives of non-complying dwellers during those Intolerable Years roughly spanning between the mid 1970s and 1990s. As said, domains furthest away from the blacktop often had so few others living near that inhabitants might've imagined their digs more as pioneer homesteads of yore rather than any dratted modern-day subdivision parcels subject to a slew of nit-picky, spirit-stifling rules and regulations. But the latter reality would sooner or later assert itself to put a decided damper on one's day.
Some (certainly not all) board members and their cohorts of the time -- their fondest hopes for the place fading to oblivion and, consequently, minds unhinging, desperate and drunk on the seeming powers being a board member conferred -- could run amok like so many little T-Rexes. With barred teeth and razor claws, the uber law-and-order champions tried wielding a ruthless authority over the domain.
Fast forward and board members, though still grumbling over the rampant non-compliance going on ruining property values and quality of life, seemed to gradually become more or less resigned to having to endure the seemingly unsolvable situation. Board meeting members and attendees, many still mindful of the brief Shangri-la of yore, at some point started to sink into a why-even-try? depressed mindset. But, oddly enough, even as the once-iron authority was rusting away, residents often still somehow felt one couldn't do diddly-squat without first getting the board's approval -- and then grow old waiting for it. ("Matter tabled til next month (yawn); motion for adjournment?") The same if one wanted to start a volunteer effort to try helping the place along.
Beleaguered crew aboard
the foundering HMS Vista
One day at a meeting held in then-president Bonnie Jolly's living room, the writer volunteered to become the unpaid custodian of the subdivision; I wanted to deal with the epidemic of road litter and windblown detritus often despoiling the roadsides. Though they seemed to think it a laudable idea and promptly voted me into the new position, it was an unreal experience. It was almost like they approved the post in their sleep. They hadn't bothered to address any details the position would require, like supplying trash bags or any possible reimbursements for dump fees or a gas allowance stipend; nothing. (I hadn't thought to bring it up either.) I quit my official post before I started, knowing I needn't bother saying anything to anyone. Their hearts simply weren't into it. Burned out volunteering and used to receiving mostly only grief for their efforts and getting depressed over the sorry state of affairs in general, they could only muster enough energy to cover routine matters like road maintenance while coasting along on automatic pilot. (I'd continue gathering road litter informally, as did a few others likewise concerned.)
The way board members so often seemed to be just woodenly going through the motions, calling it in, other residents, knowing the beast had lost its teeth, would tackle things as they saw fit on their own, not asking for the board's permission. Like setting aright a road sign that had been struck and was precariously listing or fallen, or repairing a stretch of road in front of one's place themselves rather than go through stupefyingly sluggish channels.
Apathy and a sense of hopelessness in the place had become so chronic and well-entrenched, it could feel like we were a beleaguered crew aboard a foundering ship with barely the will left to do anything more than bail just enough water to keep from going clean under.
What rules?
Jumping back again to those earlier, super-intolerant years... Despite a seemingly bonkers board throwing its weight around on near-constant red alert, the remote circumstances still somehow lent a tenuous assurance that, even then, one could do (or should be able to do) whatever the heck they wanted to on their land. No uptight board -- lacking credibility and legal fining power and over time getting less and less enforcement support from the county -- could stop them, regardless of how much ruckus they might raise.
Private-property rights were sacrosanct, after all. The more independent-thinking dwellers blocked from mind the reality of being part of any external world's rules and regulations -- and especially any busybody elected board of directors. It just didn't register as something needed in their world: it was too invasive, too arbitrary, too self-defeating to the very reason they moved here.
At the risk of overstating the point (okay, probably too late), the illusion of anything goes manifested in profound measure, if only indirectly, due to the vast majority of raw-parcel owners being mere investors and most living far away and rarely, if ever, visiting. To actual dwellers, they seldom held more than an easily tuned out phantom presence. Inhabitants came to view the thousand-plus vacant, undeveloped, seemingly unsellable parcels as a de facto permanent park commons. Dwellers were sovereign over their own inviolate mini fiefdom of two to three acres plus an oftentimes luxuriant buffer zone of dozens of empty parcels; it could make one feel land rich indeed. (Writer, living in one of the more remote areas, far from power lines and, thus, residents, for decades luxuriated in being surrounded by hundreds of undeveloped, unfenced acres; one could enjoy strolling the area bare-ass naked if one wanted and no one to care.)
Some residents -- beyond board members in contact with absentee owners -- might've vaguely sensed the latter's displeasure over how the place was doing. It was a disheartening situation, one that often allowed firewood-selling tree poachers to raid absentees' unprotected lots at will, sometimes parcels harboring actual squatters, and let off-roaders indifferently tear through absentee owners' unfenced, often unposted, parcels with zero respect for it being someone's private property. Though perhaps having no one to blame but themselves for being foolish enough to buy into what proved to be such a spectacular developmental misfire, it was easier to blame the residency and the mostly powerless board who together gave the impression they didn't care diddly-squat about what was happening (as some residents, only trying to make the best of a bad situation, indeed didn't).
Whether or not one sensed this pernicious force at play, on one level the absentees' combined ire over the sorry state of affairs was part of the overload of corrosive forces at work. Though subtle, it could vaguely gnaw at a resident's peace of mind -- if only on an unconscious level -- right along with the in-your-face, code compliant dwellers waging war on the non-compliant. The huge absentee ownership, which as a whole never mustered enough public-minded energy to want to help the place out of its dire straits by voting for things like a community center, not if it meant forking over one more cent, was definitely a contender for being the straw that finally broke the camel's back.
Vigilante episodes
inside an intractable tract
One day in the early 2000s, one of the very few residents then furtively growing illicit cannabis for the underground market long before changing California pot laws largely decriminalized such doings, found himself with new neighbors. They appeared keen on doing the exact same thing he was. Wanting to avoid increasing the likelihood of perhaps bringing unwanted attention to his own clandestine operation, he persuaded them to leave by promising them violence in no uncertain terms if they didn't.
An isolated few others were also discreetly growing small patches of plants by then, some mostly for their own enjoyment, others to generate extra income as well. The place had a nice sunshiny climate for it (if not the ideal soil) and was remote enough to pursue such happy gardening without getting hassled if one kept discreet and low-key.*
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* The Vista's early pot grows, limited as they were, would of course help set the stage for the later grower mania, showing yet again how the remote place was an irresistible draw for all sorts, for all sorts of reasons.
California had of course legalized medical marijuana in 1996, the first in the nation to do so. In the years preceding recreational pot being legalized by the state in late 2016, changing the rules yet again, a few enterprising Vistan residents pooled together scrip from the sea of registered, mostly-sham medical-marijuana 'patients' ("I can't sleep, Doc"..."Well, slip me a Franklin and your troubles are over"), entitling them to grow six plants a year for each. In effect it legally allowed them to grow 99 plants, thereby ostensibly supplying some sixteen 'patients' with the healing herb while still technically keeping in compliance with state law and not trigger unwelcome government interest by growing any more.
After 2016, the 99-plant figure reportedly would become the tacitly agreed-on limit, barring any filed complaints, to overwhelmed county authorities, regardless of whether one had scrip paperwork or not. The six-plant limit the state specified for private individuals on their own property, applying to all except actual licensed commercial farms, was ignored by the inundation of enterprising underground growers pouring into the Vista and adjacent areas starting in 2015 -- along with, eventually, the 99-plant limit.
For the civil misdemeanor fine was the same, whether growing three hundred or three thousand plants -- $500.
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Between a critical handful of your more defiant kinds, ignoring any and all rules and regulations interfering with doing what they wanted; a county seemingly throwing up its hands and abandoning the place as a hopeless mess, actually deleting its residency-code enforcer post for several critical years; and radically-changing times in general -- between these, respect for the rule of law in the Vista got on some mighty shaky ground.
A few more examples will show how shaky.
As mentioned, some less than civic-minded entrepreneurial residents as well as invading outsiders routinely poached trees on vacant lots to sell as firewood, cutting down scores of standing snags, sometimes even living trees, including some of the few tall pines that had graced the region. They left unsightly stumps and slash piles on once relatively pristine parcels. (A forestry department rep once showed the writer a regional map with a rash of probably over a thousand tiny red dots, each dot representing an illegal cut.) Another party set up a huge dog-rescue kennel on an unimproved, treeless parcel in section 21; neighbors up to half mile away suffered the endless barking of dozens of unhappily caged residents, often left baking in the sun, for over a year until the operation was finally shut down.
And bolder souls took the law into their own hands. When a resident towards the top of White Drive discovered that a surveyor had made an error decades earlier on his lot boundaries, he tried to close off the major through road running by his place outright by building a sign-posted gate across it. This despite it being ages too late to legally remedy the error. A devil-may-care neighbor who regularly used the road didn't think twice when encountering the sudden barrier: he backed up his bad-boy truck, gunned the engine and smashed through the gate; end of problem.
Yet another neighbor on McClarty Road, furious over how certain parties routinely roared by his place and raised clouds of dust just to tick him off, one evening furtively dug a slanted trench across the road. That night they sped by as usual, promptly lost control, and ran into a tree. As they staggered back, shaken and furious, to confront him, he shot at them, missing, and was arrested. On another occasion, a resident on Cardinal Road saw red on learning how his scuzzy neighbor had tried hitting on his young teen daughter. Along with the wrecking crew he rounded up, he descended on the culprit's land late one night when they knew he was on vacation in county lockup; they vandalized and looted the place to a fare-thee-well. And when a Black man briefly occupied a vacant stone cottage (yet again on McLarty) and was discovered one night by the absentee owner, the latter held a shotgun on him until the sheriff deputy arrived a full half hour later.
Obviously, the place's auspicious start during simpler times -- its relatively homogeneous, upbeat if convention-minded, law-abiding dwellers sharing a euphoric bonhomie in settling the land after having annually camped on their lands and then coming together -- was ancient history, shot to hell and gone ages ago, the quaint way of life of a misty bygone era.
Blame it on the mountain
One could maybe in part blame the energy of the massive mountain for Vista residents not working together any more. As mentioned, its natural force field (or whatever energy one sensed it emanated) was thought to stimulate one's upper-body chakras. While initially revving the imagination, in time it could also tend to pull one meditatively inward. Bolstered by the development's founder, who, as an enthusiastic fellow camper in the early years, championed the freedom to do whatever one wanted on one's private parcel (within the bounds of the law, of course), the mountain's influence could work to make one feel their lot was something akin to Superman's impregnable Fortress of Solitude.
Long after the honeymoon camping period and early homesteading years faded away and non-code-approved living took off in earnest, people for a while actually competed and campaigned to get voted onto the board. Some no doubt were hoping to mellow the place, willing to turn a blind eye to unenforceable county ordinances so long as residents were otherwise peaceable, wanting to somehow make the best of a bad situation. Meanwhile, others with short fuses kept grinding the code enforcement ax, bound and determined to somehow keep alive the by-then mostly toothless hardline campaign against unsanctioned dwellings, their dwellers, and anyone who looked at them cross-eyed.
That relative community-active period passed soon enough. Fast-forward a decade and the place was so overwhelmed with non-compliant, what's-it-to-you? residents, there emerged an air of pronounced civic indifference. The ungovernable atmosphere, perhaps aggravated by and reflecting the 1990's high national crime rate, was punctuated by the helpless wails of long-suffering residents: “What’s happening to this place?”
Lost in a fog, we were a ship at sea without sail or rudder, aimlessly adrift. "Water, water, everywhere / nor any drop to drink."
Rambunctious Whitney Creek
Speaking of water... In supreme irony, residents on water-parched lands periodically had to scramble to keep water out. Snow melts poured in from next door's seasonally running Whitney Creek that every now and then went on a rampage, flooding areas of the adjacent section 28's lowlands at either Buck Horn Road or Rising Hill Road, depending on the seasonal creek's changing course. After many years of floods washing away vulnerable roads and eroding various parcels, the Association in the eighties sued the Forest Service. It had allowed the course of the creek -- actually just a seasonal snow-melt wash -- to be diverted towards the then-new subdivision by removing a dam built above state highway 97 by people in the area who'd owned what later became Lake Shastina and no longer had need of it -- or wanted to deal with reversing the diversion themselves. (Then-emerging Lake Shastina hadn't wanted to either.)
Our development won the suit, and the quarter-million dollar settlement went to funding the massive earthen berms that to this day are kept up along Buck Horn and what's left of Rising Hill to protect the place from future flooding. Between annual bulldozing efforts to repair the latest erosion from the previous year's water action and the creek sometimes cutting new courses through the silt, or a massive mud flow causing the same, the waters were mostly kept out of harm's way.*
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* Not always. In August 2022, part of the Buck Horn Road berm was again breached by water and mud flows after prolonged record 100 degree weather generated extraordinary amounts of snow and glacier melt, possibly built up in an ice dam that finally burst, flooding land with water and mud flow on both sides of the berm and prompting a Code Red evacuation alert.
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Bored writer joins the board
In the early 2010s, after over thirty years of feeling little fondness for the board -- and at times demonized by some of its members in return, short fuses being common all around -- the writer actually served on it for all of eighteen months. At the time volunteering for the board had hit an all-time low. It was hard-pressed to fill more than three of its five seats, three being the legal minimum needed to conduct official and essential business like approving road maintenance outlays.
They weren't too picky about who volunteered, just so long as one was a code-compliant resident or an absentee owner in good standing. If not rallying, the place could conceivably have gone into dread state receivership as a failed subdivision and faced monumentally unpleasant and costly consequences. As I was one of only a few who even sporadically attended monthly meetings, one evening in 2012 I found myself roped into serving on it as secretary by then-president Pam Simpson before I knew what was happening.
While it turned out the development's actually defaulting never posed an imminent threat, it did seem to at least flirt with such an ignominious fate from time to time. It felt like no one gave three hoots in a holler what happened to the wayward place. Certainly few appreciated or respected how various residents were volunteering their time and effort serving on the board to try to meet the state's mandate to do what needed to be done to keep alive some minimum level of functionality. For all their troubles, volunteers were, as said, often vilified as power-crazed busybodies interfering with residents' would-be tranquility. (Various non-compliant neighbor acquaintances suddenly became a tad wary towards me, as if I'd just joined up with the dark side.)
With so many members -- resident and absentee alike -- routinely damning the board or at least being supremely indifferent to it, all but the more determined and thick-skinned members serving on it soon burned out, becoming overwhelmed, jaded and/or embittered and disillusioned in record time. Those who hung in could appear like charred remnants of their former selves. They hung on at the monthly meetings like a dog with a bone, determined not to let go of the reigns for fear no one could or would do a credible job.
Indeed, from time to time the board did attract volunteers with private agendas up their sleeves, hoping to use the post to selfish advantage, wanting to sabotage operations to protect nefarious goings-on, or idly sought the dubious prestige and sense of empowerment being a member might bestow without having to do any real work.
