Entrance sign to Mt. Shasta Vista subdivision

Entrance sign to Mt. Shasta Vista development

Preface

Entering Mt. Shasta Vista for the first time was like walking into the middle of a movie and trying to figure out the plot — one that seemed, by turns, written by Zane Grey, Rod Serling and J. Edgar Hoover.

I'm still trying to figure out that plot... even after living in this peculiar rural development for 47 years, even after the sea-level change in 2015, when its long-empty lots found sudden, dramatic and controversial new life and purpose 50 years after its founding.

I've come to appreciate how the one-time camping retreat, tucked in the hinterlands of far Northern California's Mt. Shasta region, has its own distinct personality — a unique energy matrix — regardless of who is currently residing or visiting. And also that it's been caught up in a doom loop, defined as "a self-reinforcing cycle where one negative factor triggers another, worsening the situation, creating a downward spiral."

The following deep-dive pieces together the place's origins and tries to determine how and why it went so seriously cattywampus, ages before the relatively recent quantum shift to serving as a rogue commercial pot-growing haven. Along the way, I share anecdotes, insights and history gleaned from my long years here. The informal, time-jumping story of the Vista (as many former residents called it) was driven in part by a determination to make sense of a place I've called home over 80% of my adult life, and in part by the chance to indulge my penchants for writing, time travel and selective analysis.

While touching on events unfolding during and since the 2015 meltdown (which happened to coincide with its 50th anniversary; coincidence?), more controversial events, like the water-truck ban and the fatal shooting by authorities during the 2022 Lava Fire, all widely covered by media, are omitted; they're too raw and unprocessed in my mind yet to be integrated into the narrative. Primary focus is on its first 50 years — its antediluvian period, as it were, before the flood of emboldened growers submerged the realm's former age.

The main goal was to determine the root causes that, directly or indirectly, set off the chain reaction leading to its subsequent misadventures. It also explores how the anticipated legalization of recreational cannabis in California cannabis laws led to the flood of rebellious grows here. And, as it relates, it examines the Uniform Building Code, racism, the regional real estate market, the power grid and radical body freedom.

The time before I arrived in 1978 — seven years after the first modern-day settlers began an ephemeral, seemingly idyllic retirement community following their first years of camping-only — has always mystified me. It represented the great unknown, a grand riddle to be solved. What happened during that time to create such a peculiar directional arc that affects the place to this day?

Consider this writing 85% casual history and 15% memoir by one with an abiding love-hate relationship with the place. Having fitfully grown from an article series I wrote for the local paper in 2021, it's not presented in a neat linear timeline. Instead, it often timeskips around the decades as nearly half a century of remembered events and new insights came to mind and were added. Secure your seatbelt, and hopefully this will pose no problem. See it as a topsy-turvy carnival ride time-traveling through the singular history of a remote hideaway that has alternately baffled, intrigued, enamoured and repelled visitors and homeowners alike.

I gained insight into the early years by hearing stories from longtime residents, such as my late neighbor Bill Waterson, who died at 98 in 2016, and by sifting through a complete set of archived "Vistascrope" biannual newsletters.

What did happen during those critical first years? What led the peculiar place's first vacationers and, later, its residents to dive down the rabbit hole with such abandon that it became the wildly dysfunctional, anarchistic place it is today? Drawing on firsthand knowledge, findings from various sources and at least semi-informed deductions, I think I might've found the answers.

Stuart R. Ward

Mt. Shasta Vista

December 31, 2025

Welcome, Now Leave

How a Would-be Shangri-la
Went Hopelessly Astray

"...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

"[The Vista is]... 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."

- George Collins, founding developer and fellow camper

"Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

– Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” Leaves of Grass

Chapter 1

Wilderness condo, anyone?

The archway spanning the main entrance beckoned. Bearing the words "Mt. Shasta Vista" in six-inch scrolled wooden lettering, it made your more whimsical first-timers driving under it imagine they were perhaps entering an enchanted realm or quaint scout retreat, rather than, in fact, a simple, sprawling, primitive subdivision of individually-owned, mostly undeveloped recreational lots with a few homes hidden among them.

One felt the hopes and dreams that went into the archway. How the place's earliest property owners — first only visiting summers from distant cities for extended camping and rendezvous — would develop a deep affection for their fledgling development, so neatly tucked in the high-desert wooded foothills of Mount Shasta's northwestern slopes.

Begun in the mid-1960s, it's 15 miles out from both Weed and Grenada, off County Road A-12. Its wider region, before long ago being cleared for farming, ranching and charcoal production for smithy forges, was once blanketed with juniper trees, and was, appropriately enough, named Juniper Flats.

Happy campers turn modern-day settlers.

So smitten by its charms were some among the flock of mostly older repeat vacationers, mainly from the Los Angeles area, that they decided to retire here. Collectively, they'd segue their individual lots from simple first-generation recreational use into a proto-community of full-on code-legal residences.

This wasn't as outlandish a move as it might've appeared. At the time of formation, the county had already rezoned the land to single-family residential use in response to the land developer's petition. The community-building venture by the few dozen lot holders was possibly launched in hopes (by at least some) that like-minded others would follow suit and become self-reliant like them, covering their own water, electrical and sewage needs, and help grow the incipient rustic settlement. Perhaps over time they could develop a more systematic and centralized infrastructure.

Meanwhile, it would be up to each prospective resident to provide their own water, power and waste-disposal means to meet the then-rigorously enforced building codes. They appeared to envision creating a standard, albeit sparsely settled, backwoods community of respectable, financially secure nature lovers who were willing to work together to help it grow.

This at least appeared to be their starry-eyed dream. If so, alas, things didn't exactly pan out. Though a few dozen retiring couples successfully built homes, initial efforts failed to create common infrastructure beyond a few isolated power and telephone lines and an informal community well. This wouldn't bode well for further standard settlement on the embarrassment of empty lots.

Among the many reasons why things stalled:

bitterness by locals surrounding the land sale to the developer, in effect putting a whammy on the place;
the speculating developer, overambitious, creating a super-sized subdivision that held far more lots than the private home-building market could absorb, or even for simple camp use;
lot owners' fallout over a campaign to bring electricity to every lot, shorting out the initial, tenuously unified efforts of a majority of lot owners hoping to increase infrastructure and lot values, aggravated by almost certain skyrocketing cost to further extend power lines;
the high cost of drilling often-deep wells to hit often-scarce water; and
the arrival of younger, rebellious countercultural back-to-the-landers, merrily bent on ignoring health and building codes like they didn't exist

Long story short, forces conspired to torpedo the fondest dreams of the modern-day settlers. Their vision, seemingly rich in promise, was never fully realized. Instead, the place morphed over the decades into a haphazard, semi-zombie development. Theirs proved to be only a short-lived idyllic enclave of transplanted retired city folks before things went seriously astray. No more than maybe six percent of the parcels ever got connected to the grid, and the cost of drilling individual wells often proved so high, and finding affordable water so iffy, that bold noncompliance with health and building codes became common in time.

The brief idyllic honeymoon of the fledgling respectable community was thus cut short, and it mutated into a bizarre limbo land, becoming an incongruous oil-and-water mix of fully code-compliant residences and decidedly code-challenged ones. Result: The Vista was perpetually in hot water with the county over code violations.

And forever at war with itself.

The possibilities!

It seems that developer George Collins, perhaps a gambler at heart and a tad over-ambitious, had decided to play it by ear, lacking any disclosed long-range plans or vision for the place and its 1,641 (count 'em) lots, averaging two and a half acres each. That is, beyond their serving as a simple — read primitive — collectively owned and maintained de facto recreational resort. While it always had the option to grow into something more, it would be on the lot owners' own dime to provide the required water, electricity hook-up and waste systems to code.

The situation was perfectly legal under California's then-existing, incredibly lax regulations.

Then, on the wings of the Vista's launch, Lake Shastina, a full-on residential development with infrastructure and amenities out the yin-yang, sprang up just down the hillside. Indeed, new rural subdivisions would soon be springing up across the region as public interest in rural living took off. The idea of building residences in such a place was becoming more attractive as people burned out on urban living.

The developer joined the campers

The L.A. developer, George Collins, actually joined the select group of owners who reveled in extended annual camp visits from afar, gathering to mingle, form work parties and brainstorm the place's possibilities, while falling under the mountain's spell. So much so, they thought, Hey, we're getting ready to retire; why don't we pull up stakes and build our own country retirement community here? We'll have the wherewithal once we sell our homes. Why not? What could go wrong?

Surely the group knew it would take a critical mass of lot owners — some of whom bought the parcels for affordable, simple camping retreats, many more as long-term investments or short-term speculations — if hoping to ever generate enough momentum to bring in more than a few scattered, mostly isolated residences amid a sea of empty lots. If unsuccessful, the parcels, no longer ideal for camping and too costly to build to code on for most, could become problematic.

Indeed, their moving on the land failed to spark any widespread enthusiasm to build likewise: Over 1,500 lots, the overwhelming majority of whose owners no longer had any use for them, either for camping or building on, became soured investments and suffered the sorry fate of becoming problematic white elephant holdings.

Almost overnight, the sprawling development would effectively turn into a ginormous, all but useless (albeit still charming) real estate desert.

__________________

Maybe, even in the grand excitement of brainstorming and resolve to leave the smoggy L.A. region behind, they knew they'd be winging it. They'd be unable to hammer out any formal development plans, since they represented less than two percent of the owner membership. Willy-nilly was their only option as they scrambled to build and establish their new homes in the strange new land. But they must've been confident — optimistic winds at their backs and plenty of money — that good intentions, bolstered by upright constitutions and rigorous adherence to following society's rules, would carry the day in successfully forging their brand-spanking-new rural hamlet.

Grand reality check

People, myself included, always assumed that the first settlers envisioned growing a thriving rural community over time. Surely they wouldn't want 98% of the lots to sit idle. But the more I thought about it, the more I suspected that among these first settlers were at least some, perhaps many, who had no vision of building a growing community at all.

Possibly, instead, they only hoped, once each had carved out their own rustic estate, to further cultivate their existing simpatico circle, never giving a thought to building community beyond what their tight-knit group of friends, associates, and family members had created. Scrambling modern-day pioneers in a challenging new land, they'd look to their own interests alone. They'd stake their territory in no uncertain terms and let the devil take the hindmost as far as the fate of the rest of the lots and their owners' use of them was concerned, for anything beyond brief camp use or 100% code compliance.

Hey, they were new retirees. They were psyched at the prospect of withdrawing from the chaos of a fast-paced world and enjoying their golden years in the peaceful quietude that the former campgrounds had earlier provided, in what they hoped would now become their own little congenial country club of sorts. The fewer public improvements — who needs a community center? We can rotate get-togethers in each other's homes — the better. It'd make it less likely that non-simpatric strangers would ever move in their cliquish midst with its set ways and pronounced La-La-Land cultural mindset. And need to be reckoned with for having intruded on the place's dreamy backwoods air and possibly threaten their newfound, coveted serenity.

Maybe some banked on there being few others who were so extravagantly-minded, willing to go full-bore like them and build similar legal residences, with their steep well-drilling costs and other private-infrastructure outlays. They anticipated being left to enjoy their deeply secluded living amid an ocean of soon-to-be-defunct recreational properties.

Maybe all along, they were intent on creating their own exclusive, gated rural community— only one without any gates. In their place, barking signs would be posted everywhere, hopefully proving sufficient to protect the fledgling retiree scene from unwelcome visitors... and, more importantly, any noncompliant residents. Their signs reflected suspicion toward unknown property owners who might be tempted not to bother building to code on such secluded parcels in the middle of nowhere. They seemed to all but shout:

Welcome, if you've the bucks to

Build a legal residence like us

Otherwise, keep the hell out

Or we'll make you wish you had

Possibly this is too cynical a take. But maybe it's closer to the truth than any notion of a little group of idealistic retirees hoping to build up a flourishing rural community. Or at least, it became the sentiment with the perhaps less sociable, less public-minded alpha members of the extended group once their idyllic, short-lived Shangri-La began to unravel. It would go a long way towards explaining the contentious forces that progressively swelled after some 1,500 parcel holders saw their unspoiled backwoods parcels, no longer ideal for camp retreats, essentially unusable unless lot holders likewise invested a small fortune.

The charming, generously sized, secluded parcels with their fabulous mountain views became a drug on the market.

Chapter 2

No nothing

At the start, it must have appeared to be little more than a sleepy Good Sam's Club of sorts, tucked away in the sleepy hinterlands. An unassuming rural development offering weary smog-choked city dwellers a mess of secluded, affordable, two- to three-acre wooded parcels. A place where now and then one might enjoy relaxed camping, unwind from city cares, mingle with other campers, many of whom one already knew, having bought the lots as a group, and breathe in fresh high-desert air, while soaking in the mountain's quiet majesty.

There was no water, no electricity, no sewer system, no gas, no phone lines. Forget any paved roads or a community center, public park or playground. There was nothing but a lot of lots. Plus a labyrinthine 66-mile network of modest red cinder roads, primitive signage and a dauntingly tiny map to access them.

Called ranch roads by the developer, they were fragile affairs built up of loose rock base over often-deep, sandy soil, with a red cinder topping got from a nearby cinder supply operation. As they were never designed to withstand constant heavy loads or frequent or fast traffic, a non-enforceable 15 mph speed limit was set to help preserve them, keep the backwoods atmosphere relaxed and tranquil, and reduce the dust. Ongoing maintenance was covered by the then-modest annual mandatory-membership lot assessments, informally known as road dues, levied on lot title holders.

It was a sea of turn-key primitive wilderness camping condos, if you will, with what at first appeared to hold no more than a wispy dream of maybe someday growing into something more. But a few lot owners — those who actually made use of their new properties, or who were waiting until others developed the place some before jumping in — no doubt imagined the possibilities all along, inspired by the secluded lots with their sweeping mountain views. If they moved fast and built homes on their parcels, maybe they could essentially get the whole place to themselves (along with, of course, anyone else willing to do the same).

Converging forces

To better understand the peculiar history of the Vista, it helps to appreciate the forces in play at its formation:

First and foremost, the late Sixties through the early Seventies were an extraordinarily tumultuous period of social and political upheaval and a grand, if fitful, mass awakening of human consciousness; a giddy exhilaration and boundless euphoria often filled the air.
The land possessed a pronounced dreamy quality, aided and abetted by mystical Mt. Shasta, which could easily lead one to imagine the sky was the limit for its development, with little need to attend to mundane details.
The historic Back-to-the-Land movement was accelerating as many fled urban areas to live closer to nature, seeking domestic tranquility and a simpler way of life.
Again, beyond simple road access, state regulations of the day didn't require new rural subdivisions to supply diddly-squat.

Combine these — along with the Vista's super-affordable lot prices encouraging impulsive purchases lacking any focused intent beyond hoping values might rise or maybe using for camping — and you perhaps had a more than passing possibility that some improbable, strange-magic lotus land like the Vista might emerge. A place where the baby-boomer inhabitants who quickly followed the first wave of convention-minded dwellers could merrily pursue bohemian living deep in the bosom of nature, ignoring any uptight busybody neighbors, or tedious downers like building codes lurking beyond its borders.

Country comfort

Situated a few miles uphill and northeast of the soon-to-be exurb of Lake Shastina, many of the realm's parcels held a profoundly still, dreamlike air of solitude (or mind-numbingly stark isolation, depending on one's mindset). As most lots were one to five miles in from its five blacktop entrances with their tranquility-eroding traffic wash, one might've felt as if they were 100 miles, rather than the actual 15, from the nearest town.

The embarrassment of wooded high-desert lots was spread over nearly seven square miles of mostly juniper and sagebrush, with the occasional cluster or solo stand of tall pine. Terrain was sometimes rocky and hilly, relatively rock-free and flat to gently sloping, sometimes a blend of the two. It spanned nearly six miles between its furthest points, and National Forest or Bureau of Land Management lands flanked many of its borders, further lending a wilderness feel to the place. The square-mile sections were in two giant clumps separated by a square mile of federal BLM land and County Highway A-12, which ran between the second, smaller clump of Sections 23 and 13, near Pluto Caves and Sheep Rock, respectively.

As was often the case with such rural subdivisions, the development team had conjured whimsical road names hoping to tickle the fancy of their target market: private vacation land seekers, impulsive, casual land investors and those seeking potential rural home sites. Evocative names such as White Cloud Road, Zane Gray Drive and Happy Lane. Rich-sounding names like Silver Lode Road, Golden, Lost Mine and Bonanza. One was perhaps meant to evoke the classic movie line, "Rosebud." Another was a shameless pun of the 1960s' "Rawhide" TV series theme song belter: Frankie Lane.

A few were named after saints, like St. George Drive and St. Mary Road, perhaps lending the development an air of an unlikely Catholic summer camp. Collins Drive and McLarty Road were named after the developer and his leading man. 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, sweetheart or perhaps the namer's mad crush from third grade.

Born amid controversy:

The place was an instant problem child

The development officially came into existence on November 3, 1965, going by the date on which formal paperwork was filed and time-stamped at the Siskiyou County courthouse. (I used this date rather than the earlier, yet-to-be-filed incorporation date of August 18, 1965.) The brainchild of developer George Collins's Southern California-based outfit, Pacific Shores Realty, it was on land he purchased from one of the many descendants of the California Gold Rush pioneer R.M. Martin (likely a great-great-grandson or some such) who made it big in cattle, and whose family members long held much of the broader region he'd acquired. They grazed their livestock on the wild lands forever, seasonally making short cattle drives right down the middle of the future development's then-uber-sleepy flanking two-lane highway. Old cow patties still littered the parcels over a decade after the Vista's start.

The area had been considered among the best hunting grounds in the entire 6,278-square-mile county (California's fifth-largest) for over a century. And before white settlers came, Indigenous Peoples seasonally hunted through the mostly waterless area; I found a complete obsidian arrowhead on my parcel the very first week. More recently, the region was picked clean of most of its tall pines by lumber baron Abner Weed around the turn of the last century; there were a few large stumps on my lot still leisurely decomposing some 80 years later.

Family and locals were reportedly outraged by the sale

With each new generation, the pioneer's vast holdings were further divided among family members, doubtless hoping to keep the land within the family. Still, each owner likely had the right, however distasteful and unlikely it might be, to sell their holding if they wanted. The story went that when Jess Martin sold his seven square miles of prime wooded land to developer Collins, other family members were furious. But they were powerless to stop the sale and the commercial nonsense set in motion on their now-lost ancestral holding.

The region's other longtime residents, intimately familiar with the unfenced land, in turn expressed rage at the disruption to their bucolic lifestyle. This eruption of ill feelings over the sale flared long before the handful of lot owners tried to morph the de facto primitive resort into a quasi-exclusive rural retirement village. Ages before finding themselves engaged in a take-no-prisoners war with the code-ignoring land buyers who dared to move in on the cheap, invading what the former would by then consider to be their domain.

The controversy surrounding the very land sale itself set the stage for all subsequent troubles. It laid a faulty foundation for the world of contention and confusion destined to practically define the place in the public eye.

The place never had a chance.

____________________

Greenlit by the county supervisors...

To their eternal regret

As long-ensconced locals grumbled how their longtime backwoods hunting, camping and grazing backwoods were permanently closed off just so a bunch of rich big-city folk could lollygag about in their shiny Airstreams a few weeks a year, the wheels were turning at the county courthouse.

The county's then-four-member board of supervisors must've sympathized with the aggrieved Martin family members and fuming locals; perhaps they had initially been skeptical of approving it. But due to Collins's persistence, earnest assurances, his proven track record of successfully launching subdivisions elsewhere, and the county board's frugality, given that Siskiyou was California's third-poorest county per capita, they'd either been won over or were unable to think of a valid reason not to approve it. The land had already been rezoned; the project was in the pipeline. They were no doubt keenly aware of the fresh revenue stream that 1,641 individually owned and taxed lots would bring to the county's coffers (at the cost of additional recordkeeping and paperwork), especially if improvements were ever made on them.

Concerns were raised about the possible lack of dependable water and the parcels' often rocky, volcanic nature, which might make owners hard-pressed to accommodate conventional septic systems should owners ever indeed want to build. The board insisted that his team first drill test wells to demonstrate that the land had sufficient water. They must've finally decided that it at least appeared to have adequate water resources and trusted that any future home builders, exercising due diligence, would realize that the cost of bringing in wells and electricity might be prohibitive. They hoped common sense and dutiful compliance with county ordinances would prevail.

So while the board approved the development in a three-to-one vote once other requested specifications, such as enlarging the turnaround diameter of the cul-de-sacs, had been addressed, the one dissenting supervisor, Mr. Jackson, appeared to remain skeptical. One of the test wells Collins drilled was at the highest elevation, in Section 13, below Sheep Rock, to show that there was likely water everywhere if you went deep enough; it had drawn only five gallons a minute — the minimum to be deemed practical. Jackson may have thought that wasn't enough to assure the place could provide adequate water if vacationers wanted to sink wells and avoid hauling in the precious, heavy liquid. Or for possible would-be home builders, for whom having a dependable water supply was the most crucial requirement to become eligible for a building permit.

It's the water

His skepticism proved justified in time. He might've had to refrain from saying "I told you so" to fellow board members. (That is, assuming his lone dissenting vote wasn't only a calculated sop to appease the infuriated citizenry.) While many future residents hit water between 200 and 300 feet in the lower sections, the required drilling depths in higher sections could reach 700 feet or more. And even then, some wells, regardless of depth, might be plagued by iron content that turned white laundry sheets pink, or worse, arsenic, requiring expensive filtering systems to render the water safe for drinking.

A retired couple on Gilman Road, Buzz and Helen Kehner, lived a mile away from me. They'd drilled a super-deep well, some 700 feet down. Its water had arsenic levels within the then-acceptable health department limit if treated with rock salt filtration, which they did. Not many years later, they both died, and not far apart. While I never learned if arsenic poisoning was determined to be a contributing factor or leading cause in their deaths, not long afterward, the county health department drastically reduced future wells' acceptable arsenic levels.

Shifting attitudes

The county authorities' faith in lot buyers to be law-abiding and do the right thing was about to be tested. Over time, their attitudes towards the soon beleaguered realm would shift markedly. Initial thoughtful, cautious concern first gave way to frustration. Then grew to exasperation. As matters escalated, newcomers openly ignoring health and building codes, sentiment turned to open hostility. Finally, as the county realized it had a perpetual problem child on its hands, it settled back into a rueful, oh-hell-what-can-you-do-about-the-misbegotten-place? dismissiveness or even hard-bitten contempt.

They were mad at the place and its bickering owners. They were angry at their predecessors for being foolish enough to approve it. And they were vexed at themselves because they knew they lacked the wherewithal to effectively enforce their own statutes should enough people choose to ignore them.

Although it was later events that would really aggravate authorities, the downward spiral in sentiment — beyond grumbling locals possibly influencing their views — was undoubtedly first triggered by the pronounced lack of water. It would directly or indirectly lead to almost all future problems. The subsequent willful disregard of residential living standards would only drive the local government's already present exasperation and displeasure over the misbegotten place through the roof. Ill regard for its eventual, seemingly hopeless dysfunctionality, replete with chronically infighting residents constantly demanding that officials intervene, spread to every last county department (with, of course, the exception of the tax-collecting office).

An electrifying turn of events

Between the original landowners' and locals' bitter resentment over their lost stomping grounds and the scarce water, scarce power and often rocky ground, all of which made code compliance extra challenging and costly for any new owners hoping to build, an already fraught situation was well on its way to snowballing even further out of control.

