One of the stranger developments in Pauma Valley, which has been sparking some local interest lately, is taking place in Joe Chisholm’s front yard on Adams Drive.
The Roadrunner asked Chisholm to explain what was going on and he had the following comments:
“The adobe ‘pueblo’ taking shape on my front slope is one of the most delightful and surprising projects I’ve ever been involved with. As a landscape architect, I have always been personally interested in landscapes that tell a story. Also, I have always been interested in the connections which link people to the land and the places they live.”
“Gardens and/or landscapes can reveal something about their owners or the places where they are built. They can educate as well as reveal some of the lands’ more natural and sometimes even mysterious processes. Ultimately, landscapes can provide a place for healing. Both healing of the scars left by the hand of man upon this earth, as well as a place for human or ‘spiritual’ healing, which so many of us need to take place.”
“This ‘pueblo’ arising from the clay of my yard is actually the work of my good friend and artist, Phil Church, who also is a member of the Pala-Pauma Community Planning Group with me. Phil has been involved in a number of historical adobe restoration projects lately as well as some that might be better described as ‘earth-art sculptures.’”
“This past summer, Phil surprised me when returning from a camping trip to Zion National park (another kind of landscape which tells its own story). I found this village taking shape in my yard. Since then, the project has continued to delight the entire neighborhood.”
“Taking on, at times, an almost communal quality. Someone or ‘someones’ have stopped and left ladders in the ‘village.’ At times, neighborhood kids stop by and help Phil with the construction. It’s something to see, with Phil giving lessons on proper techniques of adobe construction to perhaps a next generation of ‘pueblo’ builders. It seems that a day doesn’t go by without some passerby on Adams Drive stopping to try and figure out just what is going on with what is most likely Pauma Valley’s first ‘pueblo.’”
“I’ve spent a lot of time of late finding and placing large stones within the puzzle of the dry laid stone walls I’ve been building nearby. At times, the work seems more therapeutic than landscape construction. Watching the neighborhood come together as a kind of community around this adjacent earthen art project reminds me what community planning is really supposed to be about and why I came to the beautiful valley in the first place. There is magic in this place. A magic that my Native American neighbors first discovered long ago and which still emanates from this place we share and call home.”
By DAVID ROSS
Final results of Tuesday’s elections resulted in a ratification of the status quo on VC’s district boards, a narrow defeat of the VC Park & Recreation District’s Prop. GG and a strong mandate for VC’s planning group to oppose General Plan 2020’s downzoning in the center part of the Valley and increased density in the Country Town.
Prop. GG, which would have raised about $14 per parcel per year within the district, garnered 2803 yes votes (61.3%) and 1768 no votes, 38.6%.
The measure needed 66.67% to pass.
VC Water District
In the VC Municipal Water District election, Div. 2’s balloting was a squeaker, with appointed incumbent Randy Haskell getting 595 votes (51.2%) to challenger Michael J. Finton’s 567 votes (48.7).
On the other hand, if Div. 3’s venerable incumbent Gary Broomell had been a bond measure instead of a candidate, he would have passed with two thirds of the vote in his division.
Broomell, who has held the Div. 3 directorship for more years than half of the people in town have been alive, won 987 votes (67%) compared to challenger Robert Silverman’s 484 votes (32.9%).
Planning Group
The so-called “Pillars slate” identifying itself as being pro-property rights with misgivings about General Plan 2020, took all but one of the seven available seats.
That one exception was Lael Montgomery, who passed Clyde Childress (a pro-property rights candidate, but not a member of slate) and almost passed Robert Hancock, to win the bottom rung of the contest. The other member of Montgomery’s slate, her husband Jon Vick, did not win a seat.
At the top of the ladder was Craig Adams, with 2097 votes. Adams served on the planning group previously for seven years, six of them as planning group chairman, and then left the board. He ran as a strong opponent of GP2020, and shrugged off an embarrassing phone message that he accidentally left on the wrong answering machine and which some political enemies tried to pump up into a campaign issue.
Doing almost as well was longtime VC resident and dentist Ron Adair and planning group chairman Larry Glavinic, followed by high school assistant principal Mel Schuler and Bear Valley Feed Owner Eric Laventure and nursery owner Robert Hancock.
The slate that included Ron Perry, Mary Meade, Brian Bates, Kaela Laue, Noel Laue, mostly perceived as pro-GP2020 (although Kaela Laue was neutral) came after Montgomery, Childress and Vick.
Money and campaigning activity, while an important factor in the election, wasn’t the vital factor.