As the writer soon confirmed first-hand, the board's pressure-cooker meetings could be seriously detrimental to one's peace of mind. One had to be in full psychic armor and ready for battle, as it were, if, say, some outraged resident or visiting owners attended to vent their spleen. Or, more often, had to endure soul-crushing boredom. And one could be made to feel like cannon fodder if told by the manager to help sign stacks of legal foreclosure papers on property owners who'd either given up on the place, were in dire financial straits, or both.
One struggled to rise above the sea of paperwork and dry formal meeting procedure suffered in the cramped, cold-fluorescent lit fire station backroom if hoping to accomplish anything that one might be conceivably proud of. Spirits were often so subdued we appeared to be in some clinical group depression, as if everyone felt the thankless, grand futility of it all but plugged away anyhow out of a sorely misguided sense of civic duty.
Over time, the development would, now and then, appear to be getting back on track (as much as any track existed) under the guidance of more capable, on-the-ball, altruistic-minded board members. They scrambled to get the place up to speed after tackling remedial catch-up chores. Then it'd derail all over again due to the endless shuffle of new, sometimes less motivated and/or knowledgeable resident volunteers. There was always a lot of slow on-the-job orientation involved. By the time new volunteers got a tenuous handle on operations, they were often burned out. And so the learning process began once again with other newbies from an ever-shrinking pool of willing property-owning volunteers in good standing.
All is futile...
Born under a dark star?
No doubt like many well-meaning board members before and after me, I'd hoped to somehow help turn the place around. The situation had just seemed so ridiculously depressing, so needlessly downbeat, so all-is-futility-why-even-bother? that surely it wouldn't take much to reverse the dispiriting downward spiral. You'd've thunk. But of course I struck out just like everyone else. While some of the newsletter features and editorial write-ups I penned were appreciated, it was too little too late to make a bit of difference. The beleaguered ship Vista had by then not only left the dock but sailed halfway around the world. The die was cast. The line was drawn. The dismal course was set. Barring a miracle, it was purely wishful thinking to imagine concerned board members could ever pull the place out of the quagmire it was hopelessly stuck in.
We were dinosaurs, floundering in a tar pit, lamenting our dismal fate.
Though various mindful visitors over time would often sense the land's at times pronounced serenity -- some overnighters reported having the best dreams of their lives here -- cynics, and not without reason, came to dismiss the troubled realm out of hand: “No water, no trees, nothing but desert and rattlesnakes; it's a friggin' wasteland.” To them, it was just a sketchy substandard rural bedroom community; a hideout for hard-drinking loners, small-time growers and spaced-out nature freaks; maybe a few respectable, hardworking residents hoping to play out an elusive dream of idyllic country living and obviously having picked the wrong spot.
The way so many routinely slammed the place, you'd've maybe concluded it was born under a dark star, a wicked witch’s cauldron boiling over with gnarly contentious forces, any effort to resist its sad destiny sheer folly.
Resistance was futile.
A bit of esoterica:
Vista's astrology and cardology
Those familiar with astrology might appreciate knowing the celestial forces at work the day the place legally came into being: November 3, 1965. The calendar date was the birth day of TV's Rosanne Barr, along with football's Collin Kaepernick and actor Charles Bronson. Some might say the resulting early Scorpio, brooding, super-wound energies imprinted on the development at its moment of birth guaranteed the place would always be a tad on the intense side. Then, lightening the mix, both Mars and Venus were in nature-loving Sagittarius, along with having a compassionate, dreamy Pisces moon.
Related, there's cardology, or the study of planetary influences forming a unique DNA signature for each day of the year, symbolized by a playing card (some days share the same card, but each having unique variations of meaning). Its 4 of diamonds birthday, according to the book Cards of Destiny by Sharon Jeffers, created an "innate restlessness, possible dissatisfaction with what one was doing," and could make one "...a dreamer who doesn't always allow dreams to become reality."
That last surely fit the Vista to a T: it was indeed a dreamland, its denizens often unable to manifest and sustain happy dreams in waking reality.
Perfect storm
Somewhere along the way the once openly shared, carefree vacation land had reached a critical tipping point, flown past the point of no return. Anarchistic-leaning residents were determined to do their own thing while hundreds of absentee landholders, filled with buyer remorse, had little or no interest in the place except to cash out the clunker investment the first chance they got. Most would-be residents had long ago lost any inclination to build to code. One contractor who in later times actually did build a two-story house to code minus well and electricity deprived the county of ever conferring its official blessing. Why bother? The county had dropped its residential code enforcer position and a fully code-built place couldn't fetch enough return if deciding to sell for being in such a squirrelly mishmash of a place.
Countless daunting factors holding the place back had been piling up over the decades, combining with changing external realities that were destined to one day create the perfect storm.
The situation was already letting any so inclined have a field day pursuing whatever dubious land uses they might conjure -- junkyards, dog kennels, meth labs -- for being off on such remote, private dirt roads tucked far away from all but maybe the prying eyes of a few nosy neighbors, who seemed powerless to do anything about it anyway. No matter if such dubious land uses upset the peace and quiet the code-compliant had dropped anchor here for and invested decades of hard work in establishing their homesteads, or had bought places from others who had and paid them accordingly.
The wayward realm was singing the old Cole Porter's tune "Anything Goes".
Without any more harmonizing force, one with at least a semblance of pro-active community concern and respect for the rule of law, an anarchistic spirit had gained an outsize influence. It seemed the majority of less invested residency, used to the place being so dysfunctional -- a quirky, cheap, low-key hideaway with a powerless board and often unresponsive county authorities -- couldn't be bothered to read the writing on the wall. Or read it and felt nothing could be done. As a result, the place was leaving the door wide open for even greater misadventures.
One didn't need the omniscience of 20-20 hindsight to realize that by the early teens two things were crystal clear: The lotus land was a rudderless ship, vulnerable to drifting into perilous straits; and that its residents either didn't care or felt helpless to do anything to try preserving the (despite all) often tranquil rural lifestyle by then taken for granted.
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The Vista thru Time
1965-2015
[part 6]
Knowing where the Vista was coming from could go a long way in understanding where it went. Had the place's metaphorical foundation, as it were, gone full circle? First, trailers set on sand, then conventional homes built on rock, then more trailers set on sand?
It's the water
Whatever happened, or would happen, lack of water always played a major role. Klamath River County Estates (KRCE) landowner Will Jensen, in long ago reporting in a blog covering his exhaustive search to find an ideal affordable rural home property with an inspiring Mt. Shasta view, noted: “No matter who we talked to we were warned away from Mt. Shasta Vista...we were told repeatedly that Mt. Shasta Vista was bad for wells.”
Wanting to remedy the chronic water shortage, by the early 2000s a few solution-minded residents applied for a government grant to fund a proposed centralized water distribution system of some sort. It was rejected, deemed too much cost to help too few.
The realm's need for dependable water was highlighted for being high desert land, usually baking hot and bone dry in summer, and further aggrivated for being on hydrologist-baffling volcanic terrain that often made hitting water through lava strata touch and go and, even if successful, sometimes resulting in water undrinkable without expensive treatment.
Once, an early owner couple drilling for water hit a lava tube. They felt a steady cool stream of air pouring out of the ground and, after sinking a well elsewhere, harnessed the chilly air with a fan to naturally air-condition their eventual home. (More on wells and water in part 7)
Back to the ‘80s
By the mid 1980s, Vista’s resident population had grown to maybe 150 or 200 residences, its dwellers of widely varying ambition and compliance levels. Scattered over the nearly seven square miles, it was still a mere sprinkling; the development was worlds away from even beginning to be built out. Many if not most inhabitants felt like land barons -- especially those on lands furthest from the blacktop.
It seemed many owners were allergic to unpaved driving surfaces; they never learned to accept the place's cinder roads. Adverse to their nice clean vehicle getting all dusty and ruining the latest car wash, they rejected the challenge of having to drive up to five miles over sometimes narrow, winding cinder roads to reach a property. A half mile of unpaved road was more than enough to have to endure.
It seemed that for many the desire for seclusion was weighed against the desire for easy in and easy out. And so they struck a compromise, settling on lots a relatively short distance from the highway. A segment of dwellers seemed to dislike the roads so much that, for a while, some bandied about the half-baked idea of paving them, covering the prohibitive cost by special assessments, which the sea of absentee lot owners of course would then disproportionately have shouldered (no doubt causing a riotous reaction and lawsuits). Perhaps they had thought cinder roads were the main thing holding the place back from ever getting itself together. Their heads were so stuck in city-centric ways that they didn't realize the place's lack of paved roads was perhaps the least of the place's problems.
In any event, with so many of the deemed less-desirable parcels scattered deep in the hinterlands, there was the grand buffer of some thousand empty parcels overall that lent more remote regions such a profoundly tranquil, park-like ambiance for those willing to go the distance and truly embrace country living rather than just flirt with it, willing to adapt to the rough conditions rather than endure city life another day.
But it often seemed that no matter how much pristine land one might enjoy, a foreboding undercurrent often lurked just below the surface. One that could seriously jam one’s peace of mind and ability to more than fitfully enjoy the oft-heralded joys of country life. Between a regional community never really accepting the place and the dead-set resolve of code-compliant residents to battle code ignorers and their unacceptable lifestyles, which dragged down the development's livability, desirability and market values to potential, conventional-minded buyers, it seemed one was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even if a resident was compliant, an almost palpable tension could fill the air and be felt by all. On the subtle, it was like living in a crowded tenement, angry landlord pounding on the door.
It was one of the grand ironies of living in the Vista. Either you detached and became philosophical about it all, or you found yourself over-identifying with artist Munch’s screamer.
It would drive more than a few to drink.
Missing word sank efforts
About 2012, a long overdue effort was launched by a handful of more civic-minded residents: a committee was formed to try revising the outdated CC&Rs. Not overhaul them outright, but at least tinker around the edges, trying to make them a bit more relevant to current realities. After much slow sledding, a glitch in the progress report printed up and sent out to every owner promptly sank the effort. The pamphlet cover’s title was supposed to read: “Proposed Changes to Mt. Shasta Vista Bylaws”, but of course that all-critical first word Proposed somehow was left out, making the changes sound like a done deal.
This prompted a barely peaceable pitchforks-and-torches crowd storming the next monthly board meeting. Residents who normally avoided meetings like the plague came out of the woodwork; they thought the board was maybe trying to stage a coup.
The long and winding roads;
Whitney Creek revisited
While you had your own private parcel, the modest annual ‘road dues’ assessments were often resented -- and frequently contested -- by those not getting their own roads better maintained (if at all). Various absentee owners added to the chorus, claiming they could barely reach parcels located in certain, more remote reaches; some roads weren't touched in years, some for over a decade. The most neglected stretches could develop deep dry pools of tire-grabbing, quicksand-like silt, so bad that AAA tow trucks eventually refused to come out to rescue trapped members' vehicles after once having gotten their own rig stuck in turn and having to call out a monster tow truck to rescue the rescuer.
It didn’t help matters any that our part-time neighbor, Whitney Creek, running along the border of section 28, now and then got rambunctious as summer temperatures soared to 100 degree F. or more. The product of the mountain's heavy winter snow pack, its surging snow melt could cut new courses or eat through the earthen berms. It once actually put much of Section 28 under up to nine inches of water, forcing an evacuation and making regional TV news; long-time resident and native Arkansan Bill Waterson hyucked for the camera, finding it amusing (perhaps because, as a resident since the early seventies, he knew the place was often one disaster after another). The worst of the many floods over time until the massive earthen berm was built, it washed away some roads so thoroughly that the board abandoned them and bought the parcels of those who could no longer reach their parcels short of driving a Hummer; they figured it was cheaper than having to keep rebuilding the periodically endangered but little used road stretches.
Three-fourths of Rising Hill Road, the southernmost road in the Vista, no longer existed -- and the area was still vulnerable to flood. For ages, delivery people and first-timers, using an obsolete map or over-relying on sometimes inaccurate Google Maps, easily got confused, if not hopelessly stuck, looking for nonexistent roads. Finally, the Association -- decades after there was an obvious need for them -- installed Dead End signs at the front of all the once-through roads branching off Starling.
Train wreck of a place
Vistan parcel holders were often, by and large, a frugal lot: bought the land cheap, moved in cheap, wanted to keep things cheap. They frequently harbored pronounced stand-alone tendencies. So it could seem futile to try rallying for community awareness and cooperation in a place with so many having an ornery, "just leave me alone and we'll get along fine" attitude. This socially-challenged situation was (again) seriously compounded by the sea of absentee owners who'd detachedly bought parcels as investments and came to regard their unsellable holdings as an albatross about their necks. The widespread disenchantment of lot owners, both present and absent, was guaranteed to arrest any errant inclination one might've felt to try rescuing the once-promising realm from the hopelessly discombobulated straits into which it had drifted.
At some point, having no solid foundation on which to sustain and build any recognized community, it was overwhelmed by a torrent of adverse circumstances and simply shorted out. It became the arrested development first-time visitors dropped their jaws over. Such a "left for dead" train wreck of a place, set amid otherwise seemingly peaceful and charming backwoods, struck many as so odd as to verge on being surreal. Like it was some long abandoned film set for a low budget Western, forlornly gathering mothballs in outdoor storage. Or a place that had grown too big for its britches trying to rise above its lowly station and was paying the price for its rank impertinence.
Those who had early on built full-on, code-approved homes -- almost everyone who had first moved onto the land -- were realistic in assessing the situation. They knew it would take everyone following the county's health and building regulations if the development were to continue emerging as a recognized community.
But of course people had swooped on the cheap, some with an innocent "Hey, I'm just building a little vacation cabin here, no biggie" sentiment; others bearing a more defiant, "Whadarya goin' to do about it, hee-hee?" attitude; or "My land; bugger off" stances. Earliest settlers knew full well that the survival of their one-time idyllic law-abiding retirement hideaway was facing mortal danger, and so it fully depended on county authorities stepping in with no-nonsense, rigorous code enforcement.
Anything short of that and the place was toast.
Still a nice place to live, kinda sorta
Over time, the realm -- having become such a broad, haphazard, unlikely mix of full-on approved living structures, unsanctioned makeshift dwellings, and derelict trailers, mobiles, RVs and tents -- stabilized after a fashion. It became perhaps not too unlike a cake that had stopped rising in the oven, was removed and partially collapsed, then over time dried out and solidified. Though left precariously existing between worlds, the Vista was de facto recycled: its residency made like hermit crabs, moving in among abandoned rec land lot shells and houses sold by the disillusioned lot holders. Many and sundry would come to consider the development a nice place to live despite its litany of shortcomings and checkered pedigree. Sure, it was a failed subdivision, but it was our failed subdivision.
Living in the Vista was perhaps something akin to wearing a comfy if disreputable-looking old pair of sneakers that had yet to develop any worrisome holes in the soles.