The handful of ambitious and adventurous lot owners who'd brainstormed the idea of actually settling on their parcels, retiring as an urbane, ostensibly congenial group of shared-vacation buddies, were a scrupulously law-abiding lot. Each dutifully first drilled an approved well, paid into a volunteer-assessment power-and-light fund to help cover the cost of extending power lines, and installed an approved septic system.

Each had first provided all necessary infrastructure individually before ever applying for a home-building permit. This was issued only after submitting a detailed construction plan for approval, paying a non-refundable fee and agreeing to build in a timely manner. Their generation, having weathered World War II with its monumental civilian cooperation required to support the high-stakes effort to preserve democracy worldwide, was accustomed to dutifully toeing the line without question when it came to any established authority.

Though a few might've been hands-on owner-builders who stayed on-site during construction, most had likely hired contractors and lived elsewhere until their houses were completed and officially signed off by the building department.

On its way

At first glance, it might have appeared that the place was on its way to becoming a respectable, if ultra-sparsely settled, community. Telephone lines were extended to the developing lots, along with the few scattered power lines, sometimes the two sharing the same poles. Those with green thumbs planted colorful flowers at the highway entrances. It seemed everyone knew everyone; theirs was a close-knit community, emerging into a happy Shangri-la for the flock of excited, newly retired dwellers who together had made the bold leap.

But the change, again, came at the price of spoiling the widespread first-generation lot use as secluded retreats, for which purpose no doubt many had bought the lots. Such owners had no interest in ever building fences, let alone homes. The place was just too isolated, too water-challenged, too non-electrified and tall-tree bereft to seriously consider. They'd hoped things would stay primitive so they could continue enjoying the lots for their simple camping forays, maybe turn friends on to them, and, ideally, easily sell the lots to other camping enthusiasts if they chose to. They wanted things to remain affordable: no special assessments to try "improving" things.

You didn't mess with success

In their book, the place already had all it needed: simple road access. Though the lots were technically zoned for single-family residential use, they seemed so perfect for rustic getaways and retreats that it was hard to imagine them used for anything else; you didn't mess with success, trying to turn a place into something it wasn't suited for. Especially when far too few lot owners appeared willing to commit to the level of effort and expense required to make a successful transition from a collective, primitive campground into a standard community. One with all the bells and whistles city dwellers took for granted and were so unabashedly hooked on: water, electricity and waste-disposal means.

Not if they were required to supply them all themselves, at their own expense, for the foreseeable future.

Maybe the majority, by then, realized that the place, having lost its idyllic campground lure, would likely never be more than a cozy confederation of a few dozen property holders who'd had the bucks and motivation to move fast to become legal residents. Residents who were suddenly irrevocably changing the place's very nature.

They, in turn, must have realized that some, if not most, of the 98% of lot owners who didn't join them would be more than a bit upset over how the place had been effectively co-opted, how their tiny group had radically repurposed it and left others in the lurch. They must've known the situation would discourage most others from ever following suit and building on the challenging lots, and that, therefore, lot values would stall, hindering resale.

Yes, it was unfortunate, but, hey, that's the way the cookie crumbles; you snooze, you lose; such is life; c'est la vie; it is what it is...

Chapter 3

Not another Lake Shastina

Some absentee lot owners no doubt didn't want to sink another penny into the place. And so they'd passed on the request for volunteer donations to build up a power-and-light fund. Others didn't want to support what they might've viewed as a capricious, ill-advised changing of horses in the middle of the creek.

With the prospect of losing the pristine charms of their ephemeral sweet-spot hideaways staring them in the face, they'd refused to chip into the voluntary assessment power-and-light fund Collins rallied for. Camping out in open view of someone's large living room window wouldn't have been a particularly enticing prospect. Though the brief, ambitious campaign to bring power to every parcel thus failed for this and other reasons, the 1,000-plus individual contributions at least enabled stringing power lines to the lots of the few dozen Johnny-on-the-spot retiring couples going for the gusto.

Champing at the bit

Flush with cash from selling their big-city homes and champing at the bit to move onto the secluded land and mountain they'd fallen in love with, they'd been primed to move fast and simplify their lives, forsaking city living to create their own little rural retirement community. They doubtless envisioned luxuriating happily ever after amid the splendor of year-round woodland solitude in their breezily urbane, transplanted So-Cal congeniality — while, staunch, upright citizens they were, holding a high regard for strict law and order. It would become a place that, to all appearances, was open to all comers willing to meet the legal residential building standards as they had, and join their swell little group.

Anyone else had better not even think about it.

Due to the high cost of extending power to lots, most of which were miles away from existing lines, the firstcomers quickly exhausted the fund many had contributed to, hoping it would still be there when they were ready to build, or for the parties they hoped to sell their lots to at a higher profit. It's unclear whether it was intended as only the first round of contributions, as far greater cash infusions obviously would've been needed to electrify the entire place.

The volunteer fund had likely been established only after Collins realized he couldn't get the two-thirds of lot-owner votes needed to pass a mandatory assessment; I don't think he even ran it up the flagpole. Maybe the power company tenuously agreed to offer a discounted, or at least a locked-in, extension rate if everyone got on board and committed to wiring the whole place through such an ongoing special assessment. It would have been a no-brainer indication that there were a significant number of new energy-thirsty customers itching to settle, or at least seriously invest in improvements, as was then happening in just-down-the-hill Lake Shastina, (Random fact: Lake Shastina, once known by the slightly less euphonious name of Dwinnell Reservoir, was created by damming up Shasta River and diverting flows of Parks Creek and Carrick Creek in 1927, along with building a long cross-country canal outlet to aid regional farmers.)

Hoping to goose parcel values

Beyond the handful of early house builders and mobile home installers, those considering building in the future, and lot holders who had hoped to keep the place dedicated to primitive retreat use, there were others, almost certainly the overwhelming majority. This group seemed keen on segueing the giant checkerboard of infrastructure-bereft parcels into an actual, by-golly residential community. Or at least further develop their potential to become part of one by first expanding it into a seasonal rural backwoods resort with additional amenities, like electricity and water, perhaps a small grocery and gas station with a dump station. But not for their own use. Are you kidding? Perish the thought. No, they were merely disinterested speculators hoping to goose market values.

Regardless of what some owners thought about the abrupt shift in land use and the embryonic rural community soon more or less claiming the territory as their own, that tiny handful of owners of a certain age — with the means and resolve to move fast and create their own bare-bones, de facto rural retirement village, new homes sometimes companionably clustered, other times a quarter mile or more apart — had gone for it lock, stock and barrel.

Soon after, though, the power company withdrew its tentative commitment. They'd realized there was no groundswell of landholders keen on settling the land, but only the thinnest scattering. The place appeared to be a developmental misfire. Owners hoping to build in the future could live with their withdrawal, though; they'd pay for an affordable line extension later.

Power extension costs were

Likely about to skyrocket

A growing spirit of contention over bringing in power divided lot owners early on, along with a loss of confidence in the developer who had pushed for everyone to chip into the fund, possibly hoping to get everyone on board and thus secure a solid commitment to wire the whole place. He might've thought that — in a dime, in a dollar — they'd agree to further, maybe soon mandatory, assessments down the road to keep the fund solvent. Thus, over time, power would've indeed been brought to every lot in the over-ambitious back-of-beyond hideaway.

If he had learned that line-extension costs were about to skyrocket, he would've realized it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to wire the whole place at the most affordable price.

Staggering increase

A friend, Omar, was living in the backwoods of upstate New York around the same period. He told me that, immediately after he had his family's own lines extended, his power supplier increased the line-extension price from 50 cents to $5 a foot — a staggering tenfold increase. As it turned out, this was a national trend and likely very much the case here as well, which would've created an especially discouraging double whammy for any would-be Vistan settler. First, the fund was drained. Now, the region's power company, Pacific Power, was probably demanding prohibitively high extension fees, leaving any would-be home, cabin, or mobile home builder or installer reeling after relying on continued affordable rates.

It wasn't as if the power company, if the steep increase was factual, was getting greedy all of a sudden. In earlier times, the costs of extending power were predictable and often subsidized by government programs. And companies were primarily involved in connecting denser populations to their high-voltage go-juice. And relatively inexpensive, clean hydropower had long supplied the Northwest through the massive Columbia Basin Project. By the 1970s, though, amid high inflation, rising equipment costs and growing populations, power companies began seeking new, more costly power sources — primarily coal and gas — to boost output and diversify operations by investing in their development. Also, they were less able to absorb investment costs. As a result, to remain solvent, they were compelled to charge considerably higher fees for further powerline extensions, maybe factoring in a higher rate for supplying so few scattered rural dwellers.

Moltan rage

In any event, it turned out that over 1,000 Vistan property owners effectively subsidized the electrical hookup costs of a few dozen couples. It no doubt struck some as unfair (though having been advised it was first-come, first-served, good 'til gone). Tempers were already flaring over being asked for more money over the prospect of ruining a nice co-op campground with unsightly power poles and wires, driving up costs, and destroying the usability of what were once charming hideaway properties.

Now, if Pacific Power were now indeed demanding an arm and a leg for any further line extensions, lot holders would've erupted in molten rage to match the intensity of the long-ago lava spewing forth from the place's namesake dormant volcano. (More random facta: According to scientific carbon dating, Mt. Shasta's most recent eruption occurred about 1250 AD; the last major event was some 3,200 years ago. It's erupted at least once every 800 years over the past 10,000 years; do the math.)

Some might have erroneously concluded that the developer had intentionally misrepresented the financial realities involved in electrifying the place only to aid the homesteading ambitions of a few he'd gotten cozy with. Or had otherwise fudged the facts, promising something he knew he couldn't deliver. Or, most cynically, they decided he had no idea what he was doing. In contrast, some no doubt felt he was blameless, having done his best to advance the interests of the property owners as a whole. And the power company, too; it had no choice but to raise extension prices if it hoped to continue serving the electrical needs of a growing population amid rampant inflation, dwindling cheap hydro and declining government subsidies.

Whatever the reasons, lot holders were increasingly upset over the sorry state of affairs. The sweet, divergent dreams of Vista camping and homebuilding were both souring fast.

______________________

Lookin' for a home in the country...

When worlds collide

Into this growing hornets' nest of resentments, jealousies, misgivings, disillusionments and sundry disconnects already plaguing the development and handicapping its lots' potential market values, now entered a radically different breed of lot owner. One destined to put the proverbial cherry on top: instant homesteaders. Young back-to-the-landers, long on rebellious attitudes and short on cash.

The mid- to late 1960s through the early 1970s historical Back-to-the-Land movement was initially sparked by a rapidly emerging counterculture whose members were burned out on an increasingly industrialized and desensitized urban lifestyle and wanted to get back to nature... seriously back to nature. A rising tide of the population was primed to flee Babylon (as some put it biblically). Its number soon cut across class lines. Indeed, the first excited residents, themselves having had their own fill of urban life, had also gotten swept up in it. If untouched nature is so nice to visit so often, why not just live in it full-time and be done?

But, alas, in Vista's case, it was a luxurious notion that only the comfortably situated could afford to pursue if they intended to conform to the costly, then strictly enforced, county health and building codes. Codes that were made more expensive due to the lack of easier water, the daunting lack of electrical lines and the sometimes problematic, individual septic systems.

As anyone who lived through those purple-haze daze remembers (if not overdoing pot and psychedelics, that is), even while it was a time of astonishingly polarized and wrenching social and cultural upheaval and deadly wars, there was at the same time an amazingly powerful magic afoot, a rapidly emerging awareness of life's infinite possibilities.

A once-in-26,000-years event?

Esoteric teachings held that a momentous new 26,000-year cycle — the physical procession of the equinoxes, believed to affect human consciousness and evolution — was beginning. It was a time of ecstatic celebration over the believed start of a new Great Year, even if most people didn't realize at the time the cause of the times' wildly inspired merriment and phenomenal renewed passion for living.

A stream of young, often financially struggling, freedom-minded, in-your-face, nonconformist dreamers was inspired to make the great escape from the teeming cities, seeking simple country living to heal and to free their spirits. It was only a matter of time before they, too, discovered the same generously sized, secluded lots with their namesake's sweeping views and irresistibly affordable prices that had earlier lured the Vista's first modern-day settlers.

Some, and eventually most, of the younger newcomers would prove intent on ignoring the deemed unreasonable codes, regulations and restrictions that dedicated bureaucrats and lawmakers had so painstakingly crafted and codified. They were scorned as needlessly expensive and ridiculously oppressive. Such codes would require a person to first drill what might prove to be a 700-foot well, pay an exorbitant price to have power lines extended, and build a living structure to meet steep code requirements, all before ostensibly having the right to remain on their own property for more than 30 days a year. Or create anything more than a fence without first obtaining and paying for a building permit and submitting detailed plans for some detached city bureaucrat to approve.

This struck many as draconian overreach into people's private lives. Screw that. They figured what one did on their own remote parcel out in the middle of nowhere was their business.

In striking contrast, the first wave of relatively affluent residents hadn't seemed to mind at all meeting these exhaustive, super-exacting building standards to become legal residents. It was just the way things were done, the price one paid. Sure, they probably grumbled, but they scrupulously toed the line. The local bureaucracy had perhaps grown accustomed to a public that so dutifully complied with the full letter of the law, and they strove to maintain a tight rein on code enforcement. Maybe, too, they were coming under pressure from the state with its new, comprehensive requirements for new subdivisions, and they tried to do damage control in places that had slipped in under the wire of the old, super-lax regulations.

And possibly some less-than-solid-citizen lot buyers were already dropping anchor — openly or furtively — and living in unconnected trailers, motorhomes and hastily thrown-together shacks. The county felt the need to get tough with such ne'er-do-wells bent on so blatantly disregarding its chiseled-in-stone rules and regulations.

Oh, the camper and the resident should be friends

One story circulated about a respectable lot-owning couple who, early on, tried to follow the rules but were denied a permit. They'd only wanted to pour a cement slab for their brief annual RV vacation visits, but were told no way. They would first have to install a well and a septic system, and connect to the power supply, before they could pour that slab. Sorry, folks, it doesn't matter if you only visit a few weeks a year; the code's the code.

One suspects that the first wave of dwellers, having themselves gone through that mill, were apprehensive that among the well over 1,000 individual lot owners were bound to be some who'd try end-running the system, refuse to play by the rules and render unto Caesar. If so, their suspicions would soon be justified in spades. They sought to pressure the health and building department by immediately reporting every infraction their diligent searches uncovered, expecting a quick response to nip things in the bud.

This, perhaps, was to discourage even 'respectable' vacationers like that couple, as they were now effectively intruding on the incipient residential scene as it tenuously coalesced, while hoping to maintain the hamlet's up-to-then fully compliant building standards. Legal dwellers expected — demanded — that local authorities enforce the same letter of the law with which they'd so diligently complied at great expense, time and effort, dammit.

Fair's fair.

Whatever way it all came down precisely, attempts at stringent code enforcement on how to live on — apparently, even just visit — your own property out in the middle of nowhere had a predictable way of inspiring more and more to view them as unreasonable rules, deserving of being ignored.

As the Lebanese-American poet and mystic Kahlil Gibran noted in The Prophet, "You delight in laying down laws, yet you delight more in breaking them."

When a straggling flock of happy-go-lucky, rebellious back-to-the-landers, many of decidedly modest means (like me, eventually), entered the scene, stage left, intent on planting themselves on the new parcels before the signature ink on the sales contract had a chance to dry, that's when all hell really broke loose in the Vista.

Chapter 4

Snowball's chance

First, there was outrage from locals and landholding family members over the sale itself before the place had even begun to develop. Then the electrification brouhaha. Now came an explosive reaction to a slowly but surely emerging plague of non-compliant-minded miscreants loosely referred to as hippies. (Or, more commonly, "those damn hippies.")

They were determined to settle on the cheap in what the first-comers came to think of as their place, perhaps understandably, given their massive investments and the odds that few other landholders were interested in building to code. The territorial imperative was a powerful force to reckon with.

The Vista's already uber-testy vibe now shifted into overdrive. Dutifully rule-obeying residents, angst-ridden over how their newborn respectable promised land was facing clear and present danger from the young scofflaw lot buyers moving in, went unhinged. A snowball of furious contention suddenly grew to such monstrous proportions that it was as if some demonic force seized the place and had it in a stranglehold.

Once I came on board a few years later and witnessed the place's incredibly wound spirit of contention, at some point I began to wonder if a good dose of squirrelly vibes might've somehow been baked into Vista from its very beginning. It would help explain the intensity of the off-the-charts meltdown of tolerance and civility unfolding. When I heard from neighbors that the extended Martin family reportedly was furious over the sale of a prized part of their ancestral holdings by one of their own, it was an aha moment.

In any event, bitter contention seemed destined to bedevil the would-be peaceful realm for ages. And the sad legacy lingers to this day.

In a nutshell, between

an embittered farming/ranching community coming to view Vista's inhabitants through distorted fun-house mirrors as a weird, invasive mix of imperious big-city exiles and irascible, dirt-poor hillbillies;
teeth-gnashing, code-conforming residents on the warpath over the emergence of code-ignoring dwellers wrecking the place's respectability, living standards and property values;
almost-certain skyrocketing power extension costs putting the kibosh on any further affordable home building;
disillusioned and resentful absentee parcel holders, many or most indifferent to the day-to-day realities and ongoing needs of its few residents to remain a standard community, feeling stuck with all-but-unbuildable lots they could no longer enjoy or sell without losing their shirts;
non-conforming residents, taking heat from the aforementioned frothing-at-the-mouth firstcomers and kicking back hard, defying a system they viewed as oppressive; and
put-upon county authorities over time essentially giving up even trying to enforce the building code in a place locals never wanted and that seemed to exist only for outsiders...

... between all these, the place never had (you knew it was coming) a snowball's chance in hell.

A querulous spirit of dizzying proportions came to infect the once-tranquil backwoods. A contentious force field hovered over the outwardly appearing serene, high desert woodlands like so many dark storm clouds, forever threatening to rain on the parade of everyone — detached speculators, absentee property holders, code-legal and 'outlaw' dwellers alike.

No matter how many residents might dedicate themselves to trying to turn the place around over the years and salvage the seemingly once-promising development, it would never rise above being a stalled-out, de facto, primitive recreational resort that tried to be something more and failed, a soured investment boondoggle; a 'ghost subdivision.' One that had so spectacularly failed to grow into (and remain) a viable, functional standard community that its potential appeared arrested, tried and convicted for life without the possibility of parole.

In realtors' stark insider parlance, the place was roadkill.

________________

'It hasta be Shasta'

But for anyone on a super-tight budget who wanted to get back to the land and wasn't overly picky, the generously sized, affordable parcels, so close to the monarchal mountain and going begging, appeared as a gift from heaven.

I was between homes, squatting on land in the Emigrant Wilderness near Sonora, north of Yosemite. By living frugally for several months in warm weather, I'd managed to save up a good portion of the disability checks I received at the time (don't ask), hoping to accrue enough to buy a small piece of land somewhere and, over time, construct a modest home. I'd been more homeless than not for seven years, and, alas, was essentially clueless about how to support myself.

I'd just gotten word back from a Yreka realtor I'd contacted at Strout Realty, confirming that several good-sized parcels were still available in Mt. Shasta Vista at amazingly affordable prices. I went to sleep happily that night, feeling my future course was set. I would move to the big rock candy mountain, whose image I fondly remember gazing at as a child on the souvenir Dunsmuir window decal on our family's 1950 Plymouth Woody during long road trips, and whose likeness adorned the countless 13-cent Shasta Cola's cream sodas I slurped growing up in San Francisco. Its catchy slogan always tickled me: "It hasta be Shasta."

Perhaps as if to show there was no doubt whatsoever that my future course was set, Spirit — or God, Great Spirit, Jah, Divine Mother, whatever one chooses to call the One running the show — sent me a confirmation during sleep that night. It lasted only an instant. But it was easily the most fantastic dream I've ever had, like a cartoon. In it, multiple images of Mt. Shasta kaleidoscopically swam around in circles, big as life, while out of the middle came the triumphal voices of Peter, Paul and Mary singing "This Land is Your Land."

One couldn't have asked for a nicer confirmation.

________________________________

Down the rabbit hole

Preceding my own arrival by years, the more free-wheeling, non-compliant dwellers invading the once upright and reputable domain were busy jumping down rabbit holes into their own merry private worlds that the realm's rarefied energies could so easily foster. Soon enjoying wild Mad Hatter tea parties all but oblivious to the outside world and its bothersome rules and regulations, ignored with pirates' glee, they dismissed as largely impotent the ravings of the Queen of Hearts in the guise of a largely powerless property owners' board and its minions, who were now essentially screaming, "They'll build to code or it's off with their heads!"

Expanding on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland analogies a bit further: Standing in for the mischievous Cheshire Cat was the spirit of social rebellion afoot, eschewing the dull acceptance of prevailing, sometimes overstrict, law-and-order norms. And the hookah-smoking caterpillar? None other than the stony, spiraling vortex energies of massive Mount Shasta itself, the backwoods development clinging to its very foothills a half hour away from any town's modifying influence, so much under its surreality-inducing sway that it seemed to ask of anyone venturing into its dreamy, topsy-turvy realm, "Who are you?"

Planetary crown chakra?

According to one definition of vortex energy, offered by Ashalyn, founder of a 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."

Some new age thinkers believe that Mount Shasta is no less than the root or crown chakra of the entire planet. Others say Mount Kailash in Tibet, "the roof of the world," is the crown chakra; and Sedona, Arizona, or Machu Picchu, Peru, or the Scottish Highlands is its root chakra. But everyone at least agrees that Shasta definitely emanates a subtle, powerful and mysterious force. One that affects everyone within its field — and perhaps not always in a good way if one's individual upper chakra circuits are clogged.

Whether the Vista was in an actual energy vortex or not, being under the mountain's sway could definitely induce some wild fantasies, if not outright hallucinations. A guest at my place from Montreal once got ecstatic when he thought he was seeing UFOs in the distance at night, moving slowly in opposite directions across the mountain's flanks: It was the headlights of nighttime traffic on State Highway 97. Add to this the fact that it is such an untamed land, and it could easily erase from mind bothersome notions of following a fading social order's often wearisome, unduly restrictive and arbitrary ways.

It wouldn't begin to describe their unbridled fury to say code-compliant residents were upset when the quasi-anarchic scene ignited. Happening in almost spontaneous combustion, it was perhaps not unlike their own scrambling, topsy-turvy arrival, and their throwing off of the region's existing residents; maybe in a way every newcomer becomes an invader of sorts. Anyhow, these newcomers were definitely not their kind. The fledgling upscale-rustic community they'd pinned great hopes on and poured tons of energy, time, and resources into establishing was in grave peril. As far as their quietly upbeat but buttoned-down, by-the-book, retiring rural lifestyle was concerned, they were facing a clear and present danger.

Endangered wonderland

If they didn't mobilize to stem the tide and demand the county rigorously enforce its own friggin' codes with which they themselves had so thoroughly complied, all would be lost, their nascent sweet-spot retirement hamlet, 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 would, of course, prove their most determined efforts a losing battle in the long run. County authorities would all but abandon residential code enforcement after repeated efforts failed to take hold. And in much later years, a hemorrhaging county budget would lead led the elimination of the enforcement post altogether for a critical half-decade, sounding the death knell for ever regaining a handle on such matters out in the remote Vista "badlands."

Code-compliant residents, stunned by the regional government's seeming growing inability or unwillingness to enforce its own statutes — among those they'd honored and obeyed their entire lives and deemed set in concrete — were left spitting nails mad, bent into pretzels, undies in a bunch, fit to be tied, pick your metaphor.