Montgomery and Vick (one of three married couples on the ballot) campaigned extensively with signs and a brochure mailing.
A mailer was also sent out for the “Pillars.”
Clyde Childress, known locally for his private Pikake Gardens botanical garden and for his GOP political connections, did not campaign at all, yet was separated by one vote from Vick.
Cal Townsend, another well-known local Republican, had withdrawn his name from the running, yet still attracted a sizable number of votes.
Vote totals were as follows (winners in bold):
Craig Adams, 2097 vote (8.6%); Ron Adair, 2032 (8.4%); Larry Glavinic, 2023 (8.3%); Mel Schuler, 1855 (7.6%); Eric Laventure, 1660 (6.8%); Robert Hancock, 1439 (5.9%); Lael Montgomery, 1425 (5.8%) Clyde Childress, 1260 (5.2%); Jonathan Vick, 1259 (5.2%); Brian Bates, 1164 (4.8%); Mary Meade, 1123 (4.6%); Oliver J. Smith, 933 (3.8%); Kaela Laue, 851 (3.5%); Vicki Sheedy, 790 (3.2%); Terry Van Koughnett, 777 (3.2%); Noel R. Laue, 737 (3%); Cal Townsend, 619 (2.5%); Ronald Perry, 593 (2.4%); Mirra Smith, 570 (2.3%); Ronald Andes, 488 (2%); J.R. Clasen, 453 (1.8%).
VC Parks & Rec. Board
Incumbents Eric Jockinsen (president of the board) and Fran DeWilde were given a strong endorsement for new terms, while Tom Bumgardner, last year’s Western Days chairman and current Honorary Mayor, came in a strong third. Bumgardner also won a seat on a local fire board (see below).
Vote totals are as follows (winners in bold):
Eric M. Jockinsen, 1677 (20.7%); Fran DeWilde, 1627 (20.1%); Tom Bumgardner, 1343 (16.5%); Terry Van Koughnett, 1037 (12.8%); Tirso V. Ruiz, 974 (12%); Tom Litchfield, 819 (10.1%); Milo McGarrigle, 614 (7.5%).
Deer Springs Fire Protection District Board
Vote totals are as follows (winners in bold):
Donald G. Copp, 1985 (32.8%); Robert A. Winje, 1668 (27.5%); Tom Bumgardner 1303 (21.5%); Carol Fleisher, 1095 (18%).
VC-Pauma School Board
Three of the five first post-unification board members were given another shot at the job.
Pauma resident Lori Johnson topped the list with 3961 votes (30.2%) , followed by Henry Van Wyk, 3603 (27.4%) Barbara Rohrer, 3050 (23.2%) and Mike Morasco, 2489 (18.9%).
For the first time in 136 years, a grizzly bear will be seen later this month on Valley Center Road between Escondido and Valley Center.
The last time a grizzly was spotted in this area was in 1866, and the bear that was taken at that time was said to be largest ever captured in California. The notoriety surrounding that event gave Valley Center its original name, Bear Valley, a designation that remained until 1874.
While the 1866 grizzly was killed because it had been terrorizing both men and cattle, the latest bear will be an 8-foot tall taxidermy mount. It will be on its way from the Heritage Walk Museum at the Escondido Historical Society, where it has been housed for the past decade, to its future, permanent home at the new Valley Center History Museum.
Wendy Barker, executive director of the Escondido Museum, said the grizzly rightfully belongs in Valley Center because that is where the famous bear incident occurred. She contacted Norman Syler, chairman of the Valley Center Museum, who gladly accepted the gift.
Interestingly, it was Syler who brought the bear mount to Escondido when he earlier held the executive director post at that city’s museum. The grizzly originally had resided at the San Diego Natural History Museum. “We are grateful to our colleagues in Escondido for making this transfer of a significant piece of our local history,” he said.
Syler noted that the California grizzly, which has been extinct since 1924, will become the centerpiece of an educational exhibit at Valley Center’s new history museum. That facility is scheduled to open early in 2003 at 29200 Cole Grade Road where it will share a 4-acre site with a new County library branch.
Until the museum opens, the taxidermy mount will take up residence at Valley Center Mini Storage whose owner, Enrico Pinamonti, and manager Jayna Collins have been providing storage space for museum artifacts.
The actual 1866 grizzly, which weighed 2200 pounds, has never been located. Local historian Bob Lerner, a member of the history museum board of directors, said data in the VC archives indicates that the skull of the bear may be somewhere in the south.