Such kind regard toward the place was, once again, not shared by most of the some eighty percent of property holders as of 2010 -- over 1,200 owners -- who then constituted the absentee membership scattered throughout the nation; they were not enjoying the land. Some, possibly hoping for a miraculous turnaround, had clung to title deeds for decades, gritting their teeth, doubling down and shelling out each year for upkeep on roads they never drove on lest their lots be repossessed -- as countless hundreds indeed were over time. The sentiment of such owners of repo-ed lots was essentially, "When I invested in the place, I didn't realize I'd have to keep investing in it."
Others had dumped their lots in bitter dismay, taking a loss and feeling nothing but unkind thoughts towards the disastrous money pit. This churn rate of lot ownership changing hands, lending a pronounced sense of impermanence to the development, worked to create extra billing time for the salaried manager processing the reams of legal paperwork. It drove up association dues and generated quick commissions for profit-motivated realtors who kept offering the embarrassment of beleaguered low-end lots as sleeper land steals to the gullible, desperate, expedient, or flip-minded. It seemed they often didn't have to say a word; the strangely charmed, dirt-cheap lots with their sweeping mountain views and deep seclusion kept selling themselves.
Meanwhile, absentee parcel holders -- like the hapless characters in the play Waiting for Godot -- had patiently stood by, waiting for values to rise so they could finally lose the clunkers at a decent profit, or at least break even. Or the place improved itself to the point they might actually enjoy visiting, maybe even building an approved shelter of some sort as a part-time retreat. Or, if it really got itself together and they could afford it, build a full-on home and leisurely sample Vista living a while, before then anticipating selling at a nice profit. "You'll love it here"..."Why are you leaving?"..."Well..."
Beginnings re-visited:
ten-cent parcels with million-dollar views
Earliest campers in the newly formed shared wonderland had savored it like fine wine. In spring, the realm would delight the senses with surprise splashes of lavender, purple, red, and yellow wildflowers. Rich lichen moss on aging and dead junipers and shaded rocks seemed magical, dazzling the eye with bright, near-phosphorescent green. After drenching rainfalls, the pungent earthy scent of damp juniper and sagebrush was like perfume.
Abundant wildlife included deer, coyotes, jackrabbits and cottontails; birds of every kind; friendly, curious chipmunks; less-friendly polecats, porcupines and, yes, rattlesnakes (now mostly, if not entirely, gone); a rare mountain lion or other wildcats; tiny, endangered kangaroo rats with their impossibly long tails hopping about at dusk...
The place's first vacationers returned home refreshed, anticipating next year’s visit to their new shared wilderness hideaway and all the improvements they’d work on during rendezvous with friends new and old. People became keen on the idea of adventurously building up an idyllic rural community far off the beaten track.
Seldom heard: a discouraging word
The earliest vacationers gathered at night to enjoy campfire get-togethers. Coyotes yipped up a storm in the distance, no doubt time-warping the more suggestible back to days of the Old West, maybe prompting spontaneous choruses of “Home on the Range” or "Red River Valley." Hearing a distant train rumbling higher up the mountain might've sparked a spirited rendition of "I've Been Working on the Railroad." They'd enjoy daytime potlucks and barbecues under the unfailing majesty of Mt. Shasta’s northern slopes. The locale offered such staggering mountain views that the well-known City of Mt. Shasta photographer, Keven Lahey, in later times raced over to snap the spectacular, almost surreal, lenticular clouds sometimes flying off it, or an impossibly giant one hovering over it like a visiting mothership from Venus.
Judging by the writings in the association's twice-annual Vistascope newsletters, visitors were sharing in the euphoric waves of feelgoodness that was sweeping much of the planet during the rarefied purple-haze days of the late 1960s to early 1970s (along with the gnarly uprisings, wars and protests, of course).
...and the saucers flew by-y-y all night
Even if one was a hard-line Nam war hawk and hostile to the emerging counterculture, with its convention-jarring, liberated ways, spirits ran high...no doubt aided and abetted by their mind-altering drug of choice, alcohol.
But the group buzz might’ve been further heightened by something quite extraordinary: unknowingly copping a contact high from parties aboard the UFOs, then frequently spotted darting about the mountain and briefly making national headlines. The embryonic community had possibly gained a rarefied cosmic super-charge from curious advanced beings from other worlds who were checking out the singing earthlings enjoying the mountain's sleepy side.
Dreamland
To any susceptible to the subtle charms of such high desert woodlands -- magnified for being under the mountain’s spell -- it was a nature lovers’ paradise. One that new parcel holders contentedly worked on to improve. The light-duty cinder roads were kept immaculately groomed by the membership’s workhorse road truck. Flowers were planted at select highway entrances. The welcoming archway sign was lifted into place.
It’s said in metaphysical thinking that the imprint of earliest inhabitants of a land establishes a subtle vibration that it then forever after resonates with no matter what might happen over time. If accepting this as maybe true... Prehistoric indigenous people had seasonally hunted game here but didn’t settle, probably over lack of water and not daring live so close to a powerful and sacred mountain. Beyond them and the first isolated white settlers on the land -- like Eli Barnum by Sheep Rock in the 1850s and, later, hunters and livestock grazers (including Gold Rush 49er Robert Martin, whose descendant would sell the land) -- it might be said that the first major indelible imprint on the land was made by none other than the modern-day pioneering Vistans.
If so, their earliest years of extended camping and settling in bestowed on the land an euphoric, industrious, decidedly conservative, somewhat topsy-turvy energy, a DNA signature the land still resonates with, though often getting buried below the surface.
Apart from such possible influences on the subtle plane, whenever mindful visitors unwound and tuned into the land, one sensed its pronounced, soft, almost-otherworldly, dreamy quality. In spots beyond earshot of highway wash and with no jets droning overhead or freight trains rumbling in the distance, the land held such a profound quiet one could almost sense the earth breathing. Repeat visitors and residents alike, on adjusting to the enveloping silence, came to embrace it like a long-lost lover. (Explorers of Pluto Caves just beyond one of the Vista's borders might've experienced something of the same etheric quality and singular stillness.)
However, this dreamy atmosphere came with a serious downside. Tenuous new residents, wowed by the lightly wooded parcels, bought for a song, could get so caught up spinning fantasies that they never integrated being on the land with doing what was needed to get things squared away with the powers that be, and so allow their brainstorms to actually manifest. Instead, they often remained just so many pipe dreams the region's rarefied energies so readily fostered.
Over time countless one-time owners came and went, happy bubbles burst after a few months or years either ignoring or being ignorant of the sundry mundane regulatory realities still at least fitfully enforced by county and state governments, ordinances legally obligating any would-be resident to first establish a well, septic, and power and then building an abode to accepted standards...until out of the blue a reality check shocked them awake like a bucket of ice water dumped on the head.
It was a phenomenal pattern. The serene enchanted land for sale cheap kept grabbing newbies all psyched over the secluded parcels' possibilities. Then -- like a 'Star Trek' TV episode in which intrepid space explorers land on a strange new planet that at first appears some wondrous paradise -- its fatal flaw is discovered.
A fine place, by George: further speculations
on why things went so far south
As mentioned, L.A. developer George Collins was apparently no less smitten by the land's charms than the earlycomers he sold lots to. He joined in with vacationing new-parcel owners during the place's initial, visiting-only years. He became the super glue that held the place together, serving as father, midwife, cheerleader, first board president, fellow vacationer and daddy moneybags, all rolled into one. He pitched in with funds and resources to help the place along at every turn. “...I consider myself privileged to be a neighbor to each and every one of you,” he professed in an early newsletter, going on to wax poetic how the place was “...our home away from home, our frontier, our Shangri-la...there should be a constant flurry of barbecue parties, coffee klatches and just informal get-togethers all through the year.”
He created what, perhaps due to no more ambitious initial planning and risk taking, soon became a developmental misfire, a stalled-out, bare-bones recreational subdivision, lacking the critical infrastructure to facilitate ever growing into anything more. One that made the land super-affordable but ultimately causing endless headache and heartbreak for latter-day would-be and actual residents and campers alike. But one must give credit where credit's due: he was far from your typical slick disinterested land developer who took the money and ran. He nurtured the place along, wanting to see it grow and flourish as, at least, a collectively owned rural resort.
Let George do it
He was so absolutely central in the place's beginnings on so many levels that other property owners grew accustomed to it being in his experienced hands. Perhaps on one level they became something like land tenants, passively relying on their kind overlord to do whatever needed to be done -- in other words, "Let George do it."
In essence he became the place's benevolent master, doing all the heavy lifting and sparing everyone else the bother, in turn being acknowledged as the main man by his willing and grateful subjects. As long as he stayed in the picture, few would feel motivated or empowered to take on major group responsibilities to grow the place according to their own lights. Until people started moving in, it was his baby.
When at some point he bowed out for exact reasons uncertain, the vacationers and new residents, their 'father' having abandoned them, were forced to scramble post haste. Left to their own devices, they had a steep learning curve in assuming responsibilities and grappling with ongoing issues; some they probably never knew existed were now staring them in the face. Some might've concluded that it was at this point the good ship Vista first began to seriously founder. It had had its problems before, sure, leaks that bailing efforts had enabled keeping on top of things and the ship still more or less seaworthy. But Collins -- up until the electrification brouhaha began unraveling whatever group ownership fabric existed, anyhow (to mix metaphors) -- as a seasoned subdivision developer seemed to know just how to deal with everything. Now property owners, forsaken by their captain, were left struggling to keep their bearings and steer a course under their own steam...while at the same time having to bail like crazy just to stay afloat.
Alas, no critical mass
Enough had been jazzed at the idea of building up a recognized community to get Collins's hopes up after apparently having first played it by ear. "If enough want to build a community here, I'm their man to get it done", was possibly his stance. But after the few firstcomers settled, the compliant population base never grew enough to become the critical mass of committed property owners needed. Water was often too deep, power was pricey -- and too many were simply passive speculators, unwilling to sink anything more into the place, especially after it became clear there was only a tiny number going for it and keen on moving onto the land. Their faith lost, it must've appeared they'd only be throwing good money after bad into a boondoggle that would never amount to more than a sparsely-settled, infrastructure- and organization-challenged, would-be community amid a sea of mostly then-compromised retreat lots. One located too far out in the sticks to attract any but well-set retired people and their antithesis: poor, land-hungry, would-be homesteaders living on a shoestring and maybe a few working folks who wouldn't mind the commute.
Beyond the power fiasco, Collins no doubt lost heart as building owners became frustrated and testy over the lack of easily tapped water, knowing that people a mere fifteen miles away could hit good water at fifty feet or so. Vistans would have to routinely drill down at least five times that, spending a fortune, and then maybe have to deal with suspended volcanic minerals like arsenic and iron.
It's said it's easy to come and go but hard to stay. Lot owners wanting to move onto the land knew they'd have to push ahead under their own steam -- each supplying their own water, power and septic and at substantial expense. Collins's role and influence shrank as people, per force, had to act on their own and thus empowered themselves. He had maybe by then become something of a tiresome cheerleader. Owners facing sudden, complex and costly challenges were losing confidence in his ability to continue steering the place along. Feeling hurt after all he'd done to birth and nurture the place along and now seeing bitter divisions splitting the ranks and a lower regard for him as he lost his grip on things (maybe blatant code violators had already started trickling in), he might've at last said the heck with it...and his blessing turned to a curse. Or, at the very least, he developed a bittersweet "well, good luck" attitude and washed his hands of further involvement with the place he'd held dear.
And so his and others' fading, happy vision for the Vista began its long, inexorable fade into oblivion.
Something happened between Collins and his one-time fellow vacationing lot owners, then emerging as independent homesteaders, that turned the wine into vinegar. Something, or a series of somethings, inevitably changed the ephemeral Shangri-la from an idyllic retirement dreamland into a growing nightmare.
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Lookin' for a sign amid a maze of roads
Vista’s raw parcels on a per-acre basis were both some ten times cheaper and ten times bigger than those of the next door's exurb of Lake Shastina started a couple years later. That meant that for any land shopper not unduly concerned about the lack of infrastructure or remoteness, or the pronounced haywire nature of the place, the Vista offered a deal a hundred times better. The Vista had first attracted an equally financially secure if more rough-and-ready vacationing camper crowd than the second-home buyer group Lake Shastina's developers had initially wooed with full-on infrastructure, a recreational artificial lake, golf course, and relative closeness to town amenities.
The one thing the Vista got on top of was road signs, even if the initial ones proved inadequate.
Road signs were crucial inside its endless sixty-six-mile maze. Even longtime residents like the writer could get lost if hazarding off an accustomed, habitual route. One moonless night, I was driving about and suddenly realized I had no idea where I was. Disoriented, I finally reached to an intersection and spotted the modest stenciled 4X4 inch wooden road sign post. I climbed out and shone my flashlight on it, expecting to regain bearings with the help of my trusty tiny road map. But the painted lettering had faded to illegibility, done in by the elements; I was still lost in a place I'd called home for decades.
Second generation signs were equally small, four-foot tall vertical metal affairs that soon rusted out. Delinquents would steal them, as well as the current, third generation tall, rust-proof, reflective green metal signs. Perhaps they especially felt the latter's slick, citified appearance clashed with the place's rustic ambiance. Or they just wanted to make it harder for anyone to find them if they didn't want to be found, leaving those unfamiliar with the roads getting disoriented and wanting to give up to try finding their way out of the disorienting maze.
Place 'haunted' by sheer number
of phantom parcel owners
As stressed, many lot holders had originally snapped up the parcels in pure speculation -- plus maybe, for some, just to gain bragging rights for actually owning a piece of the golden state -- hoping either eventual improvements like a centralized water supply and extended power lines would skyrocket parcel values. At the least, they'd have something interesting of tangible value to leave the family. Being the first kid on the block in the wider region's rural subdivisions, the Vista had served what some might call a test run; while others took note of it and learned how to better proceed to better fine-tune their developments, the Vista had stayed an unfocused first-run, its lots held by those often never quite sure what the place was or might become -- but couldn't resist the price.
Over time, the properties traded like so many baseball cards at recess. If each parcel on average changed hands three times over the 50 years (probably an underestimate), the place, up to 2015, experienced a rotating ownership of some 5,000 individuals spread throughout the nation. If you included two more family members per parcel getting involved, the number increases to 15,000 people who all held some level of vested interest in the place and its development...or lack thereof.
Fifteen thousand people, the overwhelming number absentee owners, was a lot of absentee ownership. It was guaranteed to keep the place, already remote, feeling super remote...and more than a little sketchy around the edges.
It might've seemed to some that the place was always more about being a commercial aggregate of raw land commodities -- an investment scheme -- than any organic development whose lot owners, more than a minuscule number, anyhow, personally aspired to grow it into a functional community.