In short, they wuz pissed.

Briefly enjoyed paradise

Despite what had appeared such an auspicious start, first as a de facto shared vacation resort land, then as a nascent rural retirement community, the latter was enjoyed only briefly by the few dozen among the some 1,500 absentee lot owners (allowing for multiple-lot holders), before the place began its inexorable descent into chaos. It became a hopeless oil-and-water mix of respectable code-approved homes and tumbledown trailers, tents, mobile homes, and jerry-built dwellings, thrown together amid a sea of empty parcels too compromised for further recreational use and too remote, costly and dicey to build on to code.

A palpable air of chronic instability, confusion and contention settled in. The occasional visit to the still mostly uninhabited regions, by diehards hoping to avoid heated politics and still enjoy camping on the more isolated parcels, no doubt resulted in mixed experiences.

The place became hopelessly snared between two worlds. Now skitzy in purpose, its reason for being had gotten hazy shortly after its start: What was it, a lingering seasonal campground or a budding year-round community? Either way, it seemed to be an unwanted child, bestowed with little or no support from the county and surrounding community — or, soon enough, even from its own, teeth-gnashing residents. Not to mention the numerous disillusioned investors scattered across the nation.

Newcomers found themselves caught up in the polarization intensifying between the growing code-defiant and the law-abiding. Residents were like distressed sea voyagers adrift in a lifeboat, left to squabble, bicker and antagonize each other till the cows came home (to mix metaphors). The Vista, frozen in time and nursing a serious identity crisis, appeared deprived of the chance of ever finding some rightful place in the sun.

Emboldened by the realm's remoteness

Despite such a crushing load of handicaps, over the years, there continued to be a steady trickle of buyers, increasingly unconventional. Some wanted to live entirely off-grid and sensed that the place didn't always follow society's sometimes overrestrictive ways, at least not effectively. More and more were intent on immediately moving onto the super-secluded, view-inspiring, irresistibly cheap parcels just as they were: instant Eden; just add yourself and a sweetie.

Beyond the long-term investors feeling stuck with holdings in the arrested development, disinterested speculators still hoping to turn a profit, and the dwindling few who'd yet hoped to continue retreating on their parcels time to time... beyond these was that wild card forever to be reckoned with: land-hungry people. People, often financially insecure and burned out on the high cost and hassles of city living, who craved natural solitude and peace and quiet.

People drawn to the affordable lots like moths to flame. For the equivalent of a month's town rent, one could cover the down payment on a generously sized piece of remote wooded land with dazzling mountain view, where one could live and call home once scoring an old trailer or mobile home, or, at the least, camp out until the cold weather hit.

The place gave such people the opportunity to escape nature-challenged urban living, with its soulless overpriced ticky-tacks and greedy landlords, and live more simply.

They'd cross their fingers and hope to be left alone to dwell between the cracks of society and its costly living standard, which so often made making ends meet next to impossible. While some of us with modest resources grudgingly bit the bullet and slowly built to code, others, blissfully ignorant of or studiously ignoring the mundane city-centric regulations trying to be enforced deep in the boonies, had more of a pronounced Building code? What building code? You're kidding, right? attitude. One couldn't blame them. People, if they had their druthers, unless masochists, wanted their living scenes to be as simple and carefree as possible.

Encouraging factors

Several factors encouraged succeeding waves of non-compliant dwellers:

Again, it was historic times: A tectonic shift in human consciousness and radically changing lifestyles were underway globally; massive numbers wanted to get out of Dodge and back to nature.
The place was off the beaten path, almost like its own little kingdom, a seemingly charmed outland that felt safely beyond city-centric, restrictive regulations.
The abandoned — but lingering in spirit — first-generation, camp-use-only vibe had left enough murky uncertainty over what constituted allowable land use to take ready advantage of.
The county had dwindling success in sustained residential code enforcement, despite having fought and won many of its earliest battles.

Some among the first nonconforming builders — variously labeled code violators, illegal residents, and, perhaps the unkindest cut of all, squatters (on their own land, mind you) — moved in with a casual air of "Hey, what's the big deal? We're just building a little shelter on our own parcel here out in the middle of nowhere; c'mon, you can't be serious."

Over time, learning about the place's drawn-out code-conformity war and the increasingly spotty enforcement, some newbies grew bold enough to go on the offensive. They'd pull in their sundry derelict travel trailers and mobile homes, or build ramshackle shelters on the fly, bearing openly defiant, mocking attitude of "Hee, hee, what're you goin' to do about it, huh?"

Others were more like screaming eagles: "Hey, this was still America last time I checked; this is my land, and I'll do whatever I damn well please on it; back off if you know what's good for you."

Chapter 5

A law unto themselves

Living in non-code shelter construction and utility-unconnected, foundationless mobile homes became increasingly common over time. Eventually, it seemed like unapproved structures were popping up like mushrooms after a drenching rain. While some shelters were artful and relatively ambitious, others were bereft of charm, except perhaps to their own inhabitants, who were proud of their handiwork and resourcefulness and psyched to have fulfilled the primal need to build shelter against the elements.

It was almost as though such dwellers 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 mysteriously become an Old West frontier unmoored from the time stream. One blissfully removed from the modern era with all its spirit-stifling rules and regulations about how one was supposed to live.

Enjoying unapproved structures

Proved problematic

Though few such dwellings were ever officially "red-tagged" by the county (that is, designated unlawful to inhabit, with an ominous official warning notice tacked to the door), they still carried a powerful stigma. The disapproving, hostile reactions of code-compliant neighbors to the fact that they existed at all could make it a bit problematic to enjoy staying in them with anything approaching peace of mind for all but the thicker-skinned.

Gradually, various legal residents — feeling light years away from any dependable and responsive law enforcement save for more serious matters (even then, a 45-minute wait time wasn't uncommon) — essentially deemed themselves a law unto themselves. Feeling the need to act as citizen deputies, as it were, to keep the rabble at bay and the realm law-abiding, old-guard members patrolled the sprawling backwoods roads like bloodhounds, trying to sniff out reportable health and building code violations and then baying a storm over the phone lines. Some residents, even if they themselves were compliant, found such rigid obsession with absolute code compliance a real downer. At times, it felt downright scary, as if some two-bit fascist regime had surreally risen up in the middle of would-be tranquil lands.

Gnarly incident

Turning this prevailing vigilante tendency on its ear, one non-compliant resident decades later had just taken severe heat over being suspected of growing pot (he wasn't). It was a deed then very much illegal and vigorously prosecuted, with state laws aligned with federal statutes. Penalties included mandatory prison terms of up to three years, possible property confiscation, and fines up to $10,000.

One hot summer day, a sheriff's helicopter swooped in and hovered dangerously close above the giant truck tarp he'd stretched between the trees over an old school bus home to provide some critical shade. It started to tear loose. No doubt having been reported as a non-compliant troublemaker, they appeared convinced (or maybe just hopeful) he was trying to hide a verboten cannabis grow beneath it so they could make a grand bust and make the place safe again for honest folk. Outraged at the invasion of his airspace and how the chopper's air turbulence was tearing loose his tarp — and by no means shy — he flipped them off while offering his darkest scowl. Naturally, they couldn't let this open affront to their authority pass. Other sheriff deputies soon barged onto his land, without a warrant and loaded for bear. They pointed assault weapons at him, as if itching for an excuse to open fire.

While seemingly callous and thick-skinned, he was actually sensitive — and a bit of an actor. On the wings of this traumatic incident, he tried displacing some of his extreme angst by riding about on his motorcycle with a prominently visible sidearm and confronting various residents over things he pretended he disapproved of.

Buy in haste

No doubt, many of the land 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 routinely turned off your more circumspect land shopper exercising due diligence. They were giddy about being able to grab such nice-sized pieces of unspoiled land in such a popular recreational region at such dirt-cheap prices. Eureka! It was practically the modern-day equivalent of history's Forty Acres and a Mule government giveaway (if likewise deemed marginal land). The lots proved so affordable that any commonly felt need to make a judicious assessment seemed to fly out the window, aided and abetted by the mountain's at times almost otherworldly energy.

Parcels got snapped up as so many bargain basement steals.

Before the place's sundry disheartening realities at last percolated one's grey matter, the would-be, latter-day pioneers spun all sorts of excited dreams and schemes about how they'd enjoy their new secluded woodlands, so nicely hidden amid the maze of private country roads, beyond modern times' slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Add to these legal and illegal residents the more thoughtful and involved investors who, despite the discouraging unfolding developments, stubbornly clung to the notion that the parcels might still make good retreats and were worthy of maybe someday building homes or cabins on, either for themselves or others they'd sell to after enjoying them a while. Also, add in the many parcel flippers who grabbed the lots, imagining how quickly 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 became hopelessly deadlocked in a tangle of wildly conflicting intentions, forever at cross purposes.

The result: Mt. Shasta Vista was left in a perpetual state of chaotic confusion.

___________________________

'Hey, why don't we move here?'

The first-generation settlers at first might have seemed no more than adventurous vacationing campers wanting to kick back in nature for a while at their own private campgrounds. But even as they relished being on the land, willing to make generous allowances for the notable lack of infrastructure — maybe even embracing it — some, again, had no doubt been sussing the place's possibilities all along for building retirement residences.

While such a lack of infrastructure and the absence of formal plans had presented little or no problem during the first years of sole camp and retreat use — trailers being self-contained and one otherwise resigned to making like a bear in the woods a while — the situation would, of course, become the place's Achilles' heel. Years after having built their approved residences, resource-shy and instant-home-seeking others were rolling the dice and dropping anchor, wanting no one's approval but their own for how they chose to live.

Consequently, over the decades, as the Vista morphed from primitive camping ground to fledgling pedigree-retiree rural community to mongrel, anything-goes outback, it became the strikingly wayward realm the county eventually threw up its hands at in exasperation and dumbfounded bewilderment. It seemed as if they'd allowed some dread Frankenland to be created that was now threatening the villagers by its very presence; it served as a constant thorn in the county authorities' side.

They were at a loss over how to stem the apparent anarchy and lawlessness emerging amid the thin scattering of approved homes. Some, maybe eventually most, took refuge in magical thinking, imagining the whole place simply disappearing. Being in such a remote location made this relatively easy: out of sight, out of mind.

The onerous building code vs. the owner-builder

Consequently, unsanctioned shelters multiplied. More and more, it seemed lot buyers eager to settle lacked the funds or the willingness to build to code or both. Freer spirits, again, considered the exacting codes needlessly complicated, insultingly intrusive and ridiculously expensive to comply with. They felt such codes only reflected the cushy standard of living of the more affluent strata of society, and that they were being forced on others of lesser means, essentially to keep them under thumb.

One might've concluded that, in a way, it was America's own caste system — an economic one, with rigid insistence that everyone dance to the tune of the more affluent, or they might be treated like effluent.

But hoping to avoid such stringent codes — and the inflated lifestyles of would-be upward mobiles, many of them atempting to live beyond their means and soon drowning in debt — was the very reason so many moved out to 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 doubtless thinking short-term, intending to stay only so long as they could before attracting too much attention to their non-copacetic shelters from uptight, busybody neighbors who would rat them out to the authorities.

The way of thinking of your more reasonable person was that it was one thing to maybe have a few commonsense ordinances in place to prevent unsightly, flimsy owner-built structures that might blow over in the first strong wind, and to ensure critical hygienic standards for the sake of public health and safety. But it was another entirely to demand that one living on their own land out in the middle of nowhere be made to construct a home for theirselves to live in with a continuous, massive foundation, be a minimum size, to overbuild by a safety factor of five, install double-glazed windows, super-insulate the roof, wire and plumb the entire structure, install a fire sprinkler system...

Somewhere along the line, there appeared an extraordinary disconnect from reasonableness.

Trying to relax the code

During the 1970s, a grassroots effort emerged led by a group of outraged rural owner-builders in Mendocino County, California. As brought out in the 1976 book, The Owner-Builder and the Code: Politics of Building Your Home by Ken Kern, they'd been evicted for code violations from their hand-made crackerbox palaces on private land in the dead of winter. They and their supporters rallied for the state legislature to establish less onerous building requirements for anyone building dwellings on their own land. It led to then-governor Jerry Brown approving a Class K housing bill specifically aimed at easing building requirements for such rural owner-builders. But by 1981, the bill had been so watered down by an apparently construction-industry-friendly state assembly that it was left to each county to decide whether to adopt it.

Only three did. Vista's Siskiyou, never the most progressive-minded county, wasn't one. Its building department, at home in dealing with contractors who knew the drill in their sleep, appeared hostile or at least wary and uncomfortable with owner-builders. They didn't want to waste their time guiding first-time builders through the myriad steps required to navigate the maze of regulations and specifications they were paid to enforce. "If you can't understand it, hire a contractor" was their dismissive attitude. They assumed — not without reason, given the code's incredibly far-reaching and pricey requirements — that many owner-builders would try to "cheat" the code at every given opportunity.

'Did we ever sign you off?'

Over a decade after getting my own tiny house green-tagged (despite having indeed fudged on a few minor specs, while exceeding code on others), I ran into Mr. Fiock, the by-then-retired head building inspector, at the Yreka post office. He had come out once, at the start, no doubt to strike the fear of God into me to knuckle under and obey Caesar's edicts. Perhaps intuiting I hadn't fully toed the line and still wanting to take me to task, he furrowed his brow and asked doubtfully, "Did we ever sign you off?" (My strategy all along had been to keep calling them up and bugging them with questions on their endless specifications, to the point they finally got so exasperated, they were all, "Just build the damn thing and leave us alone.")

While such draconian requirements no doubt discouraged many earlier would-be non-compliant builders, over time, as the once-iron grip of regulatory bureaucracy's enforcement relaxed, a rebellious spirit was gaining ground. People aspired to build rural shelters on their own land however they fancied, thank you, never thinking to get any Mother-may-I? permission from some obscure, meddling bureaucratic authority and, adding insult to injury, have to pay for the privilege. Though on a much smaller scale, playing "Beat the building code" became as popular a cat-and-mouse game as the What pot laws?" mindset of far later times. Bound and determined to live on their bought-and-paid-for properties, many Vistans figured possession was nine-tenths of the law. Their headspace was, again, "Hey, this is my own private property, and I'll do whatever I damn well please 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, a complex, intense love-hate relationship with the land emerged. Especially among those who'd hoped to settle on their lots long-term and enjoy long-sought solitude. It was, "Buy in haste, regret at leisure." Over the years it became a sad, familiar song. Lured by the rural development's affordable remote parcels with what at first appeared a refreshing absence of any "Thou Shalt" authority — leastwise one with any teeth — more than a few buyers tuned out the snarling posted signs as little more than ineffectual, blustery Barney Fife bluff.

But then, any buyer who leaned toward being at least nominally law-abiding was disheartened to realize that the signs sometimes meant business. If one wanted to make use of the place beyond camping for up to 30 days a year and not risk the rug suddenly getting yanked out from under one's feet, or at least always feel under duress, the lots' woeful lack of infrastructure required shelling out a small fortune to get things squared away.

It was like ten-cent parcels had some hidden million-dollar spoiler attached.

For the same or related reasons, the lots became an albatross about the necks of investors, speculators and would-be vacationers alike. With holdings no longer part of a simple de facto recreational development once homes, power and phone lines began cluttering the once semi-pristine landscape, they could no longer sell them at a profit as either private camping property or desirable building sites... at least, not to anyone who knew the score and was convention-minded. And that didn't take much sussing to discover. One had only to talk to your typical walking-wounded, teeth-gnashing resident. Their ears would soon be singed by the aggrieved party, who, warming to their task, proceeded to rake the place over the coals with almost demonic intensity.

It was a buyer's remorse destined to become a pattern in countless owners' relationships with the singular land that, strange to say, often felt at once blessed and cursed.

But the seductive lure of the affordable backwoods parcels, under the protective presence of the big rock candy mountain, feeling worlds away from noisy, overwound city living, kept grabbing would-be residents and impulsive investors alike. While the latter only thought to flip the obviously undervalued parcels, a growing number of the former settled in and tried ignoring mundane concerns like code compliance, until, out of the blue, it bit them on the backside and they joined the howling chorus of grievously disenchanted.

Chapter 6

Lots practically sold themselves.

While the lots were technically zoned for single-family residential development, they were first marketed primarily as recreational land. Maybe over time, owners would get together and grow it into something more, maybe not. The lack of any residential development plan from the outset led to strong inertia, keeping the energy stuck. The parcels could serve as no more than primitive camping retreats. But the sky was the limit if one had the bucks to conform to rigorous code and supply all one's infrastructure. And one was, of course, enamored by the thought of living so far off the beaten path.

As speculated, some who had fully conformed might not have been all that community-minded. Or they would cease to be once things got dicey and their happy bubble of an exclusive, tight-knit retirement enclave burst, leaving them feeling surrounded by a bunch of nonconforming yahoos. Some might've never given a hoot if the place ever grew or not. Maybe they even hoped it wouldn't — more seclusion for them, no immediate neighbors, beyond those they already knew, to have to deal with.

While the bare-bones development was all upfront and legal under existing lax California laws covering rural subdivisions, informed developers must have known something was in the wind. Soon, new legislation would require new starts to supply all supporting infrastructure. It had been the last chance to make a fast buck with minimal outlay, rolling out such recreational-property subdivisions that offered no amenities beyond simple road access and whatever features Mother Nature might see fit to provide.

Overambitious

Developer Collins must have decided he didn't need to risk investing any more time, money, or effort in the project to move the lots than he did. Playing the market, and perhaps being over-ambitious with the sprawling size of the development, he lacked any certainty that a standard residential community could ever flourish here. If so, his hunch seemed correct. While it appeared enthusiasm over the chance to wing it and spend time amid the solitude of one's own bit of woodlands, serene Mt. Shasta watching over big as life, had proven contagious with the back-to-the-land movement going full tilt, there initially appeared to be a pronounced lack of interest, apart from a tiny handful of lot holders, to ever want to actually live here.

Then again, maybe it was all a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In any case, with a bit of sizzling ad copy, the lots practically sold themselves. It was cheap speculation. Besides, the parcels held some vague promise of someday, somehow, serving as useful property. Being so affordable yet having such an inspiring view of the mountain made snapping up the parcels irresistible, a nice little bauble for one's investment portfolio.

After springing for drilling test wells and buying an existing well having an impressive replenishment rate just off Vista land to satisfy the county that there was indeed water, he must've been hopeful every part of the elevation-varied realm might provide enough water should owners ever want to settle on their parcels. Or even if they just wanted to visit and have their own well. But he might have downplayed the depth of the water table in the higher elevations in Sections 13 and, especially, Section 23. Instead, he painted a happy picture of the unofficial de facto community well that every lot owner was, of course, more than welcome to use.

At least it's a nice retreat

Bottom line: He'd created at the very least a simple, collectively owned semi-wilderness retreat realm in a popular vacation region — one with the potential to, however unlikely, become something more in a way that might benefit all property holders. Not just a few who could afford the excessive costs involved to get code-compliant.

For what it was worth, in the first years each lot enjoyed immaculately well-maintained road access and was platted to a fare-thee-well, with corner boundaries marked off by short, soon-rusted red steel pipes and ribboned lathe sticks with exact, scrawled bearings. Nearly 90% offered varying degrees of views of the mountain, some breathtaking. Who needed anything more? In those giddy times of renewed awareness of life's possibilities, it was a perfect whatever-it-was just the way it was, a dreamland of one's imagination that needn't conform to any pesky, mundane waking realities.

But with the real estate game the way it was, the spiel and cheap prices also attracted many who had no foreseeable plans to either camp or build. They were almost certainly the overwhelming majority among the 1,500 initial parcel buyers. They'd snap them up as long-term investments or short-term speculations, happy to get in on the ground floor of what might prove a sure thing. They imagined others — not them, thank you — soon clamoring to camp on the lots or build homes and vacation cabins, both scenarios that would nicely drive up land values.

Now what do we do with it?

Yet others, though primarily speculating, might've sampled their untamed properties a time or two, curious to discover what it was they'd bought sight unseen. No doubt some had never owned land before and were excited just to have it, but were then unsure what to do with it. The land and its inspiring mountain view might've grabbed some once they camped on it, and they decided to hold onto the lots long-term. Again, some buyers flirted with the idea of building dwellings if and when things progressed enough to enjoy visiting and living in them for a while before selling once the novelty of Vista living began to wear thin.

So many Americans, restless, rootless, and periodically on the move, appeared to always view their current shelter as an investment first and foremost. The notion of ever dropping anchor and cultivating a long-term residence anywhere, at least before reaching retirement age, if even then, was seldom considered.

Giant monkey wrench in the works

I'd guesstimate that no more than 10% of lot owners kept entertaining the idea of building for any reason after the campaign to electrify the entire place failed and sparked a major falling-out among lot holders. It had thrown a giant monkey wrench in the works, creating ill will and a pronounced disenchantment with the place and its prospects. Some degree of cohesive group vision and a willingness to work together in a common cause had been needed if the place hoped to serve the long-term interests of the diverse group of some 1,500 lot holders.

It appeared that there was now little, if any, vision left to be had for love or money.

So now, the bold dream of the few who'd gone for the gusto and made their former campgrounds their new home was cramped by the backlash from disappointed lot holders who bore only limited financial interest in the place. They were deadweight, dragging on efforts to solidify their incipient hamlet. This they did by voting down any further funds sought through special assessment proposals.

But doggone it, everything had just seemed so peachy keen and hunky dory at first. Jazzed new rural landowners had viewed the place and its promise through rose-colored glasses. They were blissfully ignorant of the festering behind-the-scenes storm clouds brewing over the place's very existence, of locals' powerful resentment toward the bunch of high-and-mighty city folks crowding in, dripping with cash, taking over their backwoods stomping grounds and upsetting a long-established way of life.

Keep them doggies movin'

Even into the early eighties, local ranchers had seasonally led sporadic cattle drives along short stretches of Vista's frontage of County Highway A-12 between grazing areas. The road had a cattle grate (very noisy when driven over; the clanking sound was heard a mile away). One got the feeling they enjoyed pretending that the occasional impatient vehicle traffic wasn't even there, that they'd time-warped back to the pre-auto 1800s Western frontier era. Git along, little doggies.

Over the following years, newer lot owners could fail to realize how seriously the county — once lot owners started building in the often rocky volcanic foothills and struggling with water, and eventually blowing off code compliance — regretted having ever okayed the blasted place. How they came to view the forlorn development as a lemon vehicle they'd bought against their better judgment and were now stuck with. How they forever cast a jaundiced eye towards the misfire and its bickering residents with a rueful, what-the-hell-did-we-ever-approve remorse and even hard-bitten disgust.

Idyllic camping

With no such distressing undercurrents apparent at first, the earliest nature-hungry city vacationers felt free to enjoy their idyllic backwoods enclave with the prevailing lighthearted spirit of the times that often bordered on outright euphoria. One had the convenience and luxury of camping on their very own piece of secluded, scenic land for up to 30 days a year, rather than pay daily to chance camping some place where others were setting up 20 feet away with a passel full of squalling kids.

The majority of original parcel owners, again, hailed from the smog-choked Los Angeles region, where the developer was based and launched his marketing campaign. Others were from the Bay Area and the Central Valley. Purchasers pitched their tents or rolled in their travel trailers and RVs, savoring the serenity and drinking in the clean mountain air and the inspiring eponymous Mt. Shasta vista, the mountain right there, practically in their own front yard.