It is known that Col. A.E. Maxcy, who owned the ranch and the scale at which the grizzly was weighed, kept the skull for a number of years before selling it to an unnamed museum in the south about 1900. Lerner spent many months earlier this year canvassing museums in the south that were in existence around 1900, but was unable to locate the skull.
Although the community known today as Valley Center had been settled in 1845 and homesteaded in 1862, it had no name prior to the 1866 bear incident. After the killing, it was identified as Bear Valley Township. The town name was subsequently changed to Valley in 1874, then Valley Centre in 1878 and, finally, to Valley Center in 1887.
Postal authorities would not permit local use of the name Bear Valley because the designation had previously been assigned to a town in Mariposa County. The name Bear Valley, however, remains on maps to identify a range covering the southeastern portion of today’s Valley Center.
Longtime Valley Center resident Jim Nelson recently was awarded the Korean War Service Medal from the South Korean government for his service in the Korean War on the 50th anniversary of the end of the war.
The medal was presented to several hundred Korean veterans Sept. 11 at the San Diego Convention Center. Speakers included Walter Cronkite, the president of the AARP, the South Korean ambassador to the U.S. and the current admiral of the U.S. Southwest Pacific Fleet.
“They were going to give me the medal in 1952 but at that time the U.S. government wouldn’t let servicemen wear medals from foreign powers,” the 71 year old veteran told The Roadrunner. That law was repealed in 1954, by which time most of the nearly 2 million Korean War vets had already gone home.
In 1998 the South Korean government again offered to award the medals. A year later the U.S. Department of Defense gave permission for Korean veterans to wear the medals.
The American Assn. of Retired People (AARP) has a program to identify and contact all Korean War veterans and inform them about the honor they are now eligible to receive.
Nelson, who was originally from Deluth, served in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Horace Bass, a high speed attack transport.
He was 18 when he joined the Navy. He served a four year hitch.
According to Nelson, the ship was actually “a high speed destroyer that transported frogmen and SEALS.”
The transport took part in a raid deep behind enemy lines in Korea in cooperation with Royal British Marine commandos.
During the raid they blew up enemy transportation facilities and communications installations.
After leaving the service, Nelson was a professional ballplayer with the San Diego Padres for two years, pitching for them when they were still playing at Lane Field.
Nelson has been a VC resident for 16 years. He is a retired auto mechanic and also worked in the aircraft manufacturing business for 24 years, including some time with Ryan Aircraft and Convair, where he worked on the Atlas Missile.
He and his wife, Judy Nelson, have one son, Troy, who also lives in VC.
Nelson is delighted to have received the medal.
“We waited a long time. That was a forgotten war, a police action they called it.”
Opponents of closing claim land title shows public easement
Local historian Petei McHenry claims that the dirt road through Cougar Canyon has been used by residents for over a century.
At the same time, opponents of closing the dogleg dirt turnpike claim that a land title investigation discloses that the public’s right to use the dirt road is recognized in the land’s title.
The Roadrunner has obtained a copy of the title report on the property owned by John Braman. The report lists 15 easements and other incumbrances on the land.
No. 8 of these reads, “Rights of the public to use that portion of said land lying within the hereinafter named street as it now exists,” and names North Broadway NS 137, which is the address of the Braman property.
According to McHenry, author of a local history of VC, and the recently named director of the VC History Museum, there are three publically available topo maps showing Cougar Pass as a road, one as early as 1898.
The maps are available at the County Surveyor’s Office on Overland Avenue in San Diego, she says.
According to McHenry, The Meadows was originally homesteaded in 1881 by Robert B. Kuchel and called Kuchel Mesa. The Kuchels used the dirt road as a wagon road. So did the U.S. Postal Service to deliver the mail, she says.
* * *
These are the latest developments in the three week old tug of war.
On one side are Hidden Meadows residents who use the easement to take their children to VC schools each morning.
On the other is John Braman, owner of the land through which the easement winds and Betsworth residents at the bottom of the pass who want to gate off the easement to stop traffic and trash.
Braman maintains that he has a right to put a gate up on the easement, which has been used by VC Municipal District for decades to go back and forth between VC and the Meadows.
Several residents who live along the dirt road that runs off Betsworth agree with Braman, claiming that their quality of life is threatened by increasing traffic, trash dumping and dust stirred up by passing vehicles.
The Valley Roadrunner
P.O.B. 1529, Valley Center, CA 92082
Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
Copyright © 2002, Palomar Community Newspapers, dba Valley Roadrunner. All rights reserved. This content may not be archived, retransmitted, saved in a database, or used for any commercial purpose without the express written permission of the Valley Roadrunner.