After the original retiree clique faded away and a wildly diverse population came to dominate, civic interest would all but disappear. Latter-day newcomers who plugged in and involved themselves quickly became aware of the realm's dread undertow and its veritable Mt. Everest of inertia. Such forces -- magnified by the board, the only organized group the place had, other than the volunteer fire department and its auxiliary fund raiser -- quickly shattered one's dreams and fostered a sense of abject futility over the prospect of trying to fix anything. The place had become like some disastrous big budget movie misfire, where everything goes wrong after a promising start, the creative vision never realized.
Initially-involved newcomers either gave up in keen disillusionment or dialed back any errant involvement urges. The few undeterred, more thick-skinned and unwavering, often appeared like so many Don Quixotes, tilting at windmills.
Up until 2015's phenomenal sea change, absentee owners still outnumbered actual residents by about seven to one. Tellingly, the Vista’s fiftieth anniversary, occurring that November as the place was in the throes of melting down and being re-cast, was an event observed by few, if any, besides the writer, much less celebrated.
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Reprise on Setting the standard:
"You gotta permit for that?"
The first wave of firstcomers were recent retirees. They were flush with cash from selling their city homes and psyched at the prospect of becoming modern day pioneers, establishing a close-knit, tamed-wilderness community. They'd nurtured hopes of the place blossoming as, ideally, other retirees and maybe respectable working folks joined their ranks. It would be one in which they as founding members established a comfortable living standard that others, similarly financially secure, would conform to without question.
It might be hard for some readers to believe, in these rarefied, anything goes times, that such health and building codes were ever so rigorously enforced out in such obscure, remote lands. But they were. And the first wave of owner builders, staunch, law abiding citizens that they were, had jumped through every last hoop (albeit some no doubt grumbling all along).
The way they went so bonkers when parcel "squatters" became an invasive force to be reckoned with, the philosophical might've thought the whole situation was a tad ironic: A place that had started out championing primitive rec properties came to view anyone camping on them with instant concern and suspicion. It was an incongruous turn of events, fraught with paradox: the place had turned 180 degrees. Residents became so wary of lingering campers, especially if they looked threadbare, they almost viewed them as wanted criminals. They'd track their permissible days left before they could throw them under the bus in righteous fury.
The place had started as a collection of de facto, do-your-own-thing recreational lots, then a few tried turning it into a living community, then its very reason for being got so muddled it ended up supporting neither.
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The Vista Through Time
1965-2015
[part 7]
Power to the people (some, anyhow)
By the early seventies, the handful of property owners keen on building retirement homes on their lots would need electricity, power lines then being nowhere near. And others wanted electricity made available for camp visits in their appliance-loaded trailers and RVs. Yet others simply wanted to goose lot values by adding power lines.
They'd likely talked the developer and fellow lot holders into the idea of making a volunteer assessment to help spread the otherwise prohibitive costs of extending power to the remote parcels. The big question was: were there really enough owners interested in investing more in the place in order to grow it into an actual community? Or were most content to let it remain a de facto seasonal camp resort and not want to have to sink anything more into it? If the former were true, it wasn't an option but a given that the ubiquitous energy elixir so much of humanity was unabashedly hooked on needed to be strung in.
Mount Shasta's dream factory was definitely at work. Ambition was about to try for a a quantum leap as property owners, led by Collins, envisioned extending electrical lines to every single lot. Why not? The power company -- again, no doubt on the strength of developer Collins’s (possibly glib) assurances that he'd work on getting everyone on board -- had reportedly made a tentative commitment to extend power lines throughout the entire development. As speculated on earlier, possibly getting everyone committed and willing to fork over further money as needed to keep the fund solvent was a condition for the power company to agree to absorb or subsidize further line-extending costs beyond what the fund would initially generate, anticipating a new mess of long-term customers.
The Vista was reaching a critical turning point: If everyone went along, it might be well on its way to growing into an actual bonefide community. Or at least the more-committed prospect of one. For it would have met one of a place's three crucial infrastructure needs, leaving adequate water supply and hygienic waste disposal means yet to be reckoned with by individual owners until the place grew enough to develop more systematic and centralized infrastructure.
The backwoods realm seemed to be on the verge of transforming itself...if in a seemingly haphazard, scrambling to catch up, slapdash sort of way.
But nothing comes easy. While three in four -- some 1,200 parcel holders -- ponied up, fired with enthusiasm at the prospect of building there, camping with electrical amenities, or thinking adding power would increase parcel values, a quarter of the membership flat-out rebelled; some four hundred lot owners refused to chip in. This, despite a membership newsletter's pleaful pitch from Collins that began, "I know you each bought a lot out in the middle of nowhere that you could do with whatever you damn well please, but...", then going on to try convincing them to reconsider.
To no avail.
Many who actually visited their parcels seemed hunky dory with enjoying the primitive parcels just the way they were, thank you; they relished the prospect roughing it on their own bit of wilderness. They felt adding unsightly power and phone lines and their dead-tree, creosote-soaked poles would ruin things, destroying the place's magical, relatively pristine charm. They'd bought primitive land cheap for simple vacation use, never intending to do anything with it in the foreseeable future beyond, at most, roughing-in a driveway and building a stone campfire ring, maybe fashioning an outhouse if really ambitious, for their occasional retreat visits.
The whole idea of the place, as they came to see it, was to get away from the complexities of modern civilization -- including electrical dependency and telephones (this was of course decades before cell phones came along) -- and get back to basics, not drag them in, push the reset button and recharge amid the primitive realm's restorative seclusion. Bringing in electricity and extending phone lines would defeat the whole purpose. Probably those leaning this way had deemed the place so remote that any further development seemed unlikely, and so they'd come to think of their parcels as permanent, private camp refuges.
Even though the lots had been zoned for single residency occupancy by the county, thereby providing the potential avenue to eventually build out into a community, it appeared to many of those declining to chip in that speculation fever was out of control and that a tiny minority lot holders were dead set on destroying the place simply to build up some weird rustic fringe community for themselves or try to goose the lots' values for re-sale profit.
Sea of disinterested speculators
But possibly some of those refusing to chip in were themselves among the sea of disinterested investors and speculators. They'd already soured on the place they somehow managed to get tangled up in against their better judgement as property values failed to increase as hoped. It was a super-soft market. The anticipated making of easy money appeared to have become a cruel mirage. And now they were asked to sink more money into the boondoggle? No way.
It was easy for the cynically minded to jump to conclusion that a select few parcel owners, keen on making the leap and building homes on their parcels, had selfishly tried to get everyone else to go along with the fund just to minimize the otherwise astronomical individual electrical hookup costs. This tiny minority was trying to turn the place into a whole new critter that would, over time, doubtless require more -- and probably bigger and maybe even mandatory -- special assessments -- regardless of whether or not the critical level of support needed to successfully build up such a standard community was ever reached.
So they were, understandably, loathe to sink another cent in it. Some might've reasoned that getting power to every lot in itself wouldn't appreciably increase the parcels' market values due to the remaining iffy water situation and aft times problematic waste disposal issue. Their possible thinking: Not enough would ever want to live out in the middle of nowhere, so far from accustomed city conveniences, beyond a few kooky retirees who, it appeared, wanted to leave the whole world behind...and now had the unmitigated gall to try to get the rest of the parcel owners to subsidize their costs to do so.
And the other situation, stressed all along: since the place was no longer dedicated to recreational use yet was likely to fail to get enough interest in build actual community, it became increasingly desirable to neither interest. It was left twisting in the wind. An insurmountable obstacle to ever moving the now purpose-murky parcels at a profit had been unwittingly created.
Sorry, out of luck, schmuck
The power and light fund turned out to be a flash in the pan: first come, first served, good 'til gone. It was gone fast. The couple dozen parcel owners -- psyched at the idea of living in such splendid seclusion (or, again, for some, building structures for others to get enthused about, maybe briefly enjoying them before then selling at a tidy profit) -- had simply gone for it. The power company, anticipating a flood of new power-guzzling customers moving onto their parcels and rapidly building out the place -- or, at the least, a sea of vacationers wanting go-juice for their trailers and RVs -- had soon backed out of its tenuous commitment. They'd been discouraged, anyhow, by the frequent drill bit-shattering lava rock strata they encountered, requiring expensive replacements. (A similar problem was no doubt experienced by various owners trying to excavate workable conventional septic systems on rocky and or sloping parcels.)
By the time the tide turned and the ambitious plan fell through, the power company had already planted and wired tall street lamps at every one of the five highway entrances, showing its serious commitment. It's possible they'd yet be shining at night today but for the beacons (which gave off an eerie, cold, bluish glow) getting regularly shot out by rowdy locals. No doubt their tribe was still fulminating over the subdivision existing, taking over their long-accustomed backwoods wilderness. They must've taken especially keen delight being able to sabotage it without even having to leave the pavement. After a few rounds of such target practice and the power company's repairs, they finally gave up and took down the light poles.
The five highway entrances were once again obscured in darkness after nightfall.
As mentioned, only about ten to fifteen percent of the 1,641 parcels were ever connected to power. Some who'd contributed to the fund had doubtless made tenuous plans of building sometime down the road. They were so distraught by the fund getting gobbled up by the earliest builders that they sold their lots in dismay, if not disgust. Some of the less informed who had chipped in had probably kept their lots thinking to build sometime, then lost it when they realized they'd been left out in the cold: when ready to build, they were told by the association that the fund had gone dry. And then the power company, which had by then possibly jacked the per-foot extension price once realizing the rocky land was problematic for drilling post holes and there was no sea of clambering new customers, quoted them a shocking five-figure to extend lines.
Some might've been inclined to think that a handful of fellow lot owners had essentially robbed them blind (or that the power company had reneged on its commitment with bait and switch tactics). The firstcomers knew the fund would only cover the line-extension costs of a few would-be lot improvers (in 2024, over $53,000 a mile, or $10. a foot) if a possible deal with the power company to absorb or subsidize further costs had been in the offing provided everyone got on board fell through. Being new retirees who had the means and desire to settle almost immediately, they'd moved fast (perhaps getting some inside skinny on extension rates soon to skyrocket) and tapped the funds dry. In any event, the limited-fund situation had favored the bold and cash rich.
So it was that lot owners failed to get on the same page at a critical moment. Instead, they had a grand falling out, which, preceding the later 'outlaw' builder meltdown by several years, had set the stage for the even gnarlier contention to follow.
It was funny in a way, viewed from the perspective of the ongoing human tragi-comedy. Earliest campers and residents were seen as the bad guys by locals who resented their land takeover; then those who'd hogged the power fund and left the others in the cold became the bad guys to the rest of the lot owners; then those who ignored the building codes became the bad guys to those who'd hogged the fund from those who'd taken over the local's grounds...and the contentious spirit kept going round and round. (And, of course, that doesn't even include the pioneer white settlers who took the land away from the natives.)
Place wouldn't catch the solar-electric wave
Much later, the place missed a sure bet not embracing solar electricity. What with the place's enviable banana-belt micro-climate and advancing solar technology, in time reducing panel costs over eightfold, it seemed the perfect way to create go juice. It could be so sunshiny on some March days, one might be enjoying soaking up the rays while in Weed, a mere fifteen miles away, hunched-over snow shovelers were still left dreaming of spring.
The first solar electric system was installed by a 1970s' resident, Brian Green, late co-founding photographer of Homepower magazine, which in time became the premier global go-to resource guide for creating alternate-energy home systems for do-it-yourselfers.*
In contrast to the Vista, the McCloud region’s Shasta Forest subdivision was even further off the grid,yet its lot owners, code-compliant, embraced solar full tilt as an affordable -- not to mention more environmentally friendly -- solution to supplying power needs for their similarly remote, full-on homes.
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*While the later owner of Brian Green's home would lose the place to the Lava Fire of 2021, one thing miraculously survived unscathed: the latest bank of solar panels. It was safely perched on its metal stand in a clearing amid otherwise total devastation, looking for all the world like nothing was amiss.
The writer in 1989 became one of two Vista residents to fully embrace solar. In my case it was sunshine or bust -- no backup generator -- which even now powers this online article's periodic reworking. For anyone curious, a 1992 HomePower story on my modest system was featured in issue #30 (starting page 6), as an example of a small set-up, showing that one didn't have to spend a fortune to create an off-grid system if content to have just a few basic electrical amenities and then go with alternate power sources for other needs, like wood heat and propane for cooking and refrigeration. (Homepower ceased publication November 2018, but its entire archives are available to download for free with sign up.)
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Well, well
Developer Collins and the early group of owner volunteers had gotten together and established the informal, de facto community well. They constructed the huge holding tank with its enormous overhead valve, which all Vista lot owners settling were welcome to use by filling up the community water truck until their own wells were in. A spigot was provided to fill containers for camping visits. When the truck was later switched to fire use only, those with prohibitively deep water tables -- most in section 23, where 700 foot or deeper wells were required -- still found getting wells problematic. (One, ironically named Waterson, had three costly drilling misses.) Affected parties formed Property Owners Without Water (POWW, a perhaps appropriate acronym somehow) and got another water truck together.
Closing down the quasi community well
In 1980 it came to light at the county health department, on the wings of steeper California water-use laws, that the unofficial, never officially sanctioned community well was, well, technically illegal as hell. Plus, the water truck wasn't certified for delivering potable water. Then-department head Dr. Bayuk promptly capped the 26-resident club membership with iron fist. He told us at the specially called meeting, held at then-board president John Shelton's house on McLarty Road, that since he held discretionary powers to allow a code variance, he'd let current POWW members -- but only POWW members -- continue drawing from the well and haul water to their homes.
This consideration was given only in light of so many respectable members having sold their former homes and built here on the strength of realtors’ assurance that there was a community well, so one needn’t bring in a well before building, if so opting. It seems the health department had taken pity on them (and maybe wanted to avoid a lawsuit against the county if he tried to shut down the long-established well use to everyone). The building department went along with the variance, issuing building permits to any well-less parcel holders who were POWW members so long as they conformed to all other related regulations.
He insisted that all other lot holders henceforth had to drill an approved well before they could get a septic and building permit and so in time gain the right to live on their properties. That is, for more than thirty days a year without being made to feel like outlaws for overstaying their welcome by ever-vigilant neighbors forever trying to keep the rabble out. He envisioned the POWW memberships, relegated nontransferable to any subsequent home buyer, fading away over time as people got wells in or their properties were sold to new owners who'd then be expected to drill an approved well before being allowed to move in.
However, we were apparently on the honor system to comply. Inertia -- ridiculously strong in Vista's dreamy manana land -- reigned supreme. Besides, a way of living had been established. Some who were otherwise compliant, rather than spring for a well, resigned themselves to hauling water as the price one paid for living here affordably. And the fully non-compliant, hunkering down, hopefully below the radar of snoopy neighbors and the powers that be, kept on filling up at the well as always. Residents naturally wanted to avoid spending a fortune (assuming they could afford it) on drilling efforts that might not even hit water, or good water, or enough water, plus the often prohibitive expense of getting electric lines extended to power the well pump and power tools for constructing houses.