The terrain was known as high desert woodlands: high, dry, and wooded. Though powerful seasonal windstorms often proved treacherous and unnerving — roaring through like a runaway freight due to the massive mountain displacing and condensing stormy air currents in a Venturi effect — the place, like nearby Lake Shastina and Juniper Valley, otherwise often enjoyed an enviable banana-belt climate. Summers were typically hot and bone-dry. But there were plenty of juniper trees and, on a few parcels, scattered pine, to provide welcome shade. Some years saw a summer thunderstorm or two to cool things down a while. Those in the northwest end of the Vista were a short hike away from Lake Shastina's remote cross-country irrigation canal for refreshing dips. And the mountain’s spectacular northwestern, glacier-clad side did wonders keeping one feeling cooler just by gazing at its chilled splendor.

'Bye 'n' bye' came fast

Significantly, developer Collins had casually hinted early on how the place might make a dandy place to "retire to bye 'n' bye." He appeared to be responding to a growing enthusiasm among his fellow repeat vacationing campers for this very notion. But then again, maybe he'd had it in mind all along — evidenced by his having gotten the lots rezoned for residential use at formation — and was now only deftly orchestrating owners' growing excitement over the idea like a maestro. In any event, he intimated this very idea in the official newsletter periodically sent to property owners and avidly read by the small segment of co-owners who enjoyed coming each year to their new, very own semi-wilderness outpost. Dozens responded, but probably most were only the repeat vacationers who already had the idea firmly in mind.

However it went, being located at the central top of the Golden State, Mount Shasta its regal crown, made it nearly impossible for nature lovers not to be smitten by the low-key charm of the realm. Enough to go for it and indeed retire here to live on their often-secluded parcels year-round, or even before retirement and then split time between 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 suggested, as full-on retirement residences.

Enviable climate, minus the windstorms

Like Lake Shastina, Mt. Shasta Vista usually received far less snowfall than nearby Weed or the City of Mt. Shasta, offering an attractive climate (minus the occasional severe windstorms). This was due to the region's phenomenal crazy-quilt of microclimates, again, the mountain's doing. Usually, there was just enough powder to enjoy a winter wonderland now and then without getting a sore back shoveling snow, or frostbitten hands putting on chains to get out beyond the then-never-plowed roads.

Long ago, the place had tried plowing its roads after one of its rare (then maybe once a decade) heavy snowfalls of 18 to 24 inches; the equipment's blade tore up the cinder roadbeds so severely that it required expensive regrading, making it impractical. Thereafter, for decades until the unusually heavy February 2025 snowstorm hit, by which time the place had worlds more residents, everyone was on their own. (In my 47 years here, I've been snowbound twice, once for a week, once for 11 days.)

Con su permiso:

Dealing with an exacting building code

It was understood that, after passing a perc test, each would-be resident was responsible for drilling an approved well, installing an approved septic system and having power lines extended before becoming eligible to apply for a building permit. Then, only after the application was approved did one have a legal right to live on the land for more than 30 days a year. But, crazy world, once the permit was issued, you could live in any structure you wanted — be it trailer, shack or hole in the ground — since it would ostensibly serve as a temporary on-site work shelter during construction.

While building was expected to proceed 'in a timely manner,' many, unlike feverishly paced contractors, were far from in any real hurry; they could make quite a leisurely effort of things. I stretched out my own home-building period to 42 months while living in a semi-underground, ramshackle 8 x 12 ft. hobbit home, which was most decidedly non-code. It tickled me how the building inspector cast a wary eye at it every time he strode by to check the latest construction beyond it; no doubt he had to suppress an urge to red-tag it on the spot.

Once a structure was completed and signed off, the post office assigned a legal street address (or, actually, released an already existing number assigned long ago to every recorded parcel in the county), thereby enabling one to receive mail at the blacktop entrance boxes. Such an address was also ostensibly required to obtain a state driver's license, register to vote, or qualify for FedEx, UPS and OnTrak (or is it OffTrak?) home delivery.

As one might suspect, the extensive health and building codes included endlessly detailed particulars about everything: foundation; precise framing method; itemization down to the grade and variety of lumber and kind, size and spacing of every fastener; thorough electrification; insulation specs; complete kitchen facilities; indoor plumbing; minimum water pressure... Any unconventional design like a geodome, earthship, cob house or earth-sheltered abode required hiring a qualified engineer to certify that the submitted plan was structurally sound, and one still had to meet all other general specs. I'd wanted to build a free-form earth-sheltered home, but realized it would cost more and prove a profound disappointment given the compromises I would've had to make to satisfy rigid code requirements. When an office inspector talked about maybe lowering prestressed concrete slabs into the ground by crane to meet strength and insulation requirements, that's when I gave up on that dream.

Building codes were first

Aimed only at crowded cities

Although the Uniform Building Code had been in place in the U.S. since 1915, enforcement was no doubt relaxed or nonexistent for decades in rural regions. Focus originally was on crowded cities with their close-packed structures, built by detached contractors who'd never live in their creations and who were tempted to take shortcuts on building integrity, resulting in shoddy construction and sometimes tragedy for the eventual inhabitants. As the founder of the UBC, Rudolf Miller, himself stated early on, he never envisioned 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 is not a source of danger to others, no necessity for building restriction would exist [italics added]."

His reasonable, commonsense view was obviously abandoned as living densities increased and the government’s bureaucratic, power-hungry regulatory powers grew exponentially, alongside higher standards of living and the general increase in the complexities of modern life.

But for a long while, country landowners could pretty much build cabins and cottages to suit themselves, at their leisure, maybe even play it by ear with the overall design perhaps emerging only halfway through, if ever. It was their land, after all, so they could build whatever they blame-well pleased on it. But with bureaucratic regulations' inexorable tendency to become adopted by ever-greater numbers over time (some might say spreading like a cancer), until at last universalized, government authorities began insisting that the same exhaustive guidelines demanded to be adhered to in the teeming cities by indifferent contractors churning out cookie-cutter abodes for others to inhabit be followed by owner-builders living deep in the boonies on their own land.

Of course, if the occupant later sold the place to another, that's when things got complicated. This was no doubt the rationale behind universalizing building codes: to ensure that a minimum level of comfort, hygiene and safety standards existed in a living structure, no matter who built it, where it was located or who occupied it at any given time. And, perhaps more importantly, at least to the powers that be, to ensure that any lending institution floating loans for home construction or property purchases on which structures were built had a salable commodity to recover its investment should a borrower default.

It was having such perceived-as-oppressive ordinances in place in the Vista (and no fine-empowered board of directors to keep a practical, carrot-and-stick handle on matters) that led to the growing erosion of respect for specific areas of law and ordinance. At least, by its more nonconformist — sometimes only desperate and cash-trapped — inhabitants of the charm-rich, water-poor land.

Chapter 7

'Priced to move!'

At its launch, the parcels were indeed priced to move. I recall reading in the "Vistascope" newsletter archives that they cost between $750 and $975 each. Prices varied according to parcel size, location, terrain and views. The developer had relatively low overhead and was by no means out to get rich off the project. He was already successful from past urban development ventures and could afford to be generous with this special land project. He appeared to hold a genuine affection for the land and for the buyers he met while camping during the first few summers. He may have wanted the lot sales to feel like the feel-good bargains they were — or seemed to be — and whatever they were.

These prices were 1968 dollars. Adjusting for inflation, that'd be nearly 10 times more in 2025 dollars — about $9,000 — still relatively cheap for such a good-sized chunk of secluded and scenic land. The price of undeveloped lots rose for many years after 2015, but then fell after 2022 to $10,000. This restored the constant market value to its level when the place launched 57 years earlier, after adjusting for inflation.

'Hey, they're not making any more land'

Initially, there were few infrastructure costs: putting in the 66 miles of red cinder roads (many of the main arteries were traced over preexisting logging, livestock-tending and hunting/camping/partying roads); surveying and marking off parcel boundaries; erecting entrance and section corner signs; and planting the first-generation, short wooden 4 x 4 road sign posts, many soon camouflaged by the fast-growing sagebrush trying to reclaim the land.

First-generation buyers purchased the lots for different reasons — but, again, countless grabbed them out of pure speculation: "Hey, they're not making any more land." Many, no doubt, never set foot on them, let alone camped on them. Though a handful were indeed excited at the prospect of having their own private campgrounds and entertained thoughts of maybe someday building homes or vacation cabins on them, arguably the overwhelming majority were only betting on the place and the actions of others... hopefully a good number of others.

Turnkey camp sites?

They anticipated making out like bandits once the place gained in popularity. Maybe it'd grow into a giant, KOA-style camp village, loaded with amenities and services, attracting a flood of campers tickled to have their own recreational properties nestled near Mount Shasta. Perhaps eventually they'd launch time-shares for the improved and secluded camp lots, offering turnkey camping that would later be known as glamping.

However, the place instead evolved into a sparsely populated, briefly standard-grade community. One that might've actually succeeded and endured, maybe indeed driving up parcel values, had every future would-be resident taken responsibility for meeting their own infrastructure needs and built to code, as had all among the first wave of transplants (and as is, of course, always the case in more populated areas with any new development).

Obviously, they hadn't. Oftentimes, it seemed that the only reason so many moved in after them was that it offered a cheap place to live in the country for as long as they could keep building code enforcement at bay. And so fortune passed the place by. Seriously passed it by.

Counterintuitive

Pouring substantial investments into such primitive, low-cost land felt counterintuitive. Something maybe considered only by a certain people reaching retirement age, flush with cash and bewitched by the land they'd discovered during an euphoric time, and who were primed to collectively transform it into their own year-round, tight-wound Eden. (Plus, again, any with similar cash to plow into building, or the willingness, and at the time, far stricter eligibility, to assume major credit-card debt.)

And, unless a contractor or hiring one, having the disposition, fortitude and determination to deal with the niggling, hoop-jumping, monumentally exasperating process of meeting the code requirements demanded of an owner-builder working under the eagle eye of the building department without going completely nuts.

Understandably, such a vision and the high cost to meet it didn't elicit ringing endorsements from the less solvent parcel buyers — most 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, score an old trailer, throw up a makeshift shelter on the fly from scrap materials or make a small lumberyard splurge and call it okie dokie.

Vestiges of Vista's primitive

Camping origin linger to this day

It seemed that cheap land and cheap building aspirations really could go together. Since the lots were initially used as de facto primitive camp parcels and later their standard development was hindered by difficult access to water, rocky terrain and distant power lines, the place essentially froze in time. It seemed impossible to ever fully erase the place's primitive, recreational-use-only beginnings; it appeared to be permanently embedded in every parcel — some 1,550, or 95% — that was officially left undeveloped.

Earliest investors and speculators likely hadn't considered the possibility of such a wrinkle cropping up on top of the high cost of building to code and sinking a deep well. How an epidemic of non-compliant structures, and at times questionable land use, could, almost overnight, drastically further erode their holdings' sellability and desirability as places to either camp or build on for anyone conformist. After learning about the few dozen full-on, code-legal homes emerging and hearing developer Collins paint a rosy picture of the place's bright future, they'd assumed everyone would naturally continue building to code.

Misled thinking

Significantly, many speculators, on hearing of the momentous building plans of what turned out to be only a relatively few, were almost certainly misled into thinking that there were far more property holders gung-ho on creating an accepted rural community than existed. No doubt they'd started salivating like Pavlovian dogs, anticipating the place perhaps following nearby Lake Shastina's lead and building out in a giddy, mad scramble, their bargain lots bought for a song soon commanding hefty prices.

Congratulating themselves on having gotten in on the ground floor of what they thought promised to be an easy slam-dunk moneymaker given time, parcel investors sat back and waited for things to take their merry course. Some would eventually join in and likewise build on their lots, thinking to live in their structures a while before selling and making even greater profits. Or they'd become likewise enamored by the land and, resonating with the retired dwellers' buttoned-down, albeit engaging, bonhomie, decide to stay. But most, having little to no interest in the day-to-day realities of the place's eventual, widely scattered residents — or in the vital need to prevent the proliferation of non-code structures and erosion of property values and livability — couldn't be bothered to even see the dots, let alone connect them. Clueless, they twiddled their thumbs and bided their time. They patiently waited for the parcel values to take off like so many race cars in the Indy 500.

They'd only have to wait half a century.

_______________________

Time-machine boom

Then, in 2015, nearly three generations after the place's founding, floundering and foundering in another era, parcel prices began an astonishing, dizzying flight to the moon.

Long depressed values of the sea of unimproved lots soared practically overnight. And kept climbing, from going begging at $5,000 to over $150,000 by 2021 amid bidding wars. This was, of course, the result of a double whammy: a national red-hot realty market coinciding with the place's discovery by a flood of bold growers anticipating California legalization of recreational pot and what would prove to be — perhaps predictably, given the modern-day gold rush of intrepid entrepreneurs inundating the often-progressive state — a flurry of new and hard-to-enforce regulations.

Among the sea of new illicit scaled cannabis grows suddenly proliferating the state, were, besides generations-old white European Americans, recent immigrants and nationals of Russia, Mexico, Armenia, Bulgaria and Montenegro. In Vista's case, those who would snap up the long-fallow parcels by the hundred were largely Asian American, and overwhelmingly Southeast Asian Hmong (silent 'H'), a minority tribal group originally from China.

Suddenly a growers' Shangri-la

The new wave of lot holders also purchased the majority of existing code-conforming homes, as their owners lost heart over the drastic changes swamping the place, but were mollified by the healthy sale prices the homes began to command. In short order, the new Vistans sparked a phenomenal transformation into a growers' Shangri-la. The realtors might just as well have advertised the parcels as:

"Lotus land, for sale cheap. Special realm to pursue

wildest dreams and get rich quick. No reality down."

Okay, maybe that's getting too silly. But the new California cannabis statutes would decriminalize unsanctioned commercial grows from a criminal felony to a civil misdemeanor, making irresistible the urge to produce seas of green for an insatiable nationwide underground market. (Maybe it was the legislators who were in lotus land for thinking the new statutes could ever be effectively enforced the way they wrote them.)

This was the reason—beyond the Golden State being renowned for cultivating high-quality cannabis and having a solid, long-established underground market—for attracting so many, well... casual growers. New state laws left it to each county to decide whether to allow regulated commercial grows in its unincorporated areas (that is, everywhere beyond city limits). Conservative Siskiyou County, with a prevailing Reefer Madness mindset, declined, along with many other counties. But then it had to suffer towns like Weed and Mt. Shasta voting in pot dispensaries, as was their right, and also having the option to approve county- and state-regulated commercial grows within city limits.

Here was the grand enticement for unlicensed growers: If enough people scaled up cannabis production, then effectively enforcing the restrictions, beyond a bust here and there, often picking the easiest, lowest-hanging fruit, was bound to be a losing game.

A Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sort of place

As a result, from 2015 onward, Vista lots began selling like crazy for reasons unrelated to infrastructure build-up, still almost nil; new formal development plans, still nonexistent; or, for more than a few who had sunk roots, being a place to want to settle long term.

Especially after the widely shared fantasy vision, compliments of that perpetual fantasy inducer, Mount Shasta, of building up a thriving, quixotic, proscribed-grow-based community faced the chilly winds of reality. For once again, the at-first-seeming idyllic land would suddenly turn gnarly, in something akin to a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde transformation, as decidedly unpleasant, sporadic eradication campaigns by scrambling authorities, never-say-die, slogged on year after year.

The startling real estate boom, while dumbfounding many, including me, proved only in keeping with Mt. Shasta Vista's perpetual boom-bust nature.

Its boom-bust cycles might be likened to a bone-dry desert that experienced a brief flash flood once every decade or so. A deluge of land-hungry would-be country squires, bold, unlicensed pot entrepreneurs and cagey realty speculators periodically rained down on the region, driving up depressed prices on the problematic parcels or trying to. Then, invariably, as things didn't pan out, market values fell back to their default bone-dry level, softer than sponge cake.

Some might've concluded that it was a strange and wild volcanic land that refused to be tamed. It was too challenging a place to make a permanent home beyond the few who, for some odd reason, seemed to like living out in the middle of nowhere.

____________________

Land, ho!

According to the archived copy of the Vistascope newsletter sent to lot holders after the project's launch, every lot was snapped up in 18 months.

This fact belies a later common assumption, even among newspaper reporters, that the developer had been left with parcels no one wanted. People wanted them, all right — or thought they did, at first. The lots sold like crazy. It was only later that the hundreds of absentee owners and those they'd sold the lots to realized the development was going seriously cattywampus; then they couldn't get rid of them fast enough. However, they didn't want to sell at a loss. So the odd, if beguiling, lots, initially appealing to those valuing rustic seclusion, sweeping vistas and (initial) affordability, had substantial deal-breakers that put a serious drag on sales.

The consequence? For decades, the market was flooded with all but unsellable parcels.

Despite being offered for a song compared to similar regional properties, they found few takers once their bizarre pedigree — a seemingly jinxed development that had flown off the rails, rife with an angry-native social climate and lrejection by the larger community, bereft of infrastructure and burdened with a prohibitive cost to gain code compliance — became common knowledge to anyone doing the least bit of research.

But at the Vista's inception, such major stumbling blocks had not yet been realized beyond the apparent lack of infrastructure. With the Back-to-the-Land movement gaining momentum, the tiny minority of older, relatively well-heeled parcel buyers, energized by the prospect of retiring together in their own little realm of secluded, unspoiled nature, had seen in the far-flung, primitive development the chance to create their own cozy paradise. One to shape, mold and control as they saw fit.

And they hadn't been alone in their feel-good enthusiasm and optimism over the place's bright prospects.

Excited to have discovered such an affordable wonderland to vacation at, maybe someday retire to — at least a sure-fire investment — everyone and their uncle was jumping down the rabbit hole.

Chapter 8

Mt. Shasta Vista was, well... different

In some ways, the Vista, with its 1,641 two- to three-acre parcels, begun in late 1965, was a breed apart from other regional subdivisions emerging about the same time. And new rural subdivisions were popping up all over the region.

They included:

Lake Shastina, just down the hill, with 3,200 lots averaging .2 to .3 acres each (one-tenth the size of Vista lots), started in 1968;
Shasta Forest, in the McCloud area, with 791 lots of two-and-a-half to five acres each, launched in 1966;
Juniper Valley (practically next door), with some 240 lots of varied 10, 20, and 40 acres each (four to 16 times larger than Vista's), exact founding date unknown;
Klamath River Country Estates (KRCE), in the Hornbrook region, with 2,050 lots of one to 2.6 acres each, began in 1967; and
Hammond Ranch, between Mt. Shasta and Weed, its association formed in 1969, with about 430 lots of .35 to .55 acres each

One big difference, apart from the obvious iffy water situation, was that Mt. Shasta Vista happened to be the first.

Just a seasonal camp

Started a year or more ahead of the rest, there was an as-yet-unproven market for rural developments, especially one of such sprawling scale. Developer Collins may have felt that the lots needed to be priced so low as to prove irresistible, thereby attracting eager buyers and getting the ball rolling. As the region's first such developer, he may have considered it too risky to pursue a planned community that would require a vast infrastructure investment. Instead, he'd spring only for simple road access, signage and an informal community well and water truck. The place might be deemed too far from town to attract people wanting to live here, and so prove successful only as a seasonal, collectively owned, primitive vacation camp.

He played it safe, feeling no call to hammer together any master plan. He'd contented himself with launching a simple, bare-bones, de facto recreational development, as state law still allowed, one that might or might not become something more. He'd see what happened.

In a way, he was a little like a scientist running a test experiment. But an unobjective one, displaying a cagey, vague, tomorrow-never-knows air about its endless potential that undoubtedly influenced the experiment's test results.

Hedging bets

Even though he was surely aware of the Back-to-the-Land movement rapidly emerging at the time, sensing an imminent new rural land market, he also knew that potential buyers might resist the notion of building homes if they had to drill wells and extend power lines themselves.

Moreover, he must've known how up in arms the farming and ranching locals were over his invasive cockamamie scheme, so much so that he'd perhaps opted to go slowly in part to give them time to come to terms and accept the place, initially marketing the lots for seasonal camping. Just visiting, folks, no worries. He'd let the buyers deal with the angry hornet's nest of locals if they ever got brave enough to actually try moving onto the latter's now-lost wilderness.

In any event, the wording of the Vista's ruling documents (CC&Rs, or Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions) was your basic boilerplate legalese. Once the place's first few parcel holders dropped anchor and began rendering the original legal framework inadequate, it might've spelled certain disaster without extensive revisions. Such a reworked plan was possibly deemed critical by at least some of the settlers — the more social, growth-minded, not the just-leave-us-alone faction — if the place was to have a solid avenue for building out with rhyme and reason and guardrails to steer development in an agreed-upon direction.

The board lacked the power to fine

It might have created, for instance, the legal power for the board to fine errant owners for infractions of decided appearance parameters and home restrictions, like bans on changing vehicle oil, hanging out laundry and solid fencing, as some others would do, thus (ideally) working to maintain a particular agreed-on lifestyle of sorts. This power enabled the imposition of a lien on an owner's legal title if one chronically failed to pay for a ticketed infraction, thereby establishing at least a grudging respect for the rule of law. It would've served to discourage noncompliant behavior by property owners and possibly land hunters bent on inappropriate property use.

Of course, this was always a two-edged sword. As 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, she went on to say, "... 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."

Without an overarching plan for residential growth or a vision beyond the general legal boilerplate, Mt. Shasta Vista was forever left to struggle, swimming upstream against the current. It was always vulnerable to the vagaries of the place's latest resident-owners' sometimes arbitrary dictates... even as the more socially minded among the fitful, ever-changing flock of dwellers hoped to transform the place from its primitive beginnings into an actual, by-gosh, functional community. One that its dwellers might've actually taken pride in rather than only used and tolerated for a while.

Interest flatlines

With so many parcel owners absentee and seldom, if ever, visiting, from the start it seemed the overwhelming number of title holders were indeed only betting on the place and the anticipated actions of others: initially, that small minority of owners who enjoyed vacationing here, and later, the even smaller number who actually built houses and dropped anchor. Both were naturally inclined to work together to advance the place and improve its livability (and market value).

Surely they were the vanguard of others who would follow over time. Meanwhile, the investors and speculators were content to let actual residents do the heavy lifting. Maybe they liked to imagine them as an army of worker ants industriously building up the place and its value before they began enjoying it themselves. Or, far more likely, they cashed in and made a respectable chunk of change for their trouble.

As it turned out, it would prove to be more trouble than they could've imagined in their wildest dreams. Holders were destined to lose heart in droves not long after the development's early burst of improvement efforts faded and small-minded vibes swept the land, taking deep root.

Birth of the community well

Water was always a critical concern. By the early 1970s, visiting repeat campers and residents rallied, partnering with developer Collins to develop what soon became an informal community well, with an impressive flow rate, just off Vista land on Juniper Drive. It featured a large holding tank with an overhead valve for rapidly filling 2,000-gallon water trucks and included a garden spigot, thereby serving both campers and well-less home builders. Collins, with his usual largess, sold the association a water truck for a dollar. About the same time, many contributed to the volunteer fund to extend electric power lines to the lots of any owners who committed to building to code. A long mobile home was pulled in near the front of Juniper Drive to hold the first few of the state-mandated monthly property owners' board meetings.

After this initial flurry of action, though, enthusiasm for group improvement efforts seemed to run out of steam. New and soon-to-be residents switched gears, scrambling to carve out their own little backwoods mini-kingdoms in the semi-wilderness. It was often all they could do to build up resources to provide for their own needs to some semblance of their long-accustomed standard of living.

As earlycomers built the place's first approved dwellings, it seemed to be shifting from a simple, de facto shared camp to the beginnings of a formal rustic community. Albeit one spread so thin amid the vast acreage that dwellings might've appeared surreally misplaced to any impressionable visitors who chanced to cruise the labyrinth of back roads: nothing but trees and brush for long stretches, until rounding a bend, and then, bam! a full-on estate jumped out at them.

Neither fish nor fowl

Interest in enjoying one's camping parcel must have nosedived overnight. Those who had roughed it camping were now themselves noisily building homes, or grumbling about those who were and intending to sell the first chance they got. To the recreationally minded, the place had lost its charm: the once collective-camping wilds were being cluttered with all the man-made trappings of civilization they'd come here to get away from. It was an oil-and-water situation, refusing to mix.

The place was now neither fish nor fowl, a chimera. It was in an ungainly situation that provoked growing frustration among both dwellers and absentee owners.

Once unapproved shelters began to multiply, the realm's fledgling legal community, which residents had poured their personal fortunes into, representing a lifetime of blood, sweat, and tears, was in dire straits. Without updating the CC&Rs — or every future would-be resident dutifully toeing the line and meeting county health and building codes — residents faced an insurmountable impasse. They would be stymied at every turn, their most dedicated efforts to restore the place's brief upscale-rustic cachet as a respectable, admired fledgling community rendered futile.

Block captains

Early on, the association's few residents met to appoint informal block captains for each of the nearly seven square miles of land (two of its eight sections, 7 and 24, are only partial sections). They worked to alert other residents and lot owners to any suspicious activity within their respective domains, driving around regularly, scoping the scene and relaying the latest skinny to board members for review at the monthly meetings and addressing if deemed warranted.

This phase of organized grassroots government at least demonstrated a strong cohesion among many, if not all, of the early residents. (Cynics might read this as being motivated to protect their investment values more than anything.) Their rudimentary grassroots vigilance effort grew into an informal phone-tree hotline once too many barbarians began storming the gates to keep a handle on things at monthly meetings alone.

Civic-minded spirit

Even if their incentive was only to nip incipient health and building code violations in the bud, it at least demonstrated civic-mindedness, albeit more intolerant and exclusive than altruistic. One that might've served the place well in the long run, had it evolved from its initial reactive, law-and-order policing into a fair-minded, can-do, live-and-let-live mindset, willing to make the best of the situation. However, that wasn't going to happen. It was their way or the highway.

Some of the original older residents had by this time already moved on, devastated, their fondest dreams of enjoying retirement years in a sweet spot of peace and tranquility shattered. They didn't have the heart or, for some, the fortitude, to take arms against a sea of trouble and endure the ongoing battles with unruly interlopers invading their realm by mounting a desperate Hail Mary campaign to try restoring law and order. They might've concluded it was a hopeless situation.

Those who stayed, though, never say die, were ready to do battle. They demanded, with a barely-contained wrath off the Richter scale, that the county enforce its own friggin' codes, dammit.

But as more and more lot buyers boldly occupied the parcels they'd grabbed and seemingly defied anyone to do anything about it, it eventually overwhelmed weary county enforcement officials. It appeared they'd been outmaneuvered: They couldn't stem the tide of scofflaws with their limited workforce, despite their most diligent efforts.

At some point, county officials threw in the towel and pretty much gave up on the place as a lost cause.

Result: The soon-to-be-minority, flying-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, shocked-senseless, respectable legal-residency that had elected to stay and who were now being routed in their code-enforcement battles with the unruly rabble, found themselves between the devil and the deep blue sea.

White elephant time forgot

Not surprisingly, with such a daunting series of snafus and the resulting chaos growing like weeds, public interest in the wayward development flatlined for decades. After it outgrew its first-generation, recreational-only use and then stalled in its attempt to be something more by accepted standards, its parcels were massively devalued in the marketplace.

The sprawling development thus became an unmanageable white elephant of odd lots, more trouble than they were worth trying to move and earn a paltry commission on, in the view of many regional realtors.

Perhaps it was not unlike other failed or semi-failed rural subdivisions that various ambitious California developers launched over the years, such as 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," some 50,000 lots, spread over 204 square miles, all platted and roads made, in the barren, treeless Mojave Desert.

Interestingly, California City was launched within a month of Shasta Vista, and both were by real estate developers from the L.A. area, with its wild realty-hustling history. Perhaps influences were at work — both terrestrial and celestial — that made it a time of unrealistic development visions. Like it and others, the residency-challenged, one-time de facto rec-land of Mt. Shasta Vista seemed destined to become yet another place time would forget. Or try to.

Trying to tune out local politics

Eventually, this suited more than a few Vista residents just fine, those who decided to stay despite all, or had bought homes from those who bailed. And especially those who grabbed parcels and threw together modest shelters on the fly. Various dwellers, doing their best to tune out the long-simmering gnarly politics, grew accustomed to the rich solitude; it felt luxurious, like enjoying a hundred or more acres. The sometimes prevailing tranquility more than compensated for the place's many shortcomings. They relished the park-like setting that had inspired its initial incarnation as a happy-go-lucky co-op campground. So few residents amid so much undeveloped high-desert woodlands proved delightful.

But it was terrible for the myriad investors and speculators. They found it next to impossible to sell holdings that no longer held appeal beyond their low price, unspoiled seclusion and sweeping vistas. Such parcels, no longer dedicated to camping yet requiring substantial outlays to live on them legally, found few interested who were even remotely convention-minded.

And, again, it didn't help sales efforts that the place, from its conception, had gotten such a bad rap and been resented by longtime locals for having closed off and taken over their age-old backwoods stomping grounds. Or that it was seen as perpetually problematic by county authorities. Many of the latter no doubt played soothsayer at its start: "It'll be a disaster, mark my words; wait and see. Want to bet? I'll even give you two-to-one."

The county had rejected the misbegotten infant left squalling on its doorstep. The more aware land shopper sensed the place's bleak and contentious history, alert to the not-always-subtle negative vibes that often saturated the land.

The omnipresent signs shouting "No This," "No That," and "No The Other Thing" offered a subtle clue there was trouble in paradise.

Chapter 9

'Just a matter of time'

Many parcel owners held onto their apparent boondoggle, even so: in a dime, in a dollar. They doubled down year after year, paying the piper in the guise of the annual assessment through gritted teeth, determined not to take a bath on what had at first seemed a sure thing. In denial, they thought their investments would surely pay off someday, that the lots would eventually prove a nice place for someone, just not them. A place where one could build a home or a vacation cabin and enjoy the camaraderie of congenial, fellow part-time and full-time backwoods dwellers once the place finally got itself together.

After ages, at last convinced the place seemed doomed to be permanently off-kilter, with no chance of ever righting itself, many at long last bit the bullet. As fed-up and disappointed owners unloaded the clunkers en masse, resigned to breaking even or even taking a loss, cheap parcels flooded the market.

But there were often few takers, despite the late 1970s' $1,250 to $1,750 asking price and easy terms, roughly the same price as they'd paid when adjusted for inflation. Those who would buy them were often themselves only other disinterested professional investors, making small side bets on the place and parking a bit of extra cash a while, hoping the right suc — er, buyer, would come along. Or they'd be other uninformed casual investors, infected with the latest round of speculation fever, stoked at buying so much land for so little: "It was so cheap, I couldn't resist; and that mountain view..."

Age-old dream

But beyond such calculated dice rolling, impulsive moves and hopeful, "some day" thinking, there was always a sprinkling of land buyers psyched at the notion of — novel idea — actually moving onto the parcels. Some like me were still willing to build to code (albeit grudgingly) to fulfill the age-old dream of becoming country gentry, flirting with respectability. To us, 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. Some may have hoped to establish home businesses over time (despite the county imposing severe restrictions or bans on them), or to commute to work from home, the Vista becoming something of a rural bedroom community.

But entirely too many, at least to the thinking of the teeth-gnashing, ax-grinding remnant of code-legal residents, seemed only to be looking for cheap land for instant residency. People who wanted to avoid city rent with its steep first and last plus security, or have a hideout in the outlands, dodging child support or an outstanding arrest warrant or two.

Even if it meant roughing it — drastically downscaling one's living standard by hauling in a derelict mobile home or trailer, setting up a tent or fashioning a ramshackle structure from scrounged materials. And then generating, at best, primitive cesspools as a non-ecological waste-disposal means. And have to haul in every drop of water. Plus, needing to fire up a generator or go without go-juice. For even if a power line teasingly skirted their property line, it couldn't be hooked up to a structure without first satisfying the blizzard of code requirements.

It definitely made for primitive living on primitive land. But the heady sense of freedom it offered one for so little seemed worth it, at least for a while. They'd cross their fingers and hope the powers that be would let them be. But with the eighties' still-prevailing, heavy-handed mindset of the Vista's conforming residents and strict code enforcement 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, kept mesmerizing all sorts for all sorts of reasons. As the land kept seducing detached speculators, hopeful investors and would-be residents alike, a distinct pattern in owner relations with the parcels emerged.

Sporadic cycles of short-lived buying enthusiasm were followed by maybe a curious camp visit or two, and then a chronic absence of any interest whatsoever: Ephemeral fantasies fostered by the dreamy land had been played out. This was commonly the lot owners' dance. Even after decades, hundreds of parcels still clung to their relatively pristine states, apart from the occasional campfire stone ring and driveway roughed in, perhaps a dead tree or two cut down, with slash pile left, a bit of brush cleared, an outhouse built if really ambitious, maybe a soon-abandoned trailer. But they kept attracting new impulsive buyers, wowed by the land's trifecta of allure: generously sized wooded parcels, sweeping mountain views and dirt-cheap prices.

Powerless to resist such a bargain

Similarly, the long succession of casual small investors and speculators soon lost interest in the first beguiling lots and any belief in their profitability. Some parcels doubtless changed hands a half-dozen times or more over the years, always attracting new buyers powerless to resist the bargain properties. It was simply a place that, to all appearances, was safely hidden from many of the more aggravating aspects of modern life.

The massive mountain's regal presence — it was right there — kept emanating its powerful, almost palpable force and attracting new buyers. Those leaning toward new age thinking felt it could overstimulate a person's upper chakras if their energies weren't grounded. On arrival, the thinking went, such people had imaginations and visualization powers overamped; the mind reeled, bursting with excited fantasies and visions of what all they'd do with the fabulous off-the-beaten-track properties they'd been lucky enough to snag.

In a way, it was California Dreamin' full tilt.

And so the luckless development kept spinning round and round on its own little short-boom, long-bust merry-go-round. Riders reached out for the ever-elusive brass ring of easy country living or fast-turnover profit, while realtors, trying to make their nut by also moving low-end "road kill" properties, supplied the calliope's shrill but hypnotic melody.

___________________

Stymied by a sea of disinterested speculators

And investors feeling nickel-and-dimed

It probably can't be overstressed: Competing with the place's host of other drawbacks — water scarcity, lack of power, absence of development plans, often rocky soil and steep-sloping lots, incensed locals, a powerless board and the prohibitive cost of meeting code — was, though subtle, in a way one of the most significant drawbacks of all: the adverse effect that the teaming sea of detached absentee lot owners had on the place. They'd sunk money into it and became disheartened, some bitter and hostile. So much so, they became indifferent to the needs of the subdivision if it were to ever save itself from itself, or felt it was impossible. Not if it meant forking over one more cent beyond what they were already forced to pony up each year. Such powerful collective discontent reinforced and locked in the sense of futility that infused the terminally wayward, albeit charming, development.

They were chagrined to realize they'd gotten stuck with a soft-market lemon that, adding insult to injury, required the annual shelling out through the owner-association assessment; it left them feeling nickel-and-dimed to death. They felt as if they were paying for the upkeep of roads they themselves never drove on, just so a few other lot owners could live here. Meanwhile, lot values stagnated. Such a feeling of acute buyers' remorse undermined the most determined efforts of civic-minded residents to salvage the foundering place's onetime promise and set it on a more solid footing.

Aside from all the other problems, how could Vista ever move forward when 90% of the absentee owners harbored such indifference and apathy toward redeeming the place? Not if it meant sinking more money into it through special assessments to fund project proposals. Not even if a project, like creating a modest community center, might increase parcel values, making the place more livable and thus parcels more desirable and easier to sell. That's how jaundiced and cynical absentee lot holders came to feel towards the luckless subdivision.

To them, the place was a money pit, pure and simple.

Countless lot owners lost whatever faith they might've once held in the Vista and its potential to be anything other than the chaotic, infrastructure-shy disaster area that many of its few residents seemed to perversely prefer, for it left such an embarrassment of undeveloped, park-like land around them that the thoughtful, stuck investors had so generously provided.

Not another red cent...

Those who opted to keep the parcels despite everything, or tried to unload them but couldn't at a reasonable price, along with the latest round of new, soon-disillusioned owners, felt they were burdened with, bluntly, lame-ass properties in an ass-backwards development.

For what little it mattered, the annual membership assessment was far less than other regional rural subdivisions' (with the possible exception of next door's Juniper Valley). When I arrived in the late 1970s, the annual cost was about $20. (By 2025, it had grown to $300; while definitely having become ouchy, it was still easily one of the cheapest — nearby Lake Shastina's annual hit was some $2,200.) But no matter. They still felt shaken down for the latest assessment each September. Many no doubt felt like trailer-park mobile-home owners: The structure was theirs, but they had to pony up rent every month on the space it perched on lest it be seized in foreclosure... in the Vista's case, by the Mt. Shasta Vista Property Owners Association. Ironically, since every lot owner was a member, in some weird way it was like foreclosing on oneself.

Cynics thought the whole setup smacked of being a racket.

Left for dead

Perhaps predictably, due to the many absentee parcel holders' pronounced disenchantment with the stuck-in-the-mud place — "left for dead" in another phrase of the realty world's stark, dark-humor insider parlance — the association often suffered late annual payments and nonpayments. Initial optimism for the place had long since evaporated, and as a growing share of absentee owners became reluctant to fork over every year, the wording on the annual billing statement got a mite testy. Key words in large black boldface letters defied ignoring the association's demand for prompt payment. They practically shouted:

PAY WITHIN 30 DAYS TO AVOID SEVERE

PENALTY OR FORECLOSURE

Things were obviously a far cry from the lighthearted communication of earlier times, with its merry spiels of carefree vacationing and cheerful visions of retiring to the enchanted land bye 'n' bye. Current circumstances had taken a dreary, hard, no-nonsense turn. The reason: Board members were grappling with how to keep enough revenue coming in to cover the constant maintenance needs of the 66 miles of cinder roads. Roads that would otherwise return to nature — and then have angry visiting owners hounding them to get on the ball, or they'd refuse to pay. They were in a pickle, a Catch-22, a damned if they did and damned if they didn't situation, stuck between a rock and a hard place...

But such chilly exhortations only seemed to encourage some to finally blow off paying altogether. They're daring me not to pay, huh? Well, hell, I think I'll take them up on that; they can have that damn parcel back... worthless piece of crap; why I ever bought into the screwy lotus land it I'll never know... 'FUBAR Acres' would be a better name for the friggin' place... mumble grumble...

Sometimes iffy roads

As more people moved in, legally or otherwise, and the endless, fragile cinder roads took on increased wear and tear, the one-person road crew was often unable to service them all. And perhaps none, anywhere, up to the immaculate zen standards of earlier, simpler times. A time when there were far fewer residents and less than a hundredth the traffic. A time when the back roads seemed to encourage one to drive at a mosey and unwind from the highway and drink in the pleasant scenery that hundreds of empty, unspoiled wooded lots provided. But the roads were fragile: One good gully-washer of a rainstorm could wash away the loose cinder topping and cut hazardous deep mini canyons into the sand beneath it on downhill stretches, even if it had been groomed to perfection the day before.

A further crimp in the idyll of Vista living: The roads proved irresistible to mischievous kids, both locals and visiting grandchildren of over-indulgent residents of the playground-less place. They gouged donuts in the deep, freshly deposited cinders while roaring on their two-stroke chainsaws-on-wheels known as dirt bikes, creating abrupt, jarring driving dips for vehicles and remedial work for the already overtaxed roadman.

Again, this led more owners —especially residents —to protest paying for roads that weren't being kept up — at least 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, off Sheep Rock. It costs several thousand dollars a year to maintain, especially with so many residents and visitors ignoring efforts to make it a downhill-only road, marked by a wrong-way sign at its base. Constant steep uphill driving — usually to avoid extra miles to reach one's place — keeps tearing it apart, wheels scrambling for traction and gouging deep ruts.

Before 2015, some sparsely settled or unsettled regions might've never seen a road truck in a decade or more. And then, finally, often only after some visiting owner, driving 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 reimbursement for the tow bill. Such ire would finally stir harried board members to scramble to address the neglected stretches of its more remote hinterlands — and raise the annual assessment fee to cover the increased workload, along with rising material costs, wages, insurance, workers' comp, gas...

Problems like these seldom made for happy campers.

This, in dramatic contrast to the first visiting owners. Those who so relished the visits to their parcels from 10 hours away that they eventually moved on to them, dropping anchor with the infectiously high spirits prevailing in the late sixties through early seventies, when, as Buffy Sainte-Marie would sing, "God is alive, magic is afoot." A time when waves of feel-good euphoria might wash over one out of the blue, even if your drug of choice was only Valium or a good stiff martini.

Chapter 10

Raise high the roofbeams, carpenters

At its start, many Vista lots felt almost pristine (some still do). Sure, there were a few old rotting stumps from lumber baron Abner Weed’s having scythed the area’s tall timber early in the 1900s. The bulldozing required to build the road network scarred the fronts of some parcels. The KRCE development northeast of Yreka was born similarly, re-purposing tree-harvested lands into rec lots and possible future home sites for nature-hungry city-living refugees. Most Vista parcels were left undisturbed for generations after the tree harvest and the later creation of roads, though, and rebounded as part of a rich, fragile high-desert woodland ecosystem. One that could enchant anybody able to appreciate its subtle, almost primeval charm. One who didn't need towering trees and crystal streams before respecting and resonating with nature.

The land held inviting groves of junipers. Some of the older or withered ones had magical, almost Day-Glo chartreuse moss growing on their northern sides. Velvety lichens grew atop deep-shaded, half-buried boulders. There were riots of delicate, colorful wildflowers in purple, lavender, yellow and red in spring and early summer. And the occasional stands or single towering pine trees. And dramatic rock outcroppings, sometimes perched on by a mountain lion on the lookout for deer meandering through.

Many areas lent a protective atmosphere that invited one to wax poetic over. It struck more than a few as an enchanted realm where time seemed to stand still.

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Ephemeral Shangri-la

Fresh high-desert air, balmy sunshine, often-profound quietude, plus a giddy sense of freedom for being in such secluded backcountry reigned over by the regal mountain... all had combined to inspire excited repeat vacation visits from over 600 miles away, trekking from the bottom of the state to the top. Enough so to move the select handful to chuck city living and retire here to enjoy the blessings of secluded woodland living year-round. And so it was that the place briefly became a residential Shangri-la for every nature-loving retiree making the urban exodus — and who had the bucks to build according to their accustomed living standard, which, happily, more or less coincided with the county's then-rigorously enforced building codes.

But rumor had it that the very earliest comers — among them builders of a simple cabin structure on White Drive and another builder, far more ambitious, of the Spencer house on Heinzelman Drive — hadn't even needed building permits to construct their respective cabin and multi-story home. Code enforcement had apparently yet to gain a solid foothold in the more remote hinterlands. If true, this may have set the precedent for subsequent owner-builders who felt they needed no more than their own permission to build whatever they wanted on their lots. And the building department was forever left playing catch-up, saying in effect, "Hey, you need a permit now... we mean it. Seriously..."

No more sketchy subdivisions

By the early seventies, California legislators had become so leery of unregulated developments like Mt. Shasta Vista that they passed a flurry of landmark regulations known as the Subdivision Map Act to henceforth cover new subdivisions. " ... [A] new attitude of comprehensive planning and environmental protection emerged,” wrote realty attorney James Longtin. The Vista, along with other rural subdivisions in the region, had barely slipped in under the wire before regulatory changes made it impossible to spin out such bare-bones, quick-buck, often problematic rural developments any longer.

After it passed in 1974, developers were required to first obtain local approval and make legally binding commitments to provide all basic infrastructure for any new residential subdivision proposed. If approved, they or the legal management arm would be required over time to pay for public improvements such as parks, playgrounds, and community centers. It seemed that our place, though grandfathered in, came to feel intense pressure from the county — in turn feeling the heat for being under the gun of the state, with its demanding new standards — whenever an owner wanted to build on their parcel in the primitive development so unabashedly bereft of the now-mandatory infrastructure requirements.

Would-be Vistan homesteaders who believed in dutifully following the rules found themselves jumping through all sorts of complicated, time-consuming and expensive hoops to gain the right to reside on their lots — the first and perhaps most daunting, 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 install a septic system and shell out another substantial sum of money to have electrical lines extended.

All before one could apply for a building permit.

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Who’d want to live in the middle of nowhere?

To create or not to create a 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 okayed would mean several long drives out to inspect and sign off on the numerous construction phases, and they had better things to do.

Jumping ahead, disillusioned residents had better things to do than foster the dubious notion of building community. Polarized energies, bearing remarkably cynical attitudes and short fuses, discouraged it at every turn. More and more, people moved here to do their own thing and be left alone: hermits united. (Or disunited, in this case.)

It often seemed residents would work together for the common good reluctantly, at best. A visit to a monthly board meeting, where the place's buzzsaw, contentious dysfunction (or its flip side, an apathetic, what's-the-use? mindset) was on full display, offered a quick cure for anyone nurturing some misguided notion of trying to help out the misbegotten place.

Any vision beyond the usual volunteer fire department and rummage sales to support it — maybe, if really ambitious, working to secure a grant to make the area safer from wildfires — didn’t seem to fit in with the dirt-cheap lots and their pronounced lack of infrastructure. One, of course, paid dearly for such amenities in your more developed subdivisions — paved roads, electricity, water, gas, sewage, fire department, security force. When you bought land at a steal, expectations were low to nonexistent. Some people, craving natural solitude more than anything, bought here expressly because it lacked such trappings. To their way of thinking, any hum of a structured rural community, residents scrambling to get on the same page, too often resulted in everyone getting in everyone else's business and cannibalizing each other's energy, resulting in the age-old, elusive dream of tranquil rustic living remaining but a wistful imagining.

Bewitched by the realm's charms

Not so for that first-wave of affluent modern-day pioneers of yore. They were so bewitched by the realm’s charms during simpler, if more rigid and constrictive, times that they had invested their sweat, fortunes and fondest hopes into making the Vista their new home, sweet home.

Though ostensibly open to others joining them if they met code, they'd essentially given birth to a semi-exclusive enclave of urbane respectability, an embryonic hideaway sanctuary of decent folk determined to enjoy living far from the madding crowd. It would be a haven where they might enjoy their retirement years living amid the deep quitude of nature... while, of course, working to keep the riffraff out, which they felt was their legal right and, so, moral duty. As a song lyric of the time went, they were “... going where the living is easy, and the people are kind."

Kind of something, anyway, as it turned out.

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'Welcome all'

Vs. 'Up the drawbridge!'

Many among the second wave of new residents (actually more of a trickle), like those of the first wave, were grateful to be here. They were swept up in the grand pioneering adventure of it all: living in the recently opened scenic land, with so few others around, after having long endured teaming city and suburban life, glad to share their good fortune with whoever might arrive to help further populate the empty lots. They offered cheerful assistance, wanting to see the fledgling backwoods community flourish. To them, each new denizen of the sparse backwoods settlement was welcome as rain in dry times during the heady late-frontier days of the 1970s.