As a result, while POWW membership's water-hauling rights were technically nontransferable, the regulation was seldom -- if ever -- enforced; it became yet another of man's myriad rules that was ignored like it didn't even exist.
Decades later there were still over a half dozen otherwise code-legal homes in one section alone for which water hauling rights had technically been voided ages ago, through ownership transfers, yet the current owners were still merrily hauling away. The county apparently didn't feel a need to mess with homes once they'd passed final inspection; the code enforcers' job was done as far as they were concerned. Never told anything differently, new homeowners assumed that the water hauling rights were transferable.
Unfortunately, this lent the impression to prospective new residents that one needn't bring in a well before being able to get a building permit. It seemed that you could build first, then sometime down the road try for a well, at your own convenience. This misunderstanding was destined to further baffle many future would-be residents: "Hey, lots of homes don't have a well but they got building permits; why can't I?"
While Dr. Bayuk had cautioned Vista board members to forbid anyone from using the well beyond POWW’s now-closed membership, efforts to control access of course proved sketchy to none. Obviously, no one wanted to volunteer for guard duty, and fencing off and padlocking access was likely seen as either unfeasible, impractical, or more work and expense than anyone felt a civic duty to want to mess with.
As time went by the ever-changing board members apparently either lost track of the county's well-use stipulation or turned a blind eye to it (along with the county). Perhaps some felt the well represented the one thing property owners had successfully worked on together towards forging an actual, by-gosh community. Amid all the sorrowful confusion and contention, the well served an enduring and substantial reminder of the place's once-promising beginnings.
Hey, it comes with the property
Fast-forward decades and things were still out of control with the well. Residents living on the cheap, never intending to drill, kept using it. Again, they assumed it was an officially sanctioned community well and a permanent water-rights amenity to all lot holders. One neighbor on Placone Road made daily hot-summer water runs for a teeming menagerie of thirsty livestock in his ancient Cadillac, backseat removed and crammed full, along with the trunk, with lidded five-gallon buckets and Jerry cans.
Some reportedly even copped showers there. Risking a quick shower with then-infrequent traffic going by sixty feet from the well while in full view was no doubt felt worth it for the chance to luxuriate in a fast cool down and rehydration on an exotic hot day. As freer-minded dwellers during warmer weather might routinely go about with few or no clothes on the privacy of their secluded properties anyhow, this wasn't as shocking as it might've appeared. It was the kind of rarefied place that, in another time and circumstance, would've made a dandy nudist camp.
Finally, Vista board members, led by then-president George Gosting, got fed up and were fearful of getting fined by the state -- or sued by the membership. Well-owning residents were outraged that their annual dues were going to replace the pump and cover monthly power bills; they felt they were effectively enabling and subsidizing code noncompliance. The board came up with a solution: get rid of the bugger. They sold it outright with no discussion or prior notice given to association members. Done deal, end of story. Except for the unbridled fury of countless well-less, mostly non-compliant residents suddenly left high and dry.
And they got sued anyhow, by an irate section 23 couple, Alex and Debbie Blume. They had an otherwise code-approved but well-less modular dwelling on Stewart Road that was originally owned by a POWW member family. The suit pressed far-fetched racketeering charges. They likely had leaned on the assumption their home indeed came with water-hauling rights to the well. Alas, they promptly lost the case and the lawyer got a practically new, convertible Cadillac signed over as part payment.
“It’s all a big scam, I tell ya…”
Between earlier, fitfully enforced legal-residency codes and the demise of the longtime community well, it must've seemed to non-compliant dwellers suddenly told to get a well or else that a draconian building moratorium had been arbitrarily clamped on the place. Of course it was all standard procedure to gain legal residency anywhere in California. But our place had always felt exceptional...perhaps for both having difficult water and being in such remote hinterlands -- and being under Mt. Shasta's enchanted spell and unusual, subtle energies. The Vista indeed seemed a dreamland, pure and simple. Somehow it just felt beyond the pale of the mundane world and all its sundry nit-picky rules and regulations. It was a realm unto itself, operating on its own frequency, penciling in rules as residents saw fit -- and even then, they were only suggestions.
As a result, various land-hungry buyers on a shoestring, lured by the bargain lands and not exercising any better due diligence, felt majorly scammed when roused by irate residents and the county, told they couldn’t stay on their properties for more than thirty days a year without passing a perc test, drilling an approved well, getting a building permit and having all their construction approved and signed off. Whew. They’d accuse the Association board, management and realtors of being in cahoots, each passing the buck, no one willing to offer the straight of things. To a suspicious mind, one perhaps not able or willing to grasp the often unreasonable and outrageous ways of the world, it indeed appeared as though they were somehow all furtively working in concert to churn the problematic, marginal properties for quick gain, while keeping a rigid control over things. The forces seemed to be preying on people's desire to own their own land for selfish gain, all too aware how many eager buyers could never afford to meet legal residency requirements short of winning the lottery or some rich old aunt dying. But hey, it was buyer beware.
The unending cycle, as uninformed parcel holders saw it: a lot was sold after the realtor downplayed the legal problems of residing on it as-is, maybe offering a wink as if to say the rules often went unenforced; then the purchaser, disillusioned once getting hassled by imperious neighbors, the board, and county authorities, quit paying their annual POA assessment in protest; then the lot was foreclosed on and the Association, repossessing it, re-listed it and realtors waited for next suc -- er, buyer -- to come along. It was a total scam; someone oughta sue...
In later times, many buyers obviously did know the score but didn’t care. In a new era with its radically different social climate and ever sketchier code enforcement they were game to join Vista’s growing non-compliant-and-proud denizens. Again, they were especially emboldened after the county axed its residential-code enforcer position during the critical five year period starting with the Great Recession of 2008-09. Then they seemed to lack the teeth and political will to again enforce residency requirements by the time the position was brought back. By then, the county had long dismissed the Vista as a hopeless mess, best ignored.*
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* The writer attended the county board-of-supervisors meeting in which the position was re-funded, in the mid-teens. I was struck how remotely detached they seemed from the vital significance of the regulatory role tax-paying residents had relied on to assure a certain standard of living was maintained in their neighborhoods.
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Such a situation had lent the impression of anything goes in the far-removed high desert woodlands. While it was of course always Buyer Beware, you’d think your more sporting realtors might’ve at least posted this sober reminder over their doorways.
People with enough resources to pay the maybe $30,000 or more to put in a well and perhaps half again as much to get power extended, also had enough to buy land -- and more than any piddly 2-½ acres -- with easier water access and unencumbered by the ceaseless, virulent squabbling among disaffected neighbors. Why would anyone spend so much to buy into such a discombobulated sub-standard place anyway?
Cheap land with million-dollar views could only go so far.
Plenty of room left in Hotel California:
Trouble in River City revisited
Most if not all of Shasta Vista’s founding families had seemed to either known each other from down south or met during their annual summer camp vacation rendezvouses. Mostly retirement-age couples flush with cash, they could easily afford to build full-on legal residences. And, the territorial imperative being strong, they aimed to grow the one-time camp lands into their own conventional, de facto rural retirement community, let the chips fall where they may. Too bad if it disappointed or angered those who'd bought their parcels as camp retreats. Or had wanted to build but waited until after the power and light fund had run dry; you snooze, you lose.
Theirs was a pronounced culture. The alphas of the group had a pronounced buttoned down, breezily urbane SoCal sensibility and full-bore Law-and-Order mindset that some might've viewed as a tad out of place in the top of more-freewheeling northern California, even allowing for it being in a conservative rural part of it. It struck the more impressionable that a L.A. social culture was somehow weirdly transplanted, fully intact, to the top of the state's wild and woolly hinterlands.
In ways that counted the Vista became their place. Their tight-wound influence lingered for decades, even after the one-time exclusive Shangri-la had been largely co-opted by the rabble. It would continue shaping the development's social climate and collective mindset through their efforts to salvage what they could of their lost Shangri-la, or at least arrest any further degradation. This was, of course, due for having gotten an iron lock on the Vista’s volunteer board of directors for ages.
The modern-day pioneers experienced such angst seeing their place lose its fledgling legitimate-community status once the flood of non-compliant invaded that, gone bonkers, the board scrambled and its appointed duties expanded to include blowing the whistle to the county over every unapproved construction or over-long camp visit brought to their notice by their bloodhound cohorts cruising the endless backroads.
Desperate to try preserving their endangered retirement haven, they rang the phones off the hook reporting every single infraction the search posse's dogged searches uncovered. Board members demanded the county authorities hold the scofflaw's feet to the fire for having so blatantly invaded their domain on the cheap -- especially those with an infuriatingly mocking, "hee-hee-whadaryagointodoaboudit?" attitude that drove blood pressures through the roof.
Bottomless cup of trouble
If enforcers didn’t do their job and the non-compliant got away with it, it would amount to selective enforcement, possible grounds for a lawsuit against the county. And so for many years the stretched-thin code enforcers dutifully obliged, trying their damnedest to try stamping out the growing plague of noncompliance.
At some point, though, they gave up. They'd ground their teeth having to continually deal with the major problem child with a relatively slim tax-generating base. One whose situation, no matter how much they tried getting a handle on things, appeared a bottomless cup of trouble. It was like a boat springing new leaks faster than one could plug existing ones; bailing seemed futile.
Of course, this seeming shirking of public duty was deemed unacceptable to the heavily invested firstcomers. Gone around the bend, they clung to their belief that enforcing law and order was the one and only means of salvaging the community available short of raising a vigilante force. In seeming denial of the insurmountable challenges, their volunteer search parties kept blitzing the land, patrolling the giant maze of roads, determined to run to earth anyone daring to try calling the Vista home while openly ignoring the residential codes and county statutes they deemed chiseled in stone.
With their Whack-a-Mole efforts in overdrive, posse members soon stopped even trying to talk to the culprits and point out the error of their ways. They'd maybe tried earlier, some no doubt in a high-handed, imperious manner, then got huffy when told what they could do with their regulations. So they furtively drove by, stopping just long enough to scope the scene from the road and ascertain the lot's location, then later get the parcel assessment numbers from the master map index and called in a formal complaint for every last minutiae of noncompliance the latest efforts brought to light.
Sub-zero tolerance
It was for such scorched-earth campaigning that the unkind moniker of "the gestapo" got bestowed on the board of directors by the Vista's more live-and-let-live residents. Some of them had also gone through the compliance ordeal, or bought from those who did, and knew how unreasonably steep and expensive code demands were for any wanting to live in the country and simplify their lives on a modest budget. They were stunned and dismayed that such a ugly, zero-tolerance attitude erupted; playing ruthless hardball somehow just didn't seem to go with living in the would-be tranquil realm. Even though the place had woefully derailed, people must've thought there had to be a better way to resolve matters. Maybe not though, short of changing legal-residency regulations or suing the county for selective non-enforcement.
In time the situation had gotten so far gone you'd've thought the only thing left for the twisted-into-knots compliant residents was to accept that their one-time rural paradise was toast; the system they'd depended on and supported all their lives had utterly failed them. But this was unacceptable. So, like Egyptian fish, they lived in denial. As miserable consolation, they'd take grim satisfaction in making things as thoroughly unpleasant as possible for anyone daring to have crashed their party.
Driving around the deep hinterlands of neighboring Section 13 in the nineties, the writer one day met a high-spirited man and his very pregnant partner at their remote parcel. He'd just thrown up a modest makeshift two-story cracker-box palace of 2 X 4's and press-board: instant home. A goat or two was grazing contentedly on nearby brush. I returned with a sense of foreboding a month or two later and, sure enough, they were long gone, their shelter bulldozed to the ground, looking like it'd been hit by a tornado.
This was far from an isolated incident.
One might've said it was one's own dumb fault for not doing research on the way things were. Or that they'd likely known the score but rolled the dice anyhow, thinking it was such cheap land it was worth a shot trying to end-run the system.
Bottom line: many of the would-be country dwellers’ fondest dreams of cultivating simple affordable backwoods living were obliterated to hell and gone during the Vista’s Intolerable Years. Here and there, half-completed structures of varying ambition and construction levels stood abandoned and forlorn, radioactive from code-violation busts or builders running out of cash or willingness to comply. In time, many would be picked off by furtive lumber 'recyclers'. ("Hey, it's just going to waste; I'm doing a service, doncha know.")
Vista’s seemingly affordable, easy-come, easy-go lands instead often proved to be more easy-come, hard-go.
_______________________________
Welcome to Mt. Shasta Vista, now leave:
writer's first impression
The large imposing signs planted at each of the place's five county road entrances plus every section corner made the board's policy crystal clear, in large black boldface that all but shouted:
HEALTH AND BUILDING CODES STRICTLY ENFORCED
And woe betide any poor soul failing to heed such a no-nonsense warning.
So along comes your land-hungry writer, a rambling, residence-shy 29 year-old, a would-be nature boy of decidedly threadbare means burned out living on the road, with merry visions of building a bower in the wilderness dancing in his head. Having champagne taste but a beer budget, I soon warmed to the notion of building in the bone-dry yet largely wild and super-affordable juniper lands instead of the redwood creekside of my dreams...to blasted code if that’s what it took and meager resources and a steep learning curve allowed. Though it would prove by far the biggest project of my life up to then, at least lumber was fairly cheap and the building code a smidgen less onerous -- if then rigorously enforced -- and costly to comply with. I planned to join the POWW's water-hauling group and avoid having to drill a well I couldn't have even begun to afford.
To my impressionable mind, the growling entrance signs were of more than a passing concern. Even if lots were cheap -- most then listed for between $1,500 and $1,750, with easy terms of $250 down and $25 a month at 7-1/2% interest -- the place appeared just a smidge unfriendly. To me, the signage seemed to say, “Welcome to Mt. Shasta Vista. No this, no that, no the other thing under penal codes such and such; violators will be hung by their toenails; in fact, we DARE you to even enter, bub”. Or, more directly, "Welcome, now leave."
Or, perhaps most to the point, like the scrawled in blood-red town greeting sign scrawled in the Clint Eastwood Western revenge flick, High Plains Drifter: “Welcome to Hell.”
On reading the further warning in more huge black lettering -- “Private Property -- Trespassers will be Prosecuted” -- part of me felt I could be arrested any second for having so foolishly driven in. Like I’d stumbled onto some top-secret government compound and should turn around while there was still time.
But, as was the case with countless land seekers on a shoestring before and after me, cheap lot prices easily won out over common sense, eclipsing first impressions screaming red alert.
Such sign wording, of course, had served many purposes. Yes, it was meant to discourage would-be substandard dwellings and, perish the thought, any white trailer trash, hop-headed bikers and scraggly hippie types from being so foolish as to try settling in their respectable scene. But it was also meant to dissuade would-be wood poachers, outlaw game hunters, trash dumpers, vehicle abandoners -- or miscreants harboring designs of plundering goods trustingly left in trailers and mobile homes on absentee owners' briefly visited parcels. (Even decades later, with hundreds of residents spread throughout the land, once a huge 12 X 40 foot, long-vacant mobile home was boldly snatched in the dead of night from one lot and hauled two miles to another without consequence.)