These more outgoing, live-and-let-live neighbors were usually residents of dwellings whose original inhabitants had fled once the charm of Vista living began to lose its luster, and what they'd once deemed a rare gem seemed to be suspiciously morphing into cheap paste. The second-generation newcomers hadn't experienced the latter's challenges in complying with exacting codes only to have others blatantly ignore them, eroding the place's short-lived cachet as an idyllic retirement enclave. And they didn't bear battle scars from the earlier rampant vandalism and theft by mischievous and malicious local offspring during the earliest, visiting-only years.

They were more happy-go-lucky, eager to share their good fortune and excitement over being here. Some would invite newcomers like me to share an afternoon 'drinky-poo' on their front porch, and offer to freeze water in repurposed milk jugs to help one weather 100-degree F. heatwaves — even generously invite this unprepared newcomer to winter in their vacant 12 x 16-ft. cabin.

Not their kind

Others, almost invariably among the first wave, weren't nearly so welcoming. Too many newcomers were clearly not their kind. Since there were no guardrails in place and no finely tuned CC&Rs to guide the place, each new arrival was instead summarily vetted. Bearing a no-nonsense stance, they'd quickly deem each newcomer either one who would conform to the code and fit in, reinforcing the nascent respectable community, or one who would stick out like a sore thumb and undermine the place. They felt the latter needed to be dealt with in a gloves-off manner, with all due haste, surgically excised from the realm like a dread, malignant tumor.

Whereas they had done the heavy lifting and fought battles of attrition against the sometimes-hostile local population, conforming newcomers felt free to relax and enjoy the fruits of the former's labor. They savored the moment and embraced the place's innate tranquility. They relished the deep seclusion and appreciated those around them, regardless of a newcomer's circumstances or intentions.

Even though many firstcomers ground their teeth and poisoned their minds over how nonconforming undesirables were trespassing on their magical hideaway, such bad energies were blunted by the lingering afterglow of the exultant pioneering spirit vibe still lingering in the air. It was a vibe that the more mindful felt, a sense of wonder and gratitude for having boldly carved out places to live in Mt. Shasta's backwoods. It seemed a situation where anyone who valued quiet living amid nature — or what at first appeared to be quiet living — treasured and relaxed into it.

But if the place were going through one of its periodic flare-ups, meltdowns or calamities, then they'd have to try weathering the storm. Sometimes they succeeded, other times, if some terrible incident like a shooting occurred, they bailed in record time.

Instant homestead,

Furious neighbors

More's the pity, but the first and remaining residents were no longer blissfully unwinding in retirement. Their long-anticipated golden years were getting contaminated with baser metals. They became bent into pretzels under the endless trials they had to endure, just when they thought they could finally relax after a lifetime of hard work and enjoy their remaining time on earth in tranquility. Unlike their former fellow founding neighbors, who, disillusioned and alarmed, sold out on the wings of the rapidly unraveling scene, they were made of tougher stuff: they dug in hard. Here for the duration, come hell or high water, any peace of mind they might have briefly savored had vanished in the sudden struggle to try to regain sovereignty over the realm they'd forged.

They scrambled to pull up the drawbridge and throw away the welcome mat, even as the entrance signs, in supreme irony, kept welcoming one and all. But, more in keeping with residents' less-than-friendly attitude, the big signs just beyond the now-hollow greeting snarled at drivers, as if daring them to enter and promising dire consequences if they did without good reason. They reflected the trials and tribulations the firstcomers had endured, facing a torrent of challenges: the hostility of the larger community resenting the place's very existance; over 1,000 absent lot holders, many seemingly jealous or mad, or indifferent to the place's fate; the constant intrusion by the idly curious and sometimes mischief-minded; and now instant homesteaders, thinking to declare themselves home sweet home without even paying the price of admission.

The earliest residents had been bound and determined to try arresting this intolerable trend by flexing no-nonsense authoritarian muscle and kicking serious butt. They'd get the unruly rabble thrown out — and, by god, keep the buggers out. Talk of installing entrance gates was probably mulled over but rejected as too impractical and problematic (the same as growers, facing epidemics of thievery, busts and hold-ups, would consider a half-century later).

They had to save their rural outpost somehow from getting overrun by the rabble, undesirables with the unmitigated gall to invade their would-be respectable rural enclave on the cheap. Especially those revved-up younger folks of threadbare means... most especially those pot-smoking hippies and beer-guzzling redneck bikers, plus the peculiar new hybrid, the pot-smoking, beer-guzzling redneck-hippie, all of whom they thought they'd finally left behind in the cities.

Girding their loins

They knew such instant settlers would be worlds away from ever deferring to their tight-wound, conventional ways and would thus prove disastrous. That is, if they'd given them a leg to stand on, which they didn't. They mobilized to get them evicted post-haste, determined to nip the insufferable situation in the bud. Girding their loins, they took on a sea of trouble with a ruthless full-court determination: damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. They demanded that every property holder earn the right to live on the land, just as they had, 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 for some reason, well, tough; the place obviously isn't for you, so don't even think about it, bub.

But word of the cheap, secluded parcels was spreading: The floodgates of land-search postings opened wide once realtors started advertising lots for sale cheap by the dozen on the coast-to-coast multi-listing network. So, despite residents' best efforts to deter further would-be, unqualified newbies from invading their now-endangered paradise and insist that existing miscreants either conform pronto or scram, it would prove a losing battle. But they never gave up; the home guard sailed clear around the bend, permanently unhinged. Nursing boundless rage as they tried throwing their weight around to enforce their zero-tolerance stance, in a way, they became no different than the wider community, who'd been so intolerant of them.

While some among the pretenders to the realm, again, no doubt had the bucks to build an approved shelter, they instead opted to go outlaw in effect, not bothering to seek a county bureaucrat's blessing for what they did on their own secluded property. Why sink a fortune building on cheap land? It didn't compute. Others, of more modest means, were content to set up long-term tents, pull in a trailer or mobile home, or build a little tumbledown shanty from scrap material. Regardless of their situation, they'd hang their hats and figure they were home.

The firstcomers lumped them all together. It's not much of an exaggeration to say they dismissed them as little better than criminals. They were a viral infection threatening the health and well-being of the realm's legitimate tax-paying residents that must be eradicated at all costs.

Chapter 11

Brazen newcomers

I suspect that the brazen newcomers must've been either oblivious or indifferent to the established residents. Why should they care what a few scattered, uptight retirees, many living miles away, thought of them or their presence amid the giant remote checkerboard of mostly empty lots? It must've been either "What's the big deal?" or "Mind your own business." Many likely weren't unduly concerned over the county ordinances they were openly defying, having tuned out the barking signs as paper-tiger bluff and toothless desperation. It seemed that living on remote land could quickly dull the notion of conforming to what were considered clearly unreasonable demands. It was the legal gobbledygook of city-living mindsets, born of the over-complicated realities of so many living so closely together. News flash: Mt. Shasta Vista wasn't a city.

The happy illusion of one's secluded Vista property being a stand-alone lot, existing independently of any outer control — rather than in fact one among 1,641 lots, each ostensibly subject to a sea of county, state and federal regulations — was too seductive not to succumb to. In fact, it might've been said that one's sense of well-being and peace of mind depended on it.

So it went that the intimidating 'No This,' 'No That,' and 'No The Other Thing' signs were dismissed as unenforceable bluff. Well-heeled residents were trying to bogart the place by demanding everyone conform to their la-di-dah living standards or else. But more and more, newcomers went their own way, "doing their own thing", that vital watch phrase from the Sixties being taken to heart by greater numbers with every passing year. Society was unwinding and jettisoning the former times' fading tense, authoritarian mindset of rigid conformity — again, the lingering vestige of the horrific World War II period that bent the world's collective mindset so grievously out of shape, it took decades to recover from it.

When errant newcomers were rudely awakened after an unpleasant confrontation or two with compliant residents who'd gone nuclear and summoned all-business county enforcers, it no doubt did little to make them want to comply even if they could afford to. The firstcomers, in their scramble to preserve the predominantly La La Land-ish, country club enclave from rack and ruin, had adopted such a furious stance against the newcomers who dared to ignore the codes that the more rebelliously-minded land buyers, scoping their overwound headspace, thought, Well, screw 'em, uptight bastards; we'll take our chances.

Fraught, distraught and overwrought

While the firstcomers had obediently conformed to every last residency requirement and expected every would-be resident to do the same, it seemed such rules soon became an endangered species. With a growing spirit of anarchy emerging amid fast-changing times, the place grew progressively dysfunctional, embroiled in escalating battles over lifestyle and code compliance.

The way its citizen deputies prowled the roads, looking for wrongdoing wherever it lurked, the place at times must've felt like it was practically under martial law. The sad truth was that their fledgling one-time safe-haven backwoods retirement enclave was turning into its own madding crowd, and they were losing it.

Not all newcomers were probably brazen anarchists. Actually, maybe very few at first. Some were, by and large, no doubt law-abiding folks, only nurturing hopes of living out simpler versions of tranquil country living due to the lack of wherewithal to meet the county's dauntingly expensive code-compliance demands. They probably couldn't believe that anybody would actually enforce the sign's growling warnings in such an isolated area. Or that people living miles away could get so rattled over how others were living on their own property.

So, while they might've had no real intent to buck the system per se, their fondest dreams of living the good life were being blown to smithereens, receiving an antagonistic 'unwelcome wagon' visit from their hitherto unknown neighbors from hell, an overbearing delegation of high-and-mighty hard-asses who swooped down on them out of nowhere and read them the riot act.

Others were thicker-skinned. More ungovernable and less concerned with rendering unto Caesar, they dug in hard and kicked back, giving back as good as they got. In the early 1990s, an unsanctioned neighbor with such pronounced confrontational tendencies had just been given his walking papers from the board. One day, he spotted the board president driving about. He began aggressively tailgating him for miles along the otherwise empty back roads, sticking to him like glue. While the man no doubt must've become alarmed on looking in his rear-view and seeing he'd gained the ire of some crazed, bearded madman, one might've concluded he was only reaping what he and earlier board members had sown for copping such an intolerant attitude.

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Lookin' for a home in the country

Flashing back again to the early to mid 1970s... After the first wave or two of settlers had arrived, following the few late sixties' early birds, a sprinkling of maybe 40 to 50 year-round, still mostly compliant residences dotted the landscape. While the code-defiant trend had yet to gain a serious foothold, the momentum, matching the dizzying speed of changing times, was no doubt building. For the genie was out of the bottle: There was cheap land near Mt. Shasta waiting to be snapped up and settled on by anyone not too concerned about some distant bureaucracy's notions of how they should live on it. Various and sundry leaped at the chance to make the Vista’s sprawling juniper boonies their home, too.

In the bigger picture, the idea of one not just visiting but actually living in nature had taken off. “Head for the hills, brothers!” was the clarion call as city-weary souls from every walk of life joined the Back to Nature movement. For some, it would prove just a few years' respite from urban or suburban living; for others, like me, it would become an enduring new lifestyle.

As nature-loving people's interest in making the great escape from the frustrating limitations of city living soared, the Vista took on something of the air of a time-release Oklahoma Land Rush. In leaps and bounds, excited new arrivals discovered the affordable backwoods, staked their claim, and, in a flash, settled in or tried to. With the place having no master plan and the once-iron grip on code enforcement destined to gradually loosen, each newcomer went for it, winging it, flying blind, to develop their own little piece of terra firma.

The area experienced fitful, frenzied bursts of house construction, and as time went on, fewer and fewer to code. Sounds of hammering, whining circular saws and power generators filled the air. I'd guesstimate that by the mid to late seventies, maybe 70 to 80 residences of markedly varied degrees of ambition and code compliance were dotting the remote woodlands — a woodlands that, as became more evident with the passing of time, seemed to exist in its own special world.

Those opting to ignore code requirements and play it by ear in the frenetic scramble to settle were no doubt intent on getting a toehold while the getting was good. It was always harder to tell someone they couldn't be there after they'd fenced off the property, built a shelter, moved in, lock, stock and barrel, and posted their own signs, 'Posted No Trespassing' and 'Private Property Keep Out' being popular.

The territorial imperative was indeed something to be reckoned with.

With so many hypnotized by the land in a way that might preclude any more practical concerns, a strange wonderland was emerging, one growingly at variance with mundane reality despite the most dedicated and frenzied efforts of its outraged, compliant residents to arrest the insufferable trend in its tracks.

Spirit of 'anything goes'

Gains traction

It's unknown whether some of the seriously invested firstcomer residents considered revising the CC&Rs. Conceivably, it might've enabled a more orderly growth into a standard community, one in which things were more specifically spelled out, and one knew they'd have to toe the line and don winter wear to deal with the blizzard of health and building codes. This, for better or worse, was the accepted reality of places like nearby Lake Shastina... and, again, most any American city or suburb in the country.

But not in the Vista, exceptional problem child that it was. Though first settled by conventional law-abiding citizens, it was the rebellious sixties and early seventies. Many long-accepted ways were being seriously questioned and challenged. It was inevitable that the era's spirit of Anything Goes would soon burst their happy bubble, mindsets likely locked in the Nifty Fifties, like it didn't exist.

Perhaps the situation was aided and abetted by the early vacationers themselves. They'd built up such an exuberant, if law-abiding, spirit on the land, a freedom-mindedness that it might've eclipsed concern for social sensitivity and mundane realities. That is, beyond conforming to code, each being determined to be king or queen of their own regal wilderness mini-realm, and doing whatever it took to preserve it and the surrounding land — even turn in a nonconforming neighbor. Still, one wonders whether such a CC&R revision might've helped the place gain a firmer foothold.

A moot point, however. With 98% of the property owners absent and living all over the country — many by then nursing serious buyer's remorse — they would've realized they'd never get the two-thirds vote needed to tackle such a costly and time-consuming legal restructuring. And, besides, they were retirees. Once building their new homes was a done deal, their days of heavy lifting were over, beyond tackling such weighty issues as whether to paint the living room taupe or beige, or go with the 2-to-3 or 4-to-6 person-capacity Jacuzzi.

Or so they'd hoped.

Bogarting Paradise

The more cynical view, again, might've held that the first year-round residents realized constructing such full-on homes amid a sea of raw parcels once a camp land was bound to create thorny dilemmas. But they didn't care. They had theirs for whatever remained of their time on earth; let the chips fall where they may. And, anyhow, since the lots were in fact zoned for single-family residency, the new dwellers must've thought, What's the big deal? They're zoned for legal residences; camping was only a first-generation use of the parcels.

They surely would've realized that if enough lot holders didn't join their ranks, the overwhelming majority of raw parcels, ruined for camp retreats, would be left in limbo, languishing undeveloped, unattractive as building sites due to the extra construction costs and remoteness. Known that the market for seemingly unusable lots would all but disappear.

Maybe the more thoughtful yet pragmatic among them were basically, "No question about it, it's a shame. But, hey, it was always buyer beware. Everybody realized that at one point, it became every lot owner for himself."

In any event, the way they saw it, they'd earned the right to claim the place for themselves, along with any other lot holders willing to build up to snuff. They'd complied with every last golblamed, nit-picky, pricey, time-consuming, peace-of-mind-frying legal residency requirement the bureaucracy had seen fit to throw at them. And wasn't the developer himself who first suggested retiring here, "bye 'n' bye"? Blame him if the parcels no longer served as the backwoods retreats you bought them to be.

And blame him they would. But the residents, too, for taking over the place and sometimes being less than gracious and accommodating to visiting owners, still hoping to eke out a pleasant camping experience on their properties — properties whose useful shelf life had apparently just expired. Instead, they might've rubbernecked them as they drove by, not stopping to say howdy, or, at best, offer a rushed exchange and maybe a few pointed words like, "You know, you can only camp here 30 days, don't you?" that could burst their happy bubble and leave them feeling almost like intruders on their own land.

'And if we can't get you out...'

In any event, perhaps not unreasonably, the legal, tax-paying homeowners reigning over the land expected prompt county code-enforcement response to keep their newborn rural community respectable. Later, while still loaded for bear even as the system began failing them, their resolve shifted to venomous retribution: And if we can't get you out, then, by god, we'll do our damnedest to make your lives here a living hell.

For better or worse, the shape-shifting, neither-this-nor-that place was all along a blank canvas. One to be painted on and painted over, and painted over again to whatever the latest in an ever-changing succession of residents and visiting campers aspired the Vista to be (if anything). Each of the more dominant and involved inhabitants in a given period advanced their own notion of how things should be, trying to convince others that it was the best, or the only, way to go.

At the same time, the rest just wanted to be left alone to rusticate in peace. The situation was maybe akin to excited kids building a sandcastle on the shore until the high tide rushes in and, in a twinkling, erases even the most ambitious efforts. Later, new castles are built by others, likewise unmindful of the next rising tide. Or like creating an image on the then-popular Etch-a-Sketch toy, and, with a shake of the hand, even the most elaborate design vanishes if it never existed.

Dime a dozen

While legal requirements for homebuilding ostensibly fell within the sphere of county, state and federal authorities working together — which ordinances and codes the development's future parcel owners were then ostensibly obligated to conform to — these were never easy to enforce by the understaffed team tasked with such matters. A tiny dwelling amid a sprawling 66-mile labyrinth of private unpaved roads in the middle of nowhere was not easy to track. Or even be aware of as existing, short of poring over satellite photos, which, of course, in time became the county's standard procedure for boosting property taxes for lot improvements.

Once, my neighbor Steve found that his annual property tax assessment had gone up. He inquired why and was told it was because he'd installed a new metal roof on his seasonal cabin, constituting an improvement. He successfully argued that it wasn't an improvement, but only replacement maintenance for an existing structure. They lowered the assessment back.

Perhaps being a smidge over-helpful, the livid code-compliant residents burned up the phone lines, screaming bloody murder over the latest noncompliance they uncovered, expecting a rapid response as if the fate of the world depended on it — as, indeed, the fate of their own private world did.

Tall order

But it was a tall order. In the fast-changing times, with the heady sense of freedom living in the secluded back-country enclave gave new dwellers, compliant and 'outlaw' alike — often no one else living within a quarter mile or more in a county too poor to hire enough workforce to enforce its own codes should enough choose to ignore them — something of a pronounced libertarian, even anarchistic, spirit took root. Especially among the system-defiant, minimalist-lifestyle baby boomers, who, fast on the wings of earlier waves, felt pulled to the mountain like a tractor beam on TV's "Star Trek: The Next Generation."

They weren't about to be told how to live on their own property by a bunch of uptight old-fogey fuddy-duddy busybodies.

Parcels, once losing their brief upscale-rustic cachet of respectability after being irreversibly compromised for retreat use, began flooding the market, a dime a dozen. Excited land-hunters mightn't stop to wonder why they were going so cheap. It may have struck them as one of the last few feel-good land deals around, and they'd been lucky enough to discover the gems before someone else. While it might've seemed an extraordinary deal, too good to be true, land-hungry buyers may have liked to believe that such pricing only reflected how things should be. (Affordable living; what a concept.)

Chapter 12

Doing your own thing

Such a free-wheeling spirit might’ve been fine, had the place 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 period had run its course, and the tiny group of legal residents was now frantically trying to keep the place code-compliant. But the varied crowd of instant homesteaders was slowly but surely trickling in, psyched to do their own thing. Not one bought into the retirement community's notions of how things should be done.

During the radical late 60s to early 70s — as different generations, headspaces, lifestyles, incomes, awareness levels, land-use intents and varying respect for the rule of law threw themselves together in one glorious mess within the giant cookie-cutter of a bare-bones subdivision— it often seemed as though the only thing everyone agreed on was to disagree with everyone else.

The growing unwillingness of so many to build to code was of course driven by a refusal to appease the powers that be, if it meant having to spend a fortune one didn't have before being able to create even a modest living shelter on one's own land. The ensuing rebellion against building codes viewed as oppressive tore to shreds what little of the place's threadbare social fabric and sense of community had been knitted. It sparked the long-pitched battles between the staunchly compliant who stayed, braced for battle, and the merrily (and not so merrily) rebellious who arrived and likewise dug in hard. During those astonishingly polarized times, the former viewed the latter as illegal land squatters, deserving the bum's rush, while the latter viewed the former as uptight control freaks with too much money and a serious need to chill.

Many elements made for a place so festering with irreconcilable differences that it effectively sabotaged itself to death. A place built on such shaky footing, lacking water, electricity and fine-tuned CC&Rs; a What code?' attitude; an overwhelmed county's inability or unwillingness to enforce the codes effectively; contentious energies aimed at it by disgruntled locals, resenting it even existed... all were baked into the monumentally unlucky development. Such a laundry list of hindrances all but guaranteed that whatever elusive hopes the more civic-minded residents and concerned property holders might've nurtured for trying to turn the place around were doomed six ways to Sunday from the start.

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The property owners' board, a.k.a. 'the gestapo':

Hardball with a vengeance

Reflecting and amplifying the place's many woes was the Mt. Shasta Vista Property Owners Association (MSVPOA) board of directors. Formed to fulfill the ongoing legal obligations of a nonprofit public-benefit corporation, the board was composed of six elected volunteer landowners serving staggered two-year terms and met monthly. Any lot holder in good standing was eligible to run.

In the earliest years, it mainly focused on road maintenance and signage. For a while, it appointed a "sunshine committee" to send get-well cards to some in their aging circle who had perhaps waited too long to retire and enjoy their golden years. (The stresses of an unpleasant situation had likely aggravated the already fragile health of some.) Since, to be eligible, all board members had to live in approved structures and be in good standing (that is, having paid the annual dues), or at least be current if living elsewhere, the board naturally led the charge in declaring war on the scourge of non-compliance starting to run amok.

Universal health and building code compliance in Vista had been critical, especially for a legal resident who planned to move on and hoped to get a fair price for their place. Once they realized the good ship Vista was sinking fast by the port bow, their outrage was magnified by the bleak situation hitting the money nerve. They knew they'd lose any chance of a reasonable return after all their hard work and expense in creating standard residences, since the place had lost its brief pedigree as an enviable backwoods domain of respectable oldsters. Indeed, maybe it was this, more than being such strict law-and-order zealots per se, that triggered the lion's share of their rage. They wouldn't have wanted to sell and be forced to take a loss had the place remained compliant.

In any event, infuriated board members, in doggedly reporting every violation their minions' dedicated snooping uncovered, developed a stony policy of scorched-earth overreach and ruthless hardball tactics that was destined to become the downer gravity center of the realm for ages.

Serenity now!

Building a fence without a permit? Report the bugger. Thirty-two days camping out? Get that lawless interloper thrown off post-haste. In the course of such efforts, they alienated everyone who hadn't made a similar commitment to adhere to strict code specifications and their enforcement. Sometimes they upset even those who'd bought an approved home. They began to court serious misgivings for having moved into such a squirrelly place. Too late, they realized it was a hornet's nest, an outback zoo where it seemed it was normal for everyone not busy escaping the contentious air, getting drunk or stoned or both, to be gnashing their teeth over one grievance or another.

An all too common lament: "What were we thinking, moving here?"

For decades, the place experienced what many deemed no less than a mini-reign of terror. Various board members and their camp followers went about with such balls-out ruthlessness in confronting miscreants that it was scary. As if possessed, they tried their damnedest through every lawful means possible to stamp out the affliction plaguing the once-was-and-by-damn-and-by-Jesus-will-be-or-should-be-again, serene backwoods enclave of upright, God-fearing, law-abiding citizens... and everyone else could go to blazes.

Ah, the serenity of country living.