They'd probably needed that loud bark after all, for all the good it would do.
...with screenplay by Rod Serling
But the working principles of Chinese feng shui held that the given energy at an entrance set up a vibration that the entire place then resonated with. Sadly, the essence of such gnarly wording indeed seemed to ripple throughout the realm, especially when reinforced by similar huge signs planted at every section corner. Acquaintances visiting me decades later, as if not wanting to tempt fate and risk their vehicle getting towed, parked it forward of the baleful sign and walked the entire way in, over a mile.
Indeed, entering the Vista for the first time could feel like walking into the middle of a movie and left trying to figure out a plot that seemed in turn scripted by Zane Grey, Rod Serling and J. Edgar Hoover.
That nice welcoming wooden arch that once spanned the main entrance? After the writer would be, in due course, treated to his own 'unwelcome wagon', he felt it might just as well have proclaimed:
Abandon All Hope
Ye Who Enter Here
_____________________________________________________________________
The Vista through Time 1965-2015
[part 8: Conclusion]
Lost cause revisited, one last time
It perhaps came as no surprise to anyone that the Vista entrance sign's snarly energy was reflected, full force, in its monthly board meetings. Open to all parcel owners and their family members, the proceedings, dull as dishwater sometimes, other times were a caution. Gnarly shouting matches were not uncommon; once a fistfight actually broke out on the floor.
It was as if the place had developed a deadly cancer and, left untreated, was fatally metastasizing. The tsunami waves of bickering among malcontent dwellers was so phenomenal it would've made perfect fodder for treatment by the late gonzo journalist-author Hunter S. Thompson: “Fear and Loathing in the Vista.”
The first excited residents must've felt something akin to the earliest prospectors of California's fabled 1849 Gold Rush. While briefly having the rich diggings all to themselves, intoxicated with their great good fortune, things turned to pandemonium as the flood of fellow seekers of the prized yellow stone descended en masse. Similarly, earliest Vistans had briefly luxuriated in having the idyllic woodland domain all to themselves beyond the occasional visiting camper, transplanting a solidly conventional lifestyle and having firm faith in local government regulators to keep fair-minded law and order in the fledgling rural retirement village.
But, like the first miners, they quickly got run over without getting the number of the truck. Eventually they would become like so many mad King Lears, shouting imperious law-and-order commands to the winds.
When newcomers first started moving in and making bold to ignore health and building code requirements, the firstcomers still had the ball firmly in their court; they'd established relations with county code enforcers and had an absolute lock on board membership. They ran with the ball, clinging to it for dear life. They'd dismiss as idiots anyone at meetings who took exception to their hardball stance; such people obviously didn't understand the dire gravity of the situation. Beyond desperate, their bottom line was that, come hell or high water, they had to keep county health and building code rigorously enforced in order to protect their incipient community from otherwise facing certain wrack and ruin.
To arms, to arms
Desolated and shocked beyond endurance after their depended-on county enforcement response began getting iffy, overwrought board members and their cohorts, never say die, kept clad in armor, mace and sword at the ready. They were loaded for bear for the long haul, willing to engage in full-on, take-no-prisoners battles with every flagrant code ignorer, county support or no county support. Steeled to win or go down fighting, for a while earlier at meetings, they'd try dodging public discussion on hot-button issue proposals by steamrolling their everyone-must-obey-the-letter-of-the-law agenda through, mumbling “public comments?” out of the side of the mouth before taking a fast vote: "Motion?...second?...all in favor...motion carried." They'd banked on newbies’ unfamiliarity with formal meeting procedure; shouts of protest once concerned newcomers got hip to their trick were countered by simpering yells from the board's fellow hardball-policy proponents: “Robert's Rules! Robert's Rules!”
Despite their most dedicated efforts, the well-heeled firstcomers’ dream of forging a conventional backwoods retirement Shangri-la was turning into a nightmare. The Vista as they knew and treasured it was coming apart at the seams before their very eyes.
As more and more lot buyers settled amid the junipers and sagebrush -- many of such modest means and free-spirited mindsets that the notion of building to code was never even considered -- the limited-resource country's code-enforcement officers' responsiveness soon reached a critical tipping point. Beyond it they were unable and/or unwilling to enforce the codes and ordinances effectively (the very ones people living in town, nowhere to hide, perforce toed the line on). This, despite -- or perhaps because of -- being duly appraised and constantly updated of the intolerable situation by the seething-mad legal residency, which harangued them constantly with each new-found infraction demanding a swift response. The thought of taking early retirement must've started looking good to some county workers.
So it happened that in time authorities all but abandoned code enforcement efforts in the misbegotten realm. One got the impression officials liked to pretend it didn't even exist (not unlike the place's scofflaw dwellers towards their building ordinances). That is, beyond the county's property tax collectors' and property assessors' unfailing attention via satellite zoom-ins to every last parcel and precisely what improvements, if any, were being made so they could squeeze yet more shekels through annual property tax assessments.
Before that tipping point was reached, it seemed the only responses made, other than for actual emergencies, were to the most persistent calls from fuming parties who knew the law and possibly threatened legal action if they didn't respond post-haste and earn their salaries, dammit. They became such pains it was finally easier to drag themselves out and tell the culprits, "Hey, you can't be doing this, you'd better stop or else; we mean it" and hope the admonishment would stick. Some scofflaws would, indeed, at that point clear out, fantasies of cheap and easy country living clobbered by the rude reality check. Others, more hardened, kept right on living the way they were, devil take the hindmost. They felt that inertia and property rights, plus the county's enforcement resources being overwhelmed, would ultimately win the battle.
As time would prove, they were pretty much right.
White bread outpost
Though some might've experienced mixed feelings towards the firstcomers' intolerance of informal construction and ad-hoc sanitation methods and the guilty parties' aggressive response, one couldn't help but sympathize with the plight. What a heartbreaking situation, seeing the place they'd invested so heavily in, nurtured fond hopes of enjoying their golden years in, irretrievably slip away. It was maybe not too unlike a predestined romance shorting out for one being asleep at the wheel at the critical moment. The Vista could’ve, should've, would've been such a nicely settled, enviable, backwoods community of forthright, law-abiding residents...
...if only a white bread one.
While in later years at least absentee ownership appeared to become a bit racially diverse, judging by the file list of owner names, actual residents in 2014 -- then numbering perhaps 300 to 350 -- were still overwhelmingly White. Though there were a few Hispanics and maybe an American Indian or two over time, there were zero Blacks or Asians to the writer's knowledge. Growing up in the polyglot melting pot of San Francisco, I didn’t find anything amiss about this other than wincing whenever a neighbor dropped the ‘n’ word in casual conversation (and later, the 'c' word). I’d learned to pretty much adapt to any ethnic mix -- or lack thereof -- of a place, given an even playing field with no expedient intentions afoot.
The scene perhaps reflected rural Siskiyou county as a whole, so predominantly White it might've appeared to be -- and not without some truth -- a narrow minded, passively (sometimes overtly) racist backwater to any people of color arriving from large melting-pot cities that leaned towards mutual racial tolerance and inclusivity born of everyday intercultural mingling over time.
A more diverse Vista residency from the get-go might've made the would-be community, such as it was, more culturally rich and thriving. But it was a moot point; Wonder Bread it was for a full half century. Starting in 2015, residents living in their all-white world would be shocked senseless for suddenly finding themselves surrounded by an Asian-American minority many had probably never mingled with as equals who were suddenly new neighbors. (Mutual assimilation, always problematic, might've at least been easier to achieve without all the illicit commercial cannabis cultivation going on overwhelmingly complicating matters.)
Fine line
Anyone respecting reasonable rule of law held that a development needed its residents to work together on some level and follow established rules in order to keep things safe and pleasant -- the acid test being one’s own children -- for everyone committing to hanging their hats there. Otherwise weeds of civic indifference and unruly attitudes and goings-on could sometimes spring up, filling a social vacuum and choking the place's peaceable livability.
But, on the other hand, it could make simple country living all but impossible if ordinances were TOO strict, too expensive, too onerous for the majority of would-be legal residents to ever conform to.
There was a fine line between having enough rules and regulations to keep some semblance of fair-minded order and having too many and courting sure rebellion. In any event, as mentioned, developer Collins would never have gotten the Vista development greenlit if he hadn't agreed to set up the CC&Rs so that every buyer agreed by signing the legal title paperwork to conform to all county, state and federal rules, laws and ordinances. (A cynical neighbor once told the writer, "The government makes liars, cheats and horse thieves of us all."
However, the rush of having one’s own land in such a relatively remote region could obscure the reality of there being any such county, state or federal regulations to conform to. There wasn't anyone around to say 'boo' -- especially after the county abandoned its residential code-enforcement in a drastic budget-slashing measure for some five years during the first half of the 2010's.
______________________
“I say we got Trouble...with a capital ‘T’...”
Writer's own tale
(Note: the reader might opt to skip the following diversionary section;
it offers a further personal account of the writer's early experiences in the Vista.)
In October 1978, I snapped up a nice gently sloping lot with an inspiring mountain view for $1,750, with $250 down and $25 a month easy installments for the balance. I'd get by for eleven years with kerosene lamps and candles before going solar in 1989, when solar panels cost some eight times more than now, even adjusting for inflation. (A one-by-four foot, 50 watt panel ran $400.)
It was an early fall and I scrambled to set up a quick camp. While the days were still pleasant, overnight temperatures were already plunging to a bone-chilling 13 degrees F (-10 C). During my first morning after a shivering night sleeping in a shallow trench, with plastic thrown over set sticks, an older man started driving by. Perhaps he wasn't part of the volunteer posse, but he was wound up nonetheless, the same as most every other compliant year-round resident, feeling their place was perhpas getting overrun by shiftless yahoos. He spotted me heating coffee water and defrosting myself over a tiny rock-lined campfire in a clearing some thirty feet from the road and slammed his brakes. He got out and, pointedly looking at the fire, demanded to know, “You got a permit for that?” Thus were my first words of welcome from the would-be community spoken before I'd even had my first sip of morning coffee. They weren't too encouraging.
Fast-forward six weeks, and I'd apparently waited too long to apply for my building permit -- and, crucially, join the POWW water-truck club in lieu of drilling a well in order to qualify for getting said permit. As a result, I was destined to get the full "Unwelcome Wagon" treatment from the sundry busybodies of the development I'd hitched my wagon to that -- I was quickly learning to appreciate -- was a tad more than a little squirrelly around the edges.
I'd intended to conform all along, if reluctantly, essentially being a fairly timid soul and generally law-abiding citizen, if also having a contrary, intellectually radical streak (perhaps making me your typical walking human paradox). But I'd been gearing up slowly; it was to be a momentous project, by far the most ambitious I'd ever undertake up to then. Over winter I planned to leisurely research tiny home design, study construction methods, building codes, and fine-tune a design plan that I'd then submit come spring. I was staying in a third-mile distant, 12-by-16 foot cabin that a kindhearted neighboring couple, the Schumachers, out for a walk and getting ready to leave as the fair-weather season wound down and taking pity on my situation, out of the blue had generously offered to let me winter in our first and only meeting.
This so I wouldn’t freeze to death camping out in my cabin tent, as I'd first resolved. I'd wanted to stay on my brand new land and future homeland, no matter what. Cold alone could be endured with my accustomed spartan lifestyle plus extreme-weather bedding plus jury-rigged wood stove in the cabin tent (not recommended). But, unbeknownst to me, the region was notorious for its occasional severe windstorms. They were of such magnitude they beggared belief. Coming out of nowhere, they'd roar through the land like a runaway freight; seventy to eighty mph wind speeds were not uncommon. (In the late 1980s we'd get hit with one extraordinary storm that actually punched hundred-mile gusts.)
December weather assaults kept blowing my tent down no matter how thoroughly I tried securing the guy ropes. When it collapsed yet again in the middle of a howling blizzard one night, I finally surrendered. Grateful I had the option, the next morning my black cat and I moved into the couple's vacated cabin. Thereafter I made a hike each day to work on my place ,clearing brush, roughing in a roadway, and building an earth-sheltered shed that would become my legal onsite construction shelter once securing a building permit.
But before I ever got it, I seemed destined to experience the full wrath of unknown neighbors, with their anal-retentive, zero tolerance for anyone not doing things 100% according to Hoyle. It seemed the ever-vigilant Vista board members and their cohorts had established a pipeline with local realtors for every Vista parcel sale made. "Neighbors", most living miles away, thus learned another rambling upstart of seeming threadbare means had dared to invade their respectable domain, doubtless with no intention of ever paying the piper. My Strout realtor informed me later that while he had admitted selling a lot to a young long-hair, he wouldn't divulge where or to whom.
I found that sporting, at least.
Now a determined posse was hot on the trail of the latest scofflaw, systematically combing the endless back roads to run me to earth. (My you-gotta-permit-for-that? neighbor, to his credit, hadn't reported me.) Weeks later they finally discovered my lair when I wasn’t home. They took one look at the thrown-together, mostly underground store shed and verboten outhouse and promptly reported me to the county health department. They didn’t know -- or, I suspect, much care -- that I had earnest intentions of complying and building to code. (Again, it wasn't that I particularly wanted to, but I valued peace of mind and I knew I'd never have it if I didn't toe the line.)
Their scorched-earth policy allowed no wiggle room. I suppose I'd already been on the land longer than the thirty days a year rules allowed. Equal opportunity hasslers, anyone and everyone non-compliant -- especially those they didn't cotton to as one of them and maybe deserving of some leeway -- was zealously thrown under the bus.
Busted
I was soon summoned onto the carpet of the then-head county health department honcho, Dr. Bayuk, who'd just capped POWW membership, determined to make every lot owner first put in a well before becoming eligible to get a building permit. No doubt smarting from the wrathful earful he'd just endured over the latest upstart's seeming scofflaw audacity, I was given the full bum's rush. Thinking the worst of me, he was loaded for bear and read me the riot act. But then, oddly, he gave me an out: he'd give me 120 days to get compliant by installing a septic system -- even though I wouldn’t have a completed cabin to connect it to for years -- and then build a temporary outhouse over it. Otherwise he'd see to it that I'd be thrown off my land. “And don’t think I won’t!”, he growled, jowls shaking like Nixon's as he spoke. He no doubt felt I needed that extra dose of fear to get me properly motivated.
It turned out that at the last moment another kindhearted neighbor came forward and explained to him how they'd promised to let me join their by-then membership-capped water POWW truck club once I was ready to build. He thus grudgingly allowed me to slip in and become the truck club's last and twenty-sixth member.
Being thin-skinned, the experience, happening within months of my arrival overflowing with excitement to fulfill a decade's ambition to settle my own land, traumatized me. Before the last minute reprieve, I'd all but given up on the place. Devastated and demoralized, I'd appeared to be gearing up to fade away into yet another homeless sunset. Instead, though fondest hopes and dreams now felt hopelessly mangled, the wind gone from my sails, I dredged reserve willpower from somewhere, paid the $125 water-truck membership fee, and rekindled my resolve to invest the required time, money and effort needed to get legally squared away. I'd then at least be able to live on the land with a modicum of dignity and salvage some of my original anticipation of building a bower in the wilderness, while doing my best to tune out those who seemed to live to give others grief for their own fondest dreams having gotten so sadly mauled.
I passed the perc test and dug and installed an approved septic system. As per agreement, I built an outhouse over the top of the tank once it and the leach field passed inspection and was back-filled. In part for the benefit of any busybodies chancing to drive by to check out the scene of the troublemaker's almost-bust (Damn, I thought sure we had him) and no doubt hoping to find some new reportable offense, I'd painted on the side facing the road in big, bold, blue letters, much for their benefit, “Welcome Halley's Comet in 1984.” That should baffle 'em, I thought. Then I built another outhouse more to my liking to use until moving into the completed cabin years later; it was a low-slung squatter affair cleverly disguised as a doghouse, water bowl and leash in front, a piece of plywood and big cushion hiding the opening. No one ever discovered the ruse.
Over a leisurely three and a half year period I built my code-approved, one-and-a-half story, solar-tempered little-big cabin (625 square feet), meanwhile living next door in my far tinier hobbit home (8 X 12 feet). On its plank door I'd post a Shakespeare quote: "I could be bounded by a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space..."
Using only hand tools, I wanted the building experience to be intimate and relaxed. I had energy to burn, being a young man in his prime. I briefly hired help for the open-beam roof and electrical work and scrounged recycled lumber whenever possible. It appeared I was maybe on the verge of becoming an at least quasi respectable resident. Not that I was longer interested in being accepted as such by the place's apparent league of dedicated hasslers. It was like the classic Groucho Marx quip made over a restrictive country club's offering him a membership despite being Jewish:" I didn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member." It'd be decades before I'd ever warm to the board and appreciate its potential at least to do actual good for the hopelessly floundering, perpetually at odds with itself, backwoods community.
Working under the gun of county code enforcers -- who I sensed were trading notes with wary Vista board members and their cohorts on demand -- would prove so depressing it drove me to drink. I learned firsthand how board members and their ilk had a special gift for radicalizing the place's denizens in their woebegone effort to try returning the place to its former glory -- or, in abject frustration, demand a pound of flesh by giving holy hell to anyone not compliant as some warped-out sop. It felt as if the place was permanently caught up in a negative reactionary spiral, forever locked into some contention-drenched time loop of gnarly discord.
On the wings of getting my new shelter signed off in early 1983, I was still a timid if yet somewhat rebellious 33-year-old. One who was by now thoroughly resentful of The Vista's imperious would-be overlords.
Rainbow fever hits the Vista
So naturally I soon got myself into even worse trouble. It seems I decided to celebrate the return of Halley’s Comet by hosting a months-long rainbow family camp on my land.
In 1984, the annual national alternative-culture rainbow family gathering, with its deep hippie-culture roots, was going to be held in California for the first time ever since its start some twelve years earlier. It would be somewhere in an area two hours distant, in the Warner Mountains wilderness, a ways from Alturas, in the remote northeast corner of the state. Come spring a flood of psyched early-comers, some excitedly returning for the first time in decades to their countercultural roots, would be pouring in from everywhere, including overseas. Many would have nowhere to go until the exact public-forest site was determined, many months away yet.
Wanting to reconnect with my countercultural roots while evening the ledger for the countless people who'd helped me over the years when I was on the road, often homeless -- plus thinking to maybe liberate the incredibly stodgy development a bit -- in February I opened up my land and resources to all comers over the next five months.
Like the Vistan firstcomers who'd built homes amidst a de facto established recreational development unmindful of what troubles their move might create for over a thousand other lot holders, I was equally determined to let the chips fall where they may, hosting a merrily motley group that was, doubtless, the very antithesis of the strict law-and-order mindset so many of my 'neighbors' appeared to embrace.
I solemnly tendered my invite by letter to the rainbow steering committee, then holding monthly steering committee meetings in the City Hall chamber (of all places) of far away Chico. Word spread fast, and though it would never be recognized or supported as an official rainbow camp for being held on private land, for months hundreds of early-comer wired spirits, often in colorful, glad-rag garb and driving outlandish rigs, traipsed in and out of the buttoned-down-and-proud Vista hinterlands, almost like party-hearty space travelers vacationing from another planet.
Rainbow elders Whitney Loman and Eagle Feather oversaw setting up the three 28-foot yurts -- formerly belonging to the Seattle area's once controversial Love Family spiritual sect -- on the parcel's lower back acre. "There's your UFO, Stuart!," someone told me as the central yurt went up; earlier I'd mentioned how I liked to imagine a scout ship would some day land on the parcel. I'd named my place Earth Base as a whimsical variation on a former Seattle Capitol Hill fire station that had been repurposed as a community center and renamed Earth Station. It would be widely known as Earth Base for years thereafter. In a way, the scene felt a little like the animated feature Yellow Submarine, in which the Beatles's triumphant music turned the dreary frozen black-and-white world into brilliant technicolor. But it wasn't all peace and love. Not by any means. Off-putting power trips, ego trips and less than altruistic attitudes would sometimes tarnish any such reality, people being being and the eighties being trying times. Even so, incredibly juiced transcendent energies could often prevail. I had to work double time to get into the flow of it, having lived alone so long and handicapped for being the private owner of a site rather than one equally participating in shared public forestry land.
Predictably, when my convention-minded neighbors heard about what Ward was now up to, they had a veritable conniption fit. Though a few more liberal-minded retirees would seem tickled by it all, possibly rebels at heart and not seeing anything too threatening about the surreal scene, others were having kittens. Absolutely no free-spirited long-hairs, with their flagrant pot smoking (then still very much illegal) and shameless nudity and unsettling tribal drum jams far into the night, would ever be tolerated...not in their one-time Shangri-la now going to rack and ruin, dammit. One family per parcel; that was one Vista rule etched in stone. (Claims of “We ARE one family” wouldn't cut much ice.)
Fairly frothing at the mouth, they reported me to every enforcement agency they could think of: county sheriff; health, planning and building departments; fire marshal; dog catcher... But, saving grace, earlier on I’d coordinated a meeting between then-county sheriff Charlie Byrd and the rainbow elders that was held on my land. Law enforcement was keen on learning what they might expect with some 33,000 rainbow celebrants (as it turned out), soon to invade their turf. The sheriff, at least tenuously reassured our ragtag group basically appeared a harmless if trey-freaky bunch (apart from pot smoking and enjoying losing clothes whenever weather and circumstance allowed), a group likely to only cause a temporary glitch in the conventional order of things, must've told my apoplectic neighbors to chill a while, grit their teeth, it'd soon be over.
Jaws surely dropped; the system was failing them yet again.
Rebellious offspring of the various outraged residents visiting the scene loved it; it became part of Vista lore (what precious little there was of it). The writer liked to think the ensuing, largely free-spirited scene helped break the ice of the Vista's long-oppressive regime, even if perhaps at the risk of having encouraged an anarchistic spirit to gain too strong a foothold on the once depressingly strait-laced community.
It seemed that, over the decades, the place would swing from one extreme to the other: from the firstcomers' honeymoon period, happy campers giddy over the endless possibilities of the pristine lands; to a ruthless law-and-order minded "No this, no that, don't even think about it" regime; then back to "Whoopee, anything goes!"
_________________________
Gone eleven months of the year
The firstcomers' control-freak stance had been in part born of feeling the need to post serious signs everywhere to protect the place and vacationers' left belongings while they lived up to 700 miles away some eleven months of the year. Mischief-minded offspring of embittered locals resenting the sudden takeover of their former longtime stomping grounds had a hell-for-leather field day during the parcel owners' extended absences...which of course got them livid on their return, their hoped-for carefree vacations anticipated all year met with a rude reality check.
The locals, some maybe fourth or fifth generation descendants of the region's pioneers and well set in their ways, had naturally been far from welcoming the big-city based, parcel-buying newcomers into their once-sleepy realm. They'd mounted what amounted to a pitched, "You may think it's your land, but it's still ours; we'll never recognize your damn place" campaign. The endless miles of non-gated groomed back roads were ideal for the kids' dirt bikers to gouge deep donuts in, and certain delinquent-minded youth engaged in more serious, spirited hell raising by stealing and vandalizing at will. So it was that the unruly youth -- absorbing the perturbed sentiments of their elders and carrying on a proud family tradition -- geared up a protracted war with the foreign la-la-landers who'd dared to take away their wilderness hunting and grazing land. Law enforcement could only do so much in working with the absent owners, there being maybe at most a single overseer or two watching over the vast seven square miles of ungated entrances and often unfenced lots off season. (Over the decades, residents often never fenced off even their developed properties, as the place felt so remote and peaceful -- on the surface, at least -- that a need to wasn't felt.) The actual land owner himself needed to report an incident to get any investigation, and some things no doubt had gone missing over a half year before they were known to have been stolen.
By the time civic-minded lot owners started living on their parcels and joining the larger community, attending church services and, in later decades, younger-resident families increased, enrolling their children in the local schools and joining PTAs, it almost seemed too late barring a good dose of amazing grace to reverse the long-established vicious circle. Dislike and suspicion of the Vista and its invasive lot owners could seem permanently ingrained in the DNA of locals, their kids, their grandkids...
“Permit? We ain’t got no permit...
I don’t need no stinkin’ permit!”
Through the 1980s and 1990s, the county's health and building ordinances had still been at least fitfully enforced. Unless one didn’t mind being deemed an outlaw and never earning recognition or acceptance as an “official” resident -- as in time more and more wouldn't -- landowners settling on their parcels complied as a matter of course. Or at least provided the illusion of trying to comply: "See here? I started my well; I'm fifty feet down and waiting on my next paycheck to drill deeper; cut me some slack here, will ya?" (Hope he's buying this.)
After the Great Recession of 2008-2009 hit and devastated the global economy, county supervisors were forced to make tough calls. Among other actions they'd ax the position of residential-code enforcer, which seemed to be having little effect anyhow -- leastwise in the Vista. The place was so far gone by then, calling it a lost cause was an understatement.
Over the next half decade, residential-code enforcement essentially disappeared from the Vista...like it never existed.
With no official telling you anything different, it was easier than ever for newcomers to foster the notion that they could do whatever they wanted on the remote parcels. The old threatening signs that had been erected everywhere were by now seriously biodegrading, dire warnings fading into illegibility. They lent the place the air of being something akin to a forlorn, all but abandoned rural ghost town living out its zombie half-life in happy sleepy obscurity.
No legal power to fine; Liberty vs. license;
Can a place find its center without a center?
As brought out earlier, other subdivisions forming in the region about the same time had wanted to assure they established a respectable residency. Accordingly, they gave the property-owner boards legal power to levy fines for infractions of agreed-on rules. If not paid they could slap legal liens on a culprit's property, which then had to be cleared up before the land could legally change hands. Examples: in Lake Shastina, visible clotheslines, solid fencing and dirt bikes were all verboten; in Shasta Forest, one could get fined fifty dollars for changing oil on their own property even if capturing every drop for recycling.
No such legal powers ever existed here.
This was always the place's two-edged sword. While its relative lack of sometimes nit-picky, overreaching rules and regulations had empowered residents to feel more like lords and ladies of the manor, as it were, such freedom could also attract those with scofflaw intentions who wanted to exploit a seemingly unregulated land, unmindful of disturbing the realm's relative peace and quiet and pristine nature. Example: the place long ago had a monumental junkyard eyesore surreally surrounded by undisturbed wooded lots; it took the board ages to get the county to condemn it and the place be cleaned up.
In a democracy, it always came down to giving people the freedom to do whatever they wanted -- just so long as their actions didn’t interfere with the rights of others to do what they wanted: the greatest good for the greatest number. Liberty vs. license. The flip side of liberty was, of course, the obligation to support the rules of law set up to safeguard the freedom rights of the majority, thus ostensibly serving the greater good. That the rules sometimes seemed to favor the interests of the wealthier class at the expense of others getting the short end of the stick was no doubt what often made people want to rebel against the system in the first place.
Few Vistan parcel holders -- especially absentee ones, but even some residents -- ever felt a need to build a community center. So it never did. Though its population had grown enough to merit one, there was never enough interest to create such a practical facility where residents and visiting lot owners could meet and get to know each other in a neutral, relaxed setting and form informal volunteer action groups like community gardens, swap meets and litter patrol -- and have the monthly board meetings in the actual Vista, rather than next door in a tiny fire station backroom.
But indeed it was long held in the cramped, cold-fluorescent-lit backroom space, just off actual Vista property. And the annual property owner meetings were held some ten miles away, in Lake Shastina, one having to walk through the golf club's bar lounge littered with buzzed and sometimes schnockered tee enthusiasts to reach the conference room. (In earliest years they were held hundreds of miles away, at places like the many members’ favorite at the time, the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, to make it easier for the dominant southern California ownership to attend; that gives a clue how dominant their influence was over the place.)
At the risk of stating the obvious, it was hard for a quasi community to gain any sense of centeredness without actually having a center. Needing to leave the place to attend a monthly meeting and drive ten miles away to attend its annual meeting? While it struck more than a few as too weird for words, it only reflected the place's woebegone level of discombobulation.
“Wouldn’t give you a dime...” vs. “Only $29,999!”
Due to the place’s sundry shortcomings, sale values of parcels stalled for decades, barely keeping up with inflation; interest in the parcels took the meaning of 'soft market' to new levels. Until 2015, unimproved two-to-three acre lots were often left begging at $5,000. Lacking any easier water, sewage systems, electricity, or any more can-do, fair-minded, empowered board or appropriate CC&Rs, the place all but screamed, "Beware! Failed subdivision!"
It just didn’t strike many as a promising place to want to drop anchor at. It seemed it could only appreciated by those enjoying roughing it a while. And those determined to live on the cheap, who wouldn't lose any sleep for being non-compliant, "Screw the system" being their motto. Or those renting houses and mobiles from code-compliant owners who'd moved away, for affordability more than anything else, and then tried their best to tune out the place's stark shortcomings. Or long-timers, who'd known the place in kinder times and had sunk such deep roots they were braced to weather changes that would make others want to flee in a heartbeat.
Long ago, I met a former realtor who said of the properties with a heated disdain apparently then common in certain local property peddling circles, “I wouldn’t give you a dime for any of them!” He spoke with such fire-breathing intensity, you'd think the realm was maybe sitting on top of a radioactive-waste dump. It made one wonder if maybe he and his colleagues had in times past skirted ugly protracted lawsuits for misrepresenting properties, or endured some other such unpleasantness that made it not worth any paltry commission fees the low-end properties might generate.