It came as no great surprise, then, that such dizzying intolerance made the place undesirable for many to ever consider moving into. Doubtless, it scared away some of your like-minded, would-be code-compliant owner-builders from settling on their lots. Prospective and new buyers heard the war stories from sullen or spitting-mad residents they might approach to ask how they liked living here. And they likely got 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 and residency in the long run, it remained a cause celebre, kept simmering on the 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 local politics" — were scornfully dismissed as do-nothing enablers and so part of the problem.

Man the battle stations

The enforcement system they'd depended on was failing them abominably: It had allowed barbarians to storm the gates... and stay. Shocked over their vision of peaceful retirement and living among kindred souls in the bosom of nature going to hell in a hand basket, some indeed seemed to take a certain grim, warped-out satisfaction in trying to exact a pound of flesh from every transgressor they encountered. For as long as they were still talking to them, they warned them of the dire consequences if they didn't toe the line, and they needed to believe it was true. Even when they knew such threats had become mostly empty bluster, they must've felt that in so freely venting their spleens, they'd make at least some feel so unwelcome that they'd start packing to get away from such whack-job neighbors hell-bent on trying to make their lives miserable.

Some of the more unwitting transgressors, having no stomach for testy confrontations and wars of attrition, indeed then gave up and moved on, feeling stunned and devastated. (I almost became one.) A few knew they were probably courting trouble, but weren't too attached to the lots so cheaply gotten, and so shrugged and left muttering, "Oh well, worth a try." But others, having thicker skins and combative natures, dug in and escalated right along with the would-be enforcers, as if daring them to do their damnedest. They fenced off their places and posted their own gnarly signs. One of the more chilling: beneath a cross-hairs symbol, the stark 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 sometimes bumbling, blustering enforcement crowd; it was an engaging cat-and-mouse game that in some weird way defined their stay and kept the adrenaline flowing.

There was yet another reason for the code-compliant to scramble to battle stations, Klaxon horns blaring to wake the dead: The volunteer board of directors of Mt. Shasta Vista, as a nonprofit mutual-benefit common-interest corporation, was legally required to make a good-faith effort to ensure its association members complied with county, state, and federal laws and ordinances. Technically, the board could be held legally liable if found negligent in enforcing them; board members could be sued.

As if to show there could be no doubt whatsoever that they weren't shirking their duties, they reported every last infraction their relentless searches of wrongdoing unearthed.

But short of extralegal vigilante efforts, the place was entirely at the mercy of the county powers-that-be to keep things copacetic. Once the Vista started derailing, it was still up to the county to try to make things right. As taxpayers and association members, with the board having no legal fining powers, old-guard residents held that the stretched-thin county enforcement agencies were duty-bound to resolve the intolerable situation and return the realm to 100% code compliance. No matter how long or how much effort it took, or how much it might cost, dammit.

For what earthly good were such ordinances if not enforced? Failing that increasingly impossible dream, as the overwhelmed, underfunded 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 indeed signed an agreement to abide by all aforesaid applicable laws, regulations and ordinances when buying a parcel, it was of course buried in a boilerplate sea of legalese fine print. So, beyond the more flagrant scofflaws of latter times were those who, in the rush to pursue elusive dreams of country living, were in blissful ignorance that they'd ever agreed to any such thing. So they were shocked silly when told, often with a fire-breathing intensity, how you couldn't do this or that and don't even think about the other thing.

People came to feel foolish and misguided for having responded to the siren call of affordable land and what at first blush had seemed a relaxed, charming place (apart from those weird barking signs). The place seemed perversely bound and determined to give new meaning to the phrase 'going off the deep end', as if in some bizarro alternative universe and out to earn the Guinness World Record title for 'Most Dysfunctional Subdivision'.

The hardball tactics could radicalize 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 an affordable piece of rural California; they were psyched to do their own thing and be left alone. Maybe over time, they'd try for a well; maybe not. They'd connect with kindred souls who would advise them, "Hey, 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 in the boonies — could make things problematic even with supporting infrastructure and CC&Rs. While it enabled anyone so inclined to buy a bit of rural land affordably — rather than, say, shell out for a far pricier stand-alone 10-, 20-, 40- or 80-acre parcel and then have to deal with road access and maintenance all on their own — the hidden costs of affordable rural subdivision lots could prove steep. People found themselves living amid a potluck assortment of strangers concentrated together in the middle of nowhere and mandated by law to cooperate, yet were isolated far from the high-density town and city lifestyle that made such a plethora of rules and regulations feel normal... and so insufferable in the hinterlands.

It was that intense, super-regulated, soul-numbing urban reality that many had wanted to get away from that led them here in the first place.

Sharing the fantasy

The fact that people wanted their own land — a place where they could live in nature, a respectable distance from others — often made it difficult, given the contentious forces at play, to ever come to terms with the reality that others were sharing it. This, despite being a far thinner density than your typical urban scene. While you often couldn't see another's house from your own property, lending the illusion that you had a larger area to yourself than you actually did, everyone was, for better or worse, inextricably bound together on the mundane level in an overarching legal structure with endless edicts and restrictions. It felt as though the bureaucratic city mindset was surreally superimposed on the untamed countryside. Thus, hopes that the place would offer carefree, independent country living were often dashed.

Steve Dockter was a longtime part-time neighbor-acquaintance a half mile away, in what was likely the oldest structure in our section, built by two brothers from San Francisco. It had been unoccupied for decades and was going to rack and ruin when he bought it and brought it back to life. He led a gypsy existence, living on a sailboat in La Paz, Baja California, half the year and coming and going between here and the coast the rest of the time and working as an itinerant carpenter. His laconic, deliberate manner of speech and droll wit bore a striking resemblance to that of the actor Sam Elliot. One day, he noted wryly, "People need to learn to share the fantasy."

I knew what he meant. While many felt like they owned 20 or 40 acres because of a substantial buffer zone of vacant lots around their parcels, they needed to allow others to enjoy the same illusion while being mindful of their needs and rights. Otherwise, the potential for ceaseless territorial squabbling, indifference and thoughtless behavior could — and often did — result in a chaotic, wild-west social climate that could ruin it for everyone.

No surprise, the Vista's laundry list of neighborhood grievances often seemed endless.

Between barking dogs, roving packs of the same, discharging firearms, blasting stereos, gunning vehicle engines, driving fast and recklessly, vandalizing and stealing road signs, burning toxic materials in backyards rather than recycling or hauling waste 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 no concern over its despoiling the landscape... between all these things eroding blissful country living, there was usually always something or other to raise one's hackles.

'You see, it's complicated'

In sheer exasperation, residents kept up a constant stream of complaints to the mostly powerless board, usually to no avail — and to county authorities. They, in turn, were often entangled in the slow bureaucratic process, with mindsets reflecting the conservative rural ways of an older populace, and usually feeling helplessness, hostility or indifference towards the development their predecessors had shown the poor judgment in approving.

Among those benumbed or burned out on elected public service, there were no doubt those well-practiced in the political 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 kept circling endlessly: "Well, unfortunately, there's not a whole lot we can do," "Sorry, but it's not our problem," "You see, it's complicated," "You might give Neighborhood Watch another go," "I suppose you could try suing"...

Beyond the element in local government appearing jaded or indifferent to Vista's trials and tribulations, it perhaps wasn't so much others not caring as it was that the county's rural population — embracing a relaxed, stand-alone country lifestyle and the time-honored Code of the West championing rugged independence — hadn't an inclination to play cop with fellow residents. They believed people should work out their own problems. Many in government, beyond actual law enforcement, seemed to lack the disposition one cultivated living in denser, sometimes edgy, urban climates: the willingness to grab the bull by the horns and confront the thorny problems routinely being faced by those living out in the boonies that interfered with the elusive dream of tranquil country living.

That said, the stretched-thin authorities depended on the vast majority of residents to be law-abiding. The mostly rural county lacked the funds to enforce its own ordinances if enough, for some reason, chose to ignore them.

If that happened, it might find itself in deep doo-doo.

Chapter 13

Subdivisions aren't organic

For any whose imagination could take a surreal turn, it might've seemed that the state, in approving such rural subdivisions that each county then oversaw, was perhaps employing social scientists to conduct some weird social lab experiment. As if it wanted to determine how many strangers could live together in the middle of nowhere and deal with a given load of exacting 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 live more simply — and be left the hell alone. They no longer wanted to deal with the intrusive bureaucratic mandates of dense city living. Naturally, they did their level best to ignore them in the Vista. Even if, in the process, it might've led to unintended consequences... such as an influx of sometimes less-than-law-abiding people, drawn to the wayward place as a promising rural hideout. Some might say the very word 'subdivision' could hinder any development from thriving, as the word itself sounds so, well... divisive.

Historically, when a single party or group founded a settlement, unless it was a boom town, it evolved slowly. There was an organic process at work. New residents experienced a sense of belonging and a measure of empowerment in a slow-growing community where everyone played a vital role and pulled their weight.

Have cookie-cutter, will travel

The Vista, in stark contrast, was founded by a realtor who lived 600 miles away. He had every last bit of the land cookie-cutter-platted into 1,641 lots before the first parcel buyer or future resident ever set foot on it. It was his creation, such as it was, at first seeming to aspire to be no more than being a simple shared recreational land where one could enjoy roughing it in nature a few weeks a year.

Then, after a few dozen excited vacationers had a brainstorm and moved onto the land, the lack of infrastructure, fine-tuned growth plans and unified interest among a majority of lot holders seriously undermined their efforts to maintain the emerging proto-rural village's standard of living. The approach seemed to have been to play it by ear: "Hey, let's see what we can do here if enough of us get on the same page." Or, again, the possible darker, less altruistic attitude of some might've been more like, "Well, we're going for it, and we don't give three hoots in a holler about the rest of the place — beyond any illegal lot occupations and construction that might try to happen, that is."

In any event, nowhere near enough lot owners ever got on the same page. It soon became apparent that members of a wildly diverse ownership, many whose interests and intentions for the parcels seemed at perpetual odds with one another, more than on different pages or even other chapters, appeared to be reading entirely different books.

Bloom off the rose

Vista's already precarious situation was further complicated after various one-time residents began leasing their homes once the initial bloom of Vista living was off the rose. Such lessees, as non-owners, had no say in how the place was run and were ineligible to serve on the board, even if they wanted to get involved and help the place along. That is, beyond joining the volunteer fire department, doing fundraisers for it, or spouting off one's two cents' worth at the monthly meetings (if allowed to do so, not being actual property owners).

And again, the place's myriad problems were compounded by the legion of disinterested absentee parcel owners who for ages constituted over 90% of the association membership. They dwarfed the minuscule number of actual residents, yet they held equal voting power for any proposal. To many of the purely speculative, the place had become a gone-sour investment that they'd sell the second they got a decent offer. In the meantime, they'd scream and holler over every cent of annual dues increase, right along with the few scattered residents, many of whom likewise became indifferent to the outlandish notion of lifting a finger (beyond the middle one) to try helping the one-time wilderness condo now floundering. A place that, seemingly bereft of saving grace, had long ago lost any chance for redemption.

Why even bother?

The professional association manager hired by the board in the 1980s was relied upon to handle routine billing, accounting, and budgetary matters, as well as to address legal issues. By then, things had gone wrong so long that many felt there was nothing one could do but nurse the wobbly operation along the way it was and hope for the best. Long-established residents had their own social scene wired, thank you, and were all too aware how steeply the cards were stacked against the place ever turning itself around. They'd reject as naive and unrealistic the efforts of others to try straightening the place out. Perhaps they even preferred it to be dysfunctional; no need to try to be sociable with others that they might share little or nothing in common with, beyond living in the same place.

Cynicism ran so deep that hope, like the sad love song, was also just another four-letter word.

A prime example of how deeply the lack of civic-mindedness ran: One day in the 1990s, dozens of orange plastic-bagged phone books were dropped off atop the busy mailbox complex at the Juniper Drive entrance. They were promptly swept to the ground by an irate resident, no doubt taking umbrage at their presence as yet another of the competing local phone books continually being cranked out. They stayed there on the ground for weeks, like a strange avant-garde art installation. While it created an obvious eyesore for everyone who drove by, after more than a month, no one had addressed it. I didn't live in that part and so held off, waywardly fascinated by such monumental indifference. (Finally, I gathered them up for recycling.)

No doubt many grumbled to themselves how someone ought to clean them up, but, of course, never thought to be that someone. Disheartened and disgusted by the place's stark dysfunctionality, they might've felt a perverse rush every time they drove past, mentally raking the board over the coals for being so discombobulated that it couldn't (or wouldn't) handle such a simple matter. The place really was like a rural-parcel condo, with its overworked one-person road management also expected to keep the common grounds tidy, not, perish the thought, its detached residents. Earn your pay, slacker.

Community center proposal

A more far-reaching example: In 1981, a majority of association members resoundingly defeated a proposal made by then-board president Eric Prescott. He envisioned the Vista constructing a modest multi-use community center on one of the hundreds of empty lots for the mutual benefit of residents and owner-visitors. The population of the place, then still relatively code-compliant, was growing quickly. It would’ve meant only a modest extra assessment for two years, with the cost spread among many. It could have benefited numerous parcel holders over time, fostering a stronger sense of community, serving as a dedicated, informal space where residents and visitors could meet, exchange information, hold swap meets, brainstorm, coordinate civic activities, and, of course, hold monthly property-owner meetings. By making the place more livable, it would've surely increased lot values and sales by signaling that the place was finally pulling itself together.

But the sea of terminally disillusioned parcel holders, including, no doubt, many residents themselves, shot the proposal down with mad glee. Blinders firmly in place, they chorused their favorite refrain: "Not One Cent More!"

Telling result: Though Prescott and I moved here at the same time and lived in the same place for decades, we never met.

Many embraced the notion that once they bought the land, except for annual property taxes — some newbie landowners doubtless weren't aware of that recurring expense at first — they were home free. Absentee lot holders took strong exception to having to feed the parking meter (as it were) every year for road maintenance on roads they never drove on lest their property be towed away by the Association through legal repossession for resale to the next, possibly equally clueless buyer.

Sweet someday

Not to paint the situation with too broad a brush... There were also absentee owners who, despite all, continued to treasure the land and its possibilities. They admired and envied those who'd made the bold leap to genteel backwoods living and rooted for them to get the place together. They held wistful hopes that its promising beginnings might yet be rekindled. Some, no doubt, still entertained hopes of moving in and joining their number once the listing ship finally rightsided — or even as-is and hoping for the best. Additionally, a few others continued to enjoy their periodic camping retreats on lots farthest from the main traffic arteries and established residences, which were often clustered along the few power lines and within a mile or two of the blacktop.

But such fond sentiments always faced gale-force headwinds of the all-is-futility, deep-entrenched cynicism of other lot holders. They felt stuck with a sucker investment they'd been fool enough to sink their hard-earned money into. And it seemed most owners — jaded residents and disillusioned absentee owners alike — held scorn for the Pollyanna notion that the place could somehow yet turn itself around. At least, not if it meant prying one more penny from wallet or purse.

Many who wished the place well (but not at their further expense) thought that surely some portion of their annual assessment fee could be allocated to fund civic improvements that community-minded residents envisioned. However, the yearly budget was always stretched to the limit by the high cost of maintaining the 66 miles of fragile roads. Further depleting available funds, the board repossessed parcels from owners who defaulted, and the association then absorbed its annual county property taxes until new buyers were found in the super-soft market. Vandalized, damaged and stolen road signs also required frequent replacements. And there were the skyrocketing insurance rates. And thorny legal matters with potential lawsuits, requiring the retention of an expensive attorney. And...

Association manager &

Board president with conflicts of interest

The association began paying the professional association manager's annual salary once matters became too complex and time-consuming for volunteer board members to handle. Most (including me, years later) were not sufficiently versed in legal matters to grasp the intricate procedures required to run the development (even such as it was) according to Hoyle, especially after the state legislature enacted the flurry of new regulations for California subdivisions in 1985 known as the Davis-Stirling Act.

It would add insult to injury when one of the salaried managers (the place has had two) — whom residents might reasonably assume would work for the good of the place, it being a nonprofit public benefit corporation, and all — brokered lot sales on the side as a real estate agent. In itself, this was perhaps no big deal. But then, in 2015, he'd join the pumped-up realtors hustling to sell lots to those obviously intent on snapping them up to roll out unsanctioned, scaled pot grows. He, like many, seemed indifferent to the chaos and disruption the sales would unleash on the often laid-back, sometimes serene lifestyle that the Vista had, at its best, fitfully enjoyed for decades. (One grower later said, "If they didn't want us growing on the lots, they shouldn't have sold them to us," showing a cultural disconnect there somewhere.)

I doubt any of the few hundred residents, who had become a perhaps unlikely mix of older retired, younger working, and ne'er-do-well hangers-on of all ages, were prepared for what was about to happen... or the fact that our very own association manager, whose salary we paid, would actually help it happen.

This, perhaps better than anything, shows how monumentally upside-down and bass-ackwards the place was. But wait, there was another contender for the dubious distinction of most exploiting the hapless place in blatant self-interest.

Some, maybe even most, volunteer Vista board presidents, themselves residents, tried to keep the well-being of the residency foremost in mind while balancing the reasonable concerns of the absentee parcel holders. But one later actually played a central role in the full-tilt realty campaign to sell Vista lots to the burgeoning underground grower market. Having ostensibly obtained the file of names and addresses of every lot holder while serving on the board (even then, an active realtor working to move the lots), she and her partner's realty outfit sent letters and postcards to every lot holder, inviting them to sell. They knew all too well how many had long felt stuck with unsellable lots and burdened by the annual dues. They pitched something along the good-news lines of, "You might be surprised to know that there are people interested in purchasing your property!"

She and her partner knew owners would pounce at the chance to finally unload the clunkers and — surprise! — for a tidy sum, no less. "I'll be darned; Harald, it looks like that old place is finally getting popular for some reason; can't imagine why. Looks like we can visit your sister in Toledo this year after all." She'd always held that it was the right of each property owner to do with their lot whatever they wanted. "One can cut down every tree on their parcel if they want to", she once said with feeling at a board meeting. In her book, doing whatever one wanted on one's own lot eclipsed any consideration whatsoever of the community's well-being and overall quality of life. Due to such an exploitative mindset, willing to lead the charge in pulling the rug out from under the lives of the place's long-established residents to make a fast buck, Vistans would suddenly feel like so many pawns on a ruthless real estate market's chessboard.

Though the development was, again, ostensibly a nonprofit public benefit corporation, there was so much blatantly for-profit, private benefit, commodifying, make-money-anyway-you-can-off-the-lame-ass-dead-in-the-water-parcels hustling going on that it beggared belief. In comparison, it made your average just-in-it-for-the-money, for-profit concern look like a piker.

No there, there

Many residents had low to no expectations going in. They'd accepted that there wasn't any more there, there. Nothing beyond the junipers and sagebrush and simple roads amid a confused mishmash of disparate dwellings and empty lots. Maybe they were even relieved; it suited them fine. Some were only using the place as a temporary perch, ready to move on if and when something better came along.

Many of those the realm eventually attracted indeed seemed far from the conventional sort. They'd dropped anchor here to get as far away from over-complicated, stressful urban forces as possible, yet not be too far from town. They didn't mind a few inconveniences. As one late Section 13 Pilar Road resident, then president of the Siskiyou Arts Council, cheerfully said during a JPR Public Radio interview, "We live out in the middle of nowhere, and we love it!"

Those who had conformed to code requirements, or bought places that had, possessed (at least potentially) the peace of mind to enjoy them for being law-abiding citizens. But even those who hadn't, who were hunkering down hopefully under radar, seemed to feel they had the same inviolable right to enjoy their parcels any way they wanted and not get hassled... while at the same time ignoring any laws and ordinances they disapproved of. Human nature could be so contrary. Perhaps doubly so when living in such a dreamland as the Vista.

Handy place to perch

So it went that the place, a de facto recreational subdivision that failed to segue into a recognized community beyond its fleeting early incarnation, for decades remained an embarrassment of mostly empty lots amid the thinnest scattering of approved residences and an increasing number of unapproved ones.

All the while, it was growing an ungovernable spirit.

The situation struck many refugees from urban life as a promising place to land: cheap and remote, but not too remote, with extensive undeveloped acreage all around them. The code-compliant could enjoy simple stand-alone country living, while the non-compliant could often get away with not conforming to code or suffer singed feathers at worst. Both paid the mandatory annual dues (usually) and, as a popular pastime, enjoyed demonizing the association board as the source of all evil. With a remarkable shortsightedness that living in the place seemed to foster, it was the fly in the ointment interfering with carefree country living.

The more cynical among them suspected that 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?", "This place is friggin' nuts!", ad infinitum. Idle rumors of corrupt board members misappropriating funds were rampant.

Though such gnarly energies weren't always evident, it could often feel that way. There were, in fact, welcome respites, pleasant lulls when the dread fire-breathing beast of contention seemed to slumber. During such times — especially during gentle springs and early summers — a peaceful, laid-back spirit might prevail over the land. Despite all, it felt blessed with a rich tranquility. Polarized energies temporarily checkmated and put on the back burner, grateful denizens relished the serenity.

Such idyllic periods, alas, seldom seemed to last long.

Chapter 14

The Intolerant Years:

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 mini kingdom, their own little backwoods hideaway bought for a song, one had to keep tuning out the perennial joker in the deck: endless battles over code compliance. It could make the less affluent and, perforce, nonconforming feel more like serfs living under the yoke of the overlords who'd met legal residency requirements and were determined to keep them enforced by any means short of armed vigilantism. Sometimes they succeeded; other times they came off more like so many bumbling Barney Fifes.

This joker in the deck, like a rude Jack-in-the-box, kept popping up to put a crimp in the lives of non-compliant dwellers during the Intolerant Years, which roughly spanned between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s. As mentioned, domains farthest from the blacktop often had so few others living anywhere near that inhabitants might've imagined their digs more like 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 even then, the latter reality usually asserted itself sooner or later to put a damper on one's day.

Some (certainly not all) board members and their cohorts of that period — fondest hopes for the place fading into oblivion and, consequently, minds bent into pretzels — went on raging mad drunks with the power being a board member seemed to confer; they ran about like so many little T. rexes. With barred teeth and razor claws, the uber law-and-order champions wielded ruthless authority over the rabble... or tried to. They were dead-set on salvaging what they could of their Shangri-la, in the process becoming out-and-out authoritarians and making the place akin to Dante's fifth ring of Hell, the Circle of Wrath, for its dwellers. No doubt they felt their violent emotions and extreme mindset behavior were justified; the only alternative was to stand by and watch their sweet dream circle the drain in numb disbelief.

Fast-forward, and board members, though still grumbling over the rampant non-compliance ruining their property values and quality of life, seemed to have gradually become resigned to what time had proven to be an unsolvable problem. Board meeting members and attendees, many mindful of the ephemerally idyllic times of yore, at some point sank into a collectively depressed, what's-the-use? state of mind.

Perhaps it wasn't surprising that inertia prevailed even as their once-iron authority was rusting away. Residents of a place so long paralyzed by ceaseless discord still somehow felt they couldn't do diddly-squat without first getting the board's approval — and then grow old waiting for it. ("Matter tabled til next meeting [yawn] ... motion for adjournment?")

The same thing happened if one wanted to start up an official volunteer effort to help the place along.

Beleaguered crew aboard the foundering HMS Vista

One day at a monthly meeting held in then-president Bonnie Jolly's living room, I volunteered to become the subdivision's unpaid custodian. With even a little real encouragement from them, I'd be psyched to tackle the epidemic of road litter and windblown detritus often despoiling the otherwise scenic wooded roadways. They apparently thought it a good idea and duly voted me into the new position. But it was an unreal experience; it was almost as if they'd approved the post in their sleep. They didn't bother to address any details the position might require — supplying trash bags or possibly reimbursing for dump fees — nothing. (I hadn't thought to bring such matters up, either.) So I quit my official post before I started, knowing I didn't need to say anything to anyone.