Eventually two out-of-region realtor groups thought differently. Specializing in scouting rural developments deemed undervalued, in the late 2000s they snapped up hundreds of the bedeviled hinterland's parcels for cheap, properties that had long laid fallow (at last relieving many long-stuck or more recently-stuck absentee parcel owners). Then they mounted slick sales campaigns to try remedying the obviously under-exploited situation, intent on making a mint in fast turnover.
The first outfit, National Recreational Properties, Inc., would hire former "CHiPs" TV star Erik Estrada to serve as uber-aggressive pitchman. Out of Irvine (possibly the same town as Vista founder Collins), it apparently had a penchant for going after faile, “left-for-dead” subdivisions, sharp talons squeezing out what easy quick profit they could before swooping off to the next rural roadkill. In ad promos "the Ponch" enthused how the place was so great he even owned a parcel. (Of course he was given it as part of the deal just so he could say that.) see related article
The outfit reportedly offered to fly prospective buyers in to enjoy a champagne brunch, along with the big pitch and grand tour of the prime affordable properties offering such priceless solitude, fresh air and dazzling views. When they held a grand open house, balloons festooning highway entrances, rumor had it that no one even showed. (They were more successful with their Alturas, California area development, California Pines, which boasted over 15,000 one-acre parcels, though each, for some strange reason, demanded the installation of a super pricey, individually engineer-designed septic system that would hinder its development.)
A few years later, around 2012, another group, Billyland.com, likewise grabbed a mess of raw Vista parcels, possibly taking some off the former's hands. They in turn appeared to aim at gullible, land-hungry Internet surfers. They'd hawk the parcels online, eBay auction style, the 'winner' being the one having made the highest down-payment bid when the timer ran out. “Only $29,999!” they'd gush. (With low monthly payments and a high interest rate, the final cost ran over $50,000.) Their campaign attracted many living on a shoestring, some soon growing a few cannabis plants no doubt in part to try keeping up the land payments and so avoid losing what some legal residents uncharitably viewed as essentially private campgrounds for the homeless.
Eighty legal residences amid 1,641 lots
At the start of the momentous year of 2015, according to county records the Vista had a grand total of eighty legally permitted residences. Out of 1,641 parcels, that was about one in twenty, or five percent of the lots sporting homes or mobiles according to Hoyle. The rest -- some 1,556 lots, or ninety-five percent -- either had non-permitted dwellings, were once informally lived on and since vacated or, most commonly, were still as relatively pristine as the day the place was launched a half century earlier, minus the scars of tree poachers, thoughtless off-roaders, long-abandoned trailers, and windblown detritus donated by residents of nearby lots.
Hope sprang eternal for at least some of the speculative landholders, still thinking to make a bundle. They set a super inflated price in listing with the realtor, thinking to snag some eager, uninformed, land-hungry buyer with more dollars than sense, oblivious to the depressed market and the development's chronic festering problems: "Secluded"; "The perfect spot to build that dream home", "a slice of heaven" their realtors pitched brazenly. In the early teens, a sale to a woman was about to close. She was taking one last look at the parcel before signing when a nearby scofflaw resident (the late Sean Miller), was determined to keep out his own 'wrong kind of people'. He strode out into open view, buck naked, and pranced about for her benefit. It worked; the deal promptly fell through. (The would-be seller told the writer of this episode during a sauna one day at nearby Stewart Springs.)
“Maybe if we ignore them they’ll go away.”
It was no great secret that county supervisors rued the day they ever greenlit the problematic development. A former Vista board president stalwart, Jeannette Hook, who worked with county officials in the course of her career, said they viewed the Vista as "the red-headed stepchild no one knew what to do with."
Although the place was at the mercy of county officials and enforcers to keep intact whatever shreds of respect for the rule of law yet remained, the huge mostly rural county, on overstretched budget and often understaffed, had, again, long ago given up trying to deal with the forsaken realm. Responsible enforcement and policy-making parties grew so numb to the perpetual thorn in their side that they disconnected from the inconvenient truth that its legal residency as tax payers was paying their salaries and, not unreasonably, expected them to earn their keep, dammit.
Despite -- or because of -- the number of non-compliant dwellers increasing, it seemed authorities wouldn't respond with a visit short of an actual emergency. One would think they had to appreciate the possibility that the place might be an even greater disaster waiting to happen. Yet county officials kept kicking the can down the road, on automatic pilot, determined to avoid dealing with the fool's errand of a place whenever possible...
...until the great day of reckoning came at last.
Tidal wave of growers
I was taking a leisurely stroll along my road in the winter of 2014-2015. Suddenly I noticed how some long-slumbering, unfenced, raw lots had just received fresh attention. New surveying posts were planted with scrawled bearings and Day-glo-bright ribbons fluttering off their tops...just like, no doubt, at the start of the subdivision exactly a half century earlier.
There they go again, I thought dismissively, trying to sell the unsellable parcels again; will they never give up? Then, over the next few days on driving out, I noticed similar surveying flags and boundary sticks along the roads. I started to worry a little at that point. Something was going on here, but what? I was clueless. Was some new wave of homesteading fever preparing to take off? Was some developer secretly building a major attraction nearby that would make people suddenly want to live here? Had gold been discovered on the land?
I tried putting it out of mind as likely only the latest half-baked realtor campaign. Then, several weeks later, I was awakened by the sound of metal striking metal. It came from several directions, I realized, on stepping outdoors. It was like a surreal flock of persistent metal woodpeckers had descended on the region and was rat-a-tatting up a slow-motion storm. Investigating, I spotted an Asian man with dedicated intent, forty yards past my driveway, pounding metal stakes to string barbed wire along them. It being such a weird sight in a place that had rarely had any fences, let alone barbed wire ones, that I didn't feel pulled to walk up and ask what the heck was up.
In time, I noticed barbed wire fences seemed to be going up everywhere, along with "No Trespassing", "Posted: Private Property" signs on sleepy lots that had been vacant and unfenced for decades. Something was definitely going on. Clearly, some phenomenal land rush was erupting...and I began to suspect the reason.
It finally dawned on me: people were snapping up the cheap remote parcels primarily to grow pot on, while setting up simple shelters to oversee the clearly commercial-scale crops. Word had gotten out that the Vista lots were ideal: dirt-cheap, remote, and in the banana belt of a poor rural county that had lagged behind neighboring countries of Trinity and Shasta in enacting restrictive ordinances to get a handle on the explosion of unlicensed scaled-up growing going on. People were in a delirium to grab Vista's long underappreciated lots while the getting was good...and before realtors, knowing the score and having early on bought up a slew of parcels, would jack up asking prices to the moon in a sudden phenomenal seller's market. (Lots going begging in 2014 for $5,000 would be grabbed for $150,000 or more by 2022.)
Spring came and the place was abuzz with more traffic than the place had ever seen. An indication of how much more: One day on driving out, I spotted some road litter and stopped to pick it up. It had been a sleepy back road that, for ages, probably saw fewer than a dozen cars a week traverse it. In the few seconds I stopped, two vehicles had come roaring out of nowhere, like bats out of hell, driving halfway off the road to get around me.
In the spring of 2015, a flood of unlicensed pot growing entrepreneurs, mostly Asian-American and predominantly Hmong, along with maybe ten percent White, had poured onto the land. They were anticipating what would prove a tidal wave of commercial-scale pot growing in California, as voters were primed to liberalize laws regarding cannabis cultivation and recreational use by Proposition 64 in the late 2016 election.
Among other things, it would reduce unlicensed commercial grows -- of any size -- to a simple civil misdemeanor.
Damn it feels good to be a gangsta
Unlicensed growers thus began their frenzied snapping up of the long underappreciated, remote parcels. The two-to-three-acre lots were seen as an absolute steal to the new buyers -- as was almost always the case throughout the place's checkered history. In early 2015, lots were selling like hotcakes to any and all willing to take a chance and bypass what would prove the largely unenforceable grow-permitting regulations and ordinances soon to be enacted. Regulations that involved dealing with both state and county agencies, tons of paperwork, regular inspections, strict bookkeeping, fees, taxes...hey, who needed any of that?
Anarchy and rebellion suddenly looked good to lots of otherwise law-abiding folks. It was a similar situation as when people had dropped anchor on lots and ignored the building codes like they didn't exist: financially insecure people, wanting to live freely, always tending to ignore laws that appeared unenforceable.
What helped prompt the explosion of illicit grows: would-be cultivators of the magic herb in Siskiyou county? Growers weren't even given the option of complying with commercial-growing regulations even if one was willing to be go the aboveboard route. The state would allow each county to okay or ban commercial cannabis cultivation in its unincorporated rural region. (Incorporated cities, in contrast, had the option of voting to permit commercial grows and dispensaries if enough residents voted for it.) Siskiyou, its old-guard pillar citizens more than a scosche conservative, would forbid the Reefer Madness of commercial pot growing with a passion...for all the good it would do. (Being located a half hour from the town of Weed didn't help matters. In fact, it all but guaranteed the region would become the region's initial epicenter for underground growers.)
The consequences were huge for California becoming the only western state to reduce the penalty for unsanctioned, commercial-level pot grows to a misdemeanor. It essentially paved the way for the rallying cry of "There's gold in California!" to sound once more, 167 years after the epic 1849 Gold Rush. Word again spread like wildfire. Grow-happy entrepreneurs felt irresistably pulled from across the nation and overseas, as the state once again became a billion-ton magnet to pursue a new historic opportunity to get rich quick.
County supervisors might just as well have gone fishing for all the compliance their new restrictive ordinances, which they liked to think of as chiseled in stone, would inspire. The hundreds of the new Vista lot holders intuited that the ever-changing and seemingly arbitrary cannabis laws and ordinances would be all but unenforceable in the sprawling, spread thin, poor rural county if enough growers went for it -- and a relative slap on the wrist if busted. Almost overnight, seas of green would flourish, far exceeding the state's allowed personal-use six-plant plant limit, at first a modest sixteen-fold, in time over three-hundred fold.
Reactivating the sixties' back-to-the-land euphoria
on its fiftieth anniversary?
The phenomenal rush appeared to have caught everyone in the county flat-footed. Asleep at the switch. Out to lunch. Name your metaphor. "No one could've ever predicted such a thing would happen," opined one public official to the media, head stuck firmly in the sand, as The Los Angeles Times featured stories over the unfolding drama and the obscure rural subdivision was briefly getting national attention.
Their studious ignoring of the Vista's long-festering plight -- born of a county too poor, provincial-minded and or lackadaisical to keep up with fast-changing times, or able to enforce its own ordinances and regulations should enough people opt to simply ignore them -- had been careening towards a collision course with reality for ages...
...until avoiding dealing with it at last proved an unwarranted luxury.
People had predicted at its start that Mt. Shasta Vista was certain to be a disaster. It came as no great surprise then when a half century later, in something of self-fulfilling prophecy, they proved themselves absolutely right.
Had the year 2015, being the fiftieth anniversary of Vista's founding, somehow reactivated -- and further amped up -- the euphoric enthusiasm to settle the land, as was felt in the late sixties by the well-healed modern-day pioneers who'd treasured it for being a sweet spot of natural seclusion to retire in?
Possibly. But it was in a way that would prove equally short-sighted and lost in a dream. For while the sea of lots, long ignored and belittled as bad investments, were at last finding a brand-new appreciation, it was mostly for utilitarian reasons failing to honor the earth, or appreciate its fragile ecological balance.
Hopefully, people will change their tune and the land will make a gradual recovery with the help of time, the great healer.
__________
Afterword
The fifth century B.C. Chinese philosophy Lao Tse once said that the cause of anything is everything and the cause of everything is anything. It'd be unfair and over-simplistic to pin the blame for what happened to the development on any one cause or party.
There was an extraordinary confluence of factors at play over time, countless ingredients in what became the place's recipe for disaster (for non-grower residents, that is; obviously it was a deliciously fortuitous situation for adventurous pot entrepreneurs willing to live and work together to remake the place to suit themselves).
- - - - - - - -
A brief recap of the major ingredients in the Vista's recipe for disaster:
The party selling the land to developer Martin reportedly didn't first get permission from the rest of the long-time land-owning Martin family; they were furious. They'd been content to have that part of their land holdings stay devoted to grazing and hunting. Result: A contentious vibe infected the place from the very start.
Locals joined in with their resentment that the development plans were ever approved; one county supervisor had voted against its formation over a suspected lack of water
Ambitious efforts to follow protocol by the first residents -- each providing their own well, electrical hookup, etc. before then building to code, only then moving in -- weren't followed by sundry future dwellers, despite such conformity being crucial to becoming recognized as a standard community
The plan to extend power to every lot, initially funded by voluntary assessment to a power and light fund, failed after one in four parcel owners refused to chip in, among other factors leading the power company to back out of its tenuous commitment. Owners were left to gripe over how the funds of over a thousand contributors were gobbled up just to connect the homes of a couple dozen, leading to a growing indifference towards the residents by the Vista's myriad absentee owners
Add:
A sea of indifferent absentee owners, often mere speculators, many soon nursing serious buyer remorse and -- unable to unload the clunkers without taking a bath, as land use got blurred between first-generation recreational use and arrested growth as an standard community -- were loathe to sink another cent in the boondoggle
Firebrand property-owners board members, along with other heavily invested first-comer residents -- reacting to the growing rash of lot buyers living on bought lots without conforming to health and building code by declaring open war on them and reporting them to authorities -- creating an uber-contentious social climate for decades
Detached, profit-minded realtors who didn't care diddly-squat what one intended to do with their lots
Limited-involvement association managers, sometimes board presidents, indifferent to or ineffective in helping efforts of more civic-minded residents to nurture a sense of community, some even heavily participating in the eventual red-hot realty boom sparked by liberalizing pot laws
Stir in:
County officials who in time all but abandoned enforcement of the building and health regulations for a full half decade, starting during the Great Recession of 2008-2009
More and more freedom-minded residents deeming home building-code standards over-complicated and too expensive for simple country living on one's own land and thus worthy of being totally ignored
- - - - - -
Mix together and bake 50 years. Result? One giant question mark of a place that the public still shakes its head at, dismissing it as a tangled confused mess that defies even wanting to try wrapping one's head around.
Was it any wonder the Vista became such a basket case? Practically all the while it seemed it was maybe vying for the 'Most Dysfunctional Rural Development' award in some bizarro alternate universe.
Countless influences -- some possibly not touched on here -- have led the Vista to be the way it is now: a first shared recreational land and brief standard rural community forever left wanting to be something more, despite the cards being stacked against it from the start...
...and, people being people and the Vista being the Vista, is still trying to...any way it can.
______________________
Stuart Ward, a Vista resident since 1978, served in the early teens as a volunteer property owners board member and, along with former board president Bob Moore, produced the ephemeral official Vista website online from 2012 to 2014.
He still brakes for road litter.
An Independent Stewart Springs watchdog, tribute & blog site since 2011