Their hearts simply weren't into such things. Burned out from thankless volunteering, accustomed to receiving only grief for their efforts and depressed over the sorry state of affairs in general, they were coasting on autopilot. They could muster only enough energy to cover essential routine matters like road maintenance. (I'd continue gathering road litter informally, as did a few others, likewise concerned, who didn't like seeing the roadsides get trashed.)

The way board members often seemed to go through the motions so woodenly, calling it in, other residents, knowing the beast was losing its teeth, began tackling things as they saw fit without seeking the board's permission. Things like setting aright a road sign that had been run into and was precariously listing or had fallen over, or repairing a stretch of road in front of one's place rather than going through stupefyingly sluggish official channels.

Apathy and a sense of hopelessness in the place were so chronic and deeply entrenched, we were like a beleaguered crew aboard a foundering ship: We lacked the will to do anything more than bail just enough water to keep from going clear under.

What rules?

Jumping back to the earlier Intolerant Years... Despite a seemingly bonkers board throwing its weight around while on nearly constant red alert, the remote circumstances still somehow lent a tenuous assurance that, even then, one could (or should) be able to do whatever they wanted to on their own land. No uptight board — lacking credibility and legal enforcement powers, and progressively receiving less support and cooperation from county authorities — could stop them, no matter how much ruckus they raised.

Private-property rights were sacrosanct, after all. The more independent-thinking dwellers shut out the reality of being subject to the rules and regulations of the external world, especially as championed by some self-important, busybody board of meddling "directors." It didn't register as something needed in the simple rustic realm. It was too invasive, too alien, too self-defeating to the very reason people moved here.

At the risk of overstressing the point, the illusion of anything-goes manifested largely because the overwhelming majority of parcel owners were detached investors who lived far off and rarely, if ever, visited their lots. To actual dwellers, they held no more than a whispy, easily tuned-out phantom presence. Longtime inhabitants like me came to view the 1,000-plus vacant, undeveloped, unsellable parcels almost as a de facto permanent park commons. As a result, some could feel like stewards not only of their own mini-fiefdoms of two to three acres, but also of the luxuriant buffer zones of dozens, even scores, of empty parcels that the absentee owners so generously provided.

It could make one feel land-rich indeed.

Silver lining:

Nudist paradise

This reality often created conditions so isolated — nobody around to say boo — that certain social norms, even deeply entrenched ones like mandatory dress beyond the privacy of one's home, easily faded over time. I was one of a handful living in Vista's more remote reaches, surrounded by hundreds of undeveloped, unfenced wooded lots. Anyone with even a whisper of an inner bohemian could, if they felt like it, stroll about their land buck naked in nicer weather. There was next to no chance of being caught "out of uniform," as it were, like a naughty child.

One had the rare opportunity to enjoy the indescribable rush of feeling an exhilarating, intimate oneness with all of nature. Often, no vehicles drove on the furthest back roads for weeks at a time. And almost no one else ever walked anywhere (perhaps a legacy of most founders being from the uber-car-centric L.A. area). Such remote conditions often inspired more than a few freer-spirited Vistan denizens to enjoy going nekked as jays all day long, sometimes maybe for days at a time, whether at home, outdoors on one's property, or sometimes freehiking through adjacent uninhabited areas. (Ultraviolet rays weren't so intense then, so one often could actually embrace the sunshine.)

One hot, sleepy summer day in the early 2000s, when what few people lived here then had either driven to a lake to cool down, gone to the coast or were glued in front of their TVs, AC blasting and cold beer in hand, I thought of a good way to cool off. Not wearing a stitch, I hiked over a mile downhill and enjoyed immersing in Whitney Creek's land-trapped snowmelt, then pooling along Buckhorn Road. I'd worn only flip-flops, with cotton shorts slung over my shoulder in case I needed to cover up. I skinnydipped to my heart's content in the four-foot-deep, cool, deliciously silky-soft, silt-bottomed pool that stretched some 50 yards. A tall earthen berm stood between it and the adjacent road running parallel, providing privacy from any passing traffic (none passed). After gathering a few pumice stones, which the creek always washed down in summer, for my home business, I leisurely hiked back home, never having needed to cover during the entire hours-long, two-mile adventure.

Such were the exhilarating and liberating experiences one often had here. You could indulge your sensuous nature in the exotic weather that begged to be enjoyed without textile coverings that interfered with being one with the elements. How many places could you do that at, other than a naturist resort, free beach or rainbow gathering? Obviously, one of the biggest consolations for Vista being such a failed rural subdivision was that it was a veritable nudists' paradise.

By the turn of the Millennium, I became so convinced of the therapeutic value of mindful nudity for easily reintegrating body, mind and spirit that I successfully advocated changing the prudish cover-up policy at nearby Stewart Mineral Springs resort to clothing-optional. I'd recently volunteered to maintain Park Creek's cold-plunge diversion pool below the bathhouse and convinced management it was time to align with the open-minded policies of the more popular rural mineral springs resorts in the wider Northwest region. Untold thousands, making the leap and proceeding to enjoy skinnydipping, nude sunbathing and naked saunas there for the next 17 years, had the strong earth medicine of Mt. Shasta Vista's land to thank for inspiring my resolve to advocate for such mindful body freedom.

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Who's minding the place?

Some residents, beyond board members in contact with the absentee owners, might've vaguely sensed their displeasure with the sorry state of the place. At times, it was indeed disheartening. It enabled firewood-selling tree poachers to raid the unfenced lots of absentees at will. Sometimes, parcels and adjacent forestry land harbored actual squatters. And off-roaders tore through absentee owners' usually unposted, unfenced, undeveloped parcels with impunity.

Though perhaps having no one to blame but themselves for being dumb enough to buy into what became such a colossal developmental misfire, it was easier to blame the residency and the mostly powerless board, who together sometimes gave the impression they didn't care. (And, indeed, some, only trying to make the best of a bad situation for a while, actually didn't, sometimes even participating in misdeeds.)

Others tried to make a difference. While I was out one day gathering pumice stones along a remote stretch of Whitney Creek below Highway 97, I ran into a new board member, a Mr. Arbuckle. He was moving boulders to divert the creek's flow from moving down alongside Buck Horn Road to a better-bermed route just beyond Rising Hill Road. He admitted he hadn't gotten permission from the forestry service. I didn't begrudge him that, as I found it encouraging to see someone actually rolling up their sleeves and doing what needed to be done to try to help the place along.

Whether one sensed the absent owners' general displeasure or not, it was definitely a subtle yet pernicious force. Their collective ire over the pitiful state of affairs was part and parcel of the overload of corrosive influences at work. It could gnaw at one's peace of mind — if only vaguely and on the unconscious level — right along with the in-your-face code-compliant dwellers waging war on the non-compliant, and dealing with water scarcity. One might even say that the huge absentee ownership was in a way responsible for the place never mustering enough public-spirited concern to help itself out of its dire straits. Not even enough to vote for a modest community center. If not the straw that broke the camel's back, it was definitely a contender.

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Early pot growing

Inside an intractable tract

In the early 2000s, one of the very few residents then furtively growing small patches of illicit cannabis — long before California's changing pot laws decriminalized such once-nefarious doings — found himself with new neighbors. A couple seemed determined to do the exact same thing. Wanting to avoid increasing the possibility of bringing unwanted attention to his own clandestine operation, he confronted them, persuading them to leave by threatening violence in no uncertain terms if they didn't.

A few others were also discreetly growing a few pot plants outdoors by then (plus maybe one or two growing indoors with lights), mostly for their own enjoyment, but sometimes to generate side income. The place had a sunny, dry climate (if not ideal soil) and was remote enough to pursue such cultivation without getting hassled if one kept their operation low-key.

The Vista's early verbotin pot grows, limited as they were, would naturally help set the stage for later, larger-scale illicit cultivation, showing yet again how the remote place was an irresistible draw for all kinds of people for all sorts of reasons.

California, of course, legalized medical marijuana in 1996, the first in the nation to do so. Then, in the time preceding recreational pot legalization by voters in late 2016, 20 long years later, dramatically changing the rules, a few enterprising Vistan residents began pooling together scrip from the sea of registered, mostly-sham medical-marijuana "patients." ("I can't sleep at night, Doc" ... "Well, slip me a Franklin and your troubles are over.") It entitled them to grow six plants per person per year. In effect, they could grow up to 99 plants and ostensibly supply 16 so-called patients (plus three to grow on), while still technically complying with state law and avoiding unwelcome federal interest for growing one more.

After 2016 and California's legalization of recreational cannabis, the 99-plant figure reportedly soon became the tacitly agreed-upon limit, barring official complaints, for the by then overwhelmed Siskiyou County authorities, scrip paperwork or not. The state's six-plant limit for private individuals growing at their own residences for personal use applied to all but licensed commercial cultivators. In time, it would be boldly ignored as all but unenforceable. It was seen as too restrictive by the enterprising unlicensed growers who began pouring into the Vista and adjacent areas starting in 2015.

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Vigilante episodes

Between a critical handful of the more defiant, ignoring any rules and regulations interfering with doing whatever the heck one wanted; a county seemingly throwing up its hands and abandoning the place as a hopeless mess, actually scrapping 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 pretty 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 empty lots and adjacent forestry land to buck into rounds, split, and sell for firewood. They felled scores of standing snags, sometimes even living trees, including some of the few tall pines that had long graced the Vista, leaving behind unsightly stumps and slash piles on the long-undisturbed land. The Shasta-Trinity National Forest's law enforcement officer once showed me a regional map on his office wall; it was covered with what must have been over 1,000 tiny red dots, each representing an illegal cut.

Another party set up a large dog-rescue kennel on an unimproved, mostly treeless parcel in Section 21; neighbors up to a half-mile away were forced to endure the endless barking of dozens of unhappily caged residents, sometimes left in the hot sun, for over a year, until the operation was finally shut down.

Bolder souls

Bolder souls took the law into their own hands. When a resident at the top of White Drive discovered that the surveyor ages back had erred in his lot boundaries, he tried to close off the major through-road running past his place. He erected a padlocked gate across it even though it was ages too late to legally remedy the miscalculation. A young, devil-may-care neighbor on Meadow, Billy Bracken, regularly used the road; he didn't think twice when he encountered the sudden barrier: He backed up his bad-boy truck, gunned the engine, and smashed through the gate, end of problem.

And a neighbor on McClarty Road was furious over how two young men would routinely roar by his place twice a day, making a racket and raising clouds of dust, just to needle him because he mocked them for being gay. One evening, he furtively dug a slanted trench across the road. That night, they sped by at their usual time, promptly lost control, and ran into a tree. As they staggered back, shaken and furious, to confront him, he proved to be even madder: He shot at them. Fortunately, he missed and was later arrested.

On another occasion, a resident on Cardinal Road saw red when he learned that a scuzzy new neighbor had tried hitting on his young teen daughter. Along with a wrecking crew he rounded up, he descended on the culprit's land late one night when they knew he was on vacation in the county lockup and vandalized and looted his place to a fare-thee-well.

And when a Black man briefly occupied a vacant stone cottage on McLarty Road and was discovered one night by its absentee owner, the latter held a shotgun on him for a half-hour until the sheriff deputy arrived. (A while later, I saw the owner in town the day after a Black man first got voted into the White House; he held a look of stunned disbelief and utter loathing.)

Multiply this knowledge of the goings on in my own section times seven for the other sections, each with doubtless similar histories of edgy incidents over time, and there was indeed trouble in River City.

Obviously, the place's auspicious start during simpler times — its upbeat, if convention-locked, law-abiding dwellers, experiencing euphoric bonhomie camping together, then settling the land — was ancient history. The quaint way of life of a misty bygone era, blasted to smithereens ages ago.

Chapter 15

Blame it on the mountain

One could maybe blame the mountain and its powerful energy field, at least in part, for Vista's residents not working together any better. Some hold that its emanations stimulate one's upper-body energy chakras. While initially revving the imagination, it could also pull one meditatively inward. Bolstered by Mt. Shasta Vista's founder, who, as an enthusiastic fellow camper in the early years, championed the freedom to do whatever one wanted on their parcels (within the existing norms of propriety, of course), the mountain's influence might've indeed worked to make one feel like one's lot was something akin to Superman's impregnable Fortress of Solitude.

Long after the honeymoon camping period and early homesteading years had ended and more newcomers settled in without the county's blessing, people actually competed to get voted onto the board for a while. Some no doubt hoped to mellow the place, willing to look the other way about the all-but-unenforceable county ordinances being ignored so long as residents otherwise remained peaceable. They hoped to make the best of a bad situation. Others, bearing no such live-and-let-live inclinations, kept grinding the code enforcement ax. They were bound and determined to keep alive the increasingly toothless hardline campaign against unsanctioned dwellings, their dwellers, and pretty much anyone who even looked at them cross-eyed.

That peculiar, relatively community-active period passed soon enough. Fast-forward a decade, and the place was so overwhelmed by openly non-compliant, sometimes hostile, what's-it-to-you? dwellers, that the situation seemed hopeless. A pronounced air of civic indifference emerged. The ungovernable atmosphere, aggravated by and reflecting the 1990s' spiking national crime rate, was punctuated by the helpless wails of long-suffering compliant residents: “What’s happening to this place?”

We appeared lost in a fog, a ship at sea without sail or rudder, aimlessly adrift. "Water, water, everywhere / nor any drop to drink."

Rambunctious Whitney Creek

And speaking of water, ironically, residents of water-parched lands sometimes needed to scramble to keep water out. Silty snow melt poured in from next door's seasonally running Whitney Creek whenever it decided to go on a rampage. It periodically flooded areas of the adjacent Section 28's lowlands at Buck Horn Road or Rising Hill Road, depending on the part-time creek's changing course. In the eighties, after years of silt-laden waters and mud flows wreaking havoc with vulnerable roads and eroding private parcels, the association, led by then-president Eric Prescott, sued the U.S. Forest Service. They'd allowed the course of the creek — actually a seasonal snow-melt wash — to be diverted directly towards our new subdivision by removing a dam built above State Highway 97 by parties in the area who owned what later became Lake Shastina and no longer needed it... or wanted to deal with re-diverting the flow themselves.

Our association won the suit. The $250,000 settlement funded the creation of the massive earthen berms still in place and maintained today along Buck Horn and what's left of Rising Hill, protecting the area 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 dried silt or mud, the waters have mostly been kept safely out of harm's way.

But not always. In August 2022, floodwaters and a massive mud flow again breached part of the Buck Horn berm. After prolonged 100-degree-plus weather generated extraordinary amounts of snow and glacier melt, possibly building up behind an ice dam far up-mountain before finally bursting, the land was inundated on both sides of the berm, prompting a Code Red evacuation alert. Afterwards, some of the by-then-ubiquitous grow sites located there looked like eerie, mud-caked artifacts of some bygone civilization.

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Bored writer joins the board

In 2013, after over 30 years of feeling little fondness for the board — at times being demonized by certain of its members in return, short fuses being in good supply all around — I actually up and joined it. At the time, board volunteering had hit an all-time low. It was hard-pressed to fill more than three of its five seats, the minimum required for a legal quorum to conduct essential business, mostly approving new road maintenance outlays.

They obviously 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 go into dread state receivership as a failed subdivision and face unpleasant and costly consequences. As one of the few who even sporadically attended monthly meetings, I got roped into serving as secretary one evening in 2012 by then-president and fellow longtime resident Pam Simpson before I knew what was happening.

While it turned out the development's actual defaulting never posed an imminent threat, at times it did seem to flirt with such an ignominious fate. It felt like no one cared what happened to the poor, misbegotten place. Indeed, few seemed to appreciate how various residents volunteered their time to serve as members and meet the state's mandate and do what needed to be done to maintain at least a semblance of functionality. For their troubles, the volunteers were routinely vilified as power-crazed busybodies (a lingering attitude from the Intolerant Years). They were mindlessly interfering with other residents' would-be tranquility. After I joined, my non-compliant neighbor acquaintances suddenly became a bit wary of me, as if I'd maybe gone over to the dark side.

With so many members — absent lot holders included — routinely damning the board, or at least supremely indifferent to it, all but its more determined and thicker-skinned members soon burned out from serving on it; they got variously overwhelmed, jaded, embittered, bored and discouraged in record time. Those who hung in there often could appear like charred remnants of their former selves. Some were like dogs with a bone, determined not to let go of the reins for fear no one else could do the job. The longtime treasurer, Alfo Baldwin, who owned some eight parcels, always strongly opposed increasing the annual lot assessment, even though the budget was hemorrhaging. The obvious conflict of interest was apparently never considered important enough to bring up.

Indeed, from time to time, the board seemed to attract would-be volunteers with private agendas up their sleeves. One, before his tenure was abruptly cut short, had provoked a violent incident with the road manager on some pretext or other. Others seemed only to be seeking the dubious prestige and sense of entitlement board membership might bestow without having to do any actual work.

Soul-crushing boredom

As I was to learn first-hand, the board's pressure-cooker meetings could easily undermine one's sometimes-tenuous peace of mind. One had to be in full psychic armor, ready for battle if, say, an outraged resident or visiting owner attended, sitting there glaring like a ticking time bomb until given the allotted three minutes to vent their spleen. Or, more often the case, one was forced to endure soul-crushing boredom under the cold fluorescent lighting. And be made to do the dirty work if the manager told you and others to, say, sign stacks of legal foreclosure papers for property owners who had either given up on the place, were in dire financial straits, or both.

One struggled to rise above the sea of paperwork and the dry, formal meeting procedure, endured in the cramped, cold, fire station backroom, if ever hoping to accomplish anything one might conceivably feel good about. Spirits were often so subdued that it could feel like we were in some clinical group depression, as if everyone felt the thankless grand futility of it all but plugged away anyhow out of a misguided sense of civic duty. After serving 18 months, my replacement tenure on the board was set to expire with the upcoming election. Another board member put my name on the ballot without ever asking whether I even wanted to run. Predictably, I was burned out by then and so declined to serve further, even though I won by a landslide, with so few candidates on the ballot.

Over time, the development occasionally seemed to be getting back on track (as much as any track existed) under the guidance of the more capable, on-the-ball, open-minded board members. They scrambled to get the place up to speed after tackling remedial catch-up chores. Then it would derail all over again with the endless shuffle of new volunteers, sometimes less motivated or knowledgeable, coming on board. There was always a lot of slow-on-the-job orientation and a steep learning curve. By the time new board members began to get a tenuous grasp of procedures and current issues, they were already burned out. And so the learning process started again with other newbies from an ever-shrinking pool of willing resident volunteers of good standing.

A diverting contest

No doubt, like countless well-meaning board members before and after me, I'd hoped to turn the place around: Crusader Rabbit to the rescue. The situation just seemed so ridiculously depressing, so needlessly downbeat, so absurdly all-is-futility-so-why-even-bother, that surely it couldn't take too much effort to reverse such a dispiriting downward spiral.

You'd've thunk.

A writing enthusiast, I penned many features and editorials for the Vistascope newsletter. I briefly took heart after launching a contest with small cash prizes I donated, challenging readers to come up with funny or thoughtful new spell-outs for the Mt. Shasta Vista Property Owners Association's acronym, MSVPOA. The winners:

Majestic Sandy Volcanic Paradise in Outback America (Pam Schifano)

Most Sacred Vacation Place Of All (John Underhill)

Mountain Steaming, Vacate Property on A-12 (Sandy Honeyball-Berry)

All is futile...

Born under a dark star?

But despite such fun diversions, I struck out just like everyone else. It appeared far too late to change the course of the place's wonky, generations-old trajectory. The beleaguered ship Vista had by then not only left the dock but sailed halfway around the world and was floundering in decidedly unknown waters. The die was cast, the dismal course set. Barring a miracle, it was wishful thinking to think that concerned board members could ever pull the place out of the quagmire it had been helplessly stuck in so long.

We were dinosaurs floundering in a tar pit, lamenting our bleak fate.

Though various mindful visitors over time often sensed the land's at times pronounced serenity — some overnight visitors reported having the best dreams of their lives here — cynics, 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, I tell ya.” To them, it was just a sketchy de facto 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 the elusive dream of idyllic country living and obviously having picked the wrong place.

The way so many routinely slammed the place, one might've concluded that it was born under a dark star, some wicked witch’s cauldron boiling over with loathsome ingredients, any effort to avoid its sorrowful fate sheer folly.

Resistance was futile.

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A dollop of esoterica

Vista's astrology chart and cardology fortune

Those familiar with astrology might be interested in knowing the celestial forces at work on November 3, 1965, the day the place legally came into being. The calendar date was shared by TV's Rosanne Barr, football's Collin Kaepernick and actor Charles Bronson. Some might say the resulting early Scorpio, brooding, super-wound energies imprinted on the development at formation guaranteed that the place would always be more than a tad on the intense side.

Lightening the mix, Mars and Venus were loosely conjunct in nature-loving Sagittarius, along with the place having a compassionate, dreamy Pisces moon. But then, Jupiter was retrograde, potentially making it hard to find meaningful direction. Saturn was also retrograde. According to Vedic astrologer Nidhi Trivedi, this placement tends "... to instill a serious attitude towards life, emphasizing discipline and responsibility. The placement can lead to a strict or overly demanding nature, resulting in challenges related to authority and self-worth." Challenges with authority, yup.

Then, related, there's cardology — the study of planetary influences thought to form a unique DNA signature for each day of the year — symbolized by its corresponding playing card (Some days share the same card, but each has a unique meaning). The Vista's 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 [italics added]."

That last surely fit the Vista to a T. It was a dreamland through and through. But its denizens often seemed unable to manifest their happy visions in waking state.

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Perfect storm

Somewhere along the way, the once openly shared, carefree vacation land had reached a tipping point. Beyond it, anarchistic-leaning residents were increasingly emboldened to do their own thing, lawful or not, while hundreds of absentee landholders, filled with buyer's remorse, had little or no interest in the dratted place except to cash out the first chance they got.

Most would-be residents had long lost any inclination to build to code. One contractor who, in later years, appeared to have built a two-story house up to snuff on Catherine Road, minus a well, an electrical hookup, and possibly a septic system, would deprive the county of the opportunity to give its official blessing. Why bother? The county had dropped its residential code-enforcement position by then, and a fully compliant place wouldn't fetch enough return to justify the added expense of a deep well and extended power lines if sold, given that it was in such a squirrelly mishmash of a place.

Countless daunting factors had been piling up for decades. Combined with changing external realities, the place appeared to be shaping up into a perfect storm.

Circumstances already let any so inclined have a field day pursuing whatever dubious land uses they might conjure — junkyards, dog kennels, probably meth labs — for being on such remote, private dirt roads tucked away from all but the prying eyes of a few nosy neighbors who seemed powerless to do anything about it anyway. No matter whether such dubious land uses upset the tranquility for which the code-compliant dropped anchor here and built sweat equity in establishing their places, or had bought places from those who had and paid accordingly.

The subdivision, long ago given up as a lost cause by the county and residents alike, was undoubtedly the very poster child of a failed subdivision. Meanwhile, more and more denizens of the terminally wayward realm belted out rousing choruses of Cole Porter's "Anything Goes."

Without any better harmonizing force — one with at least a semblance of proactive community concern and respect for the reasonable rule of law — a disorderly spirit fast gained an outsized influence. It seemed the majority of less-vested residents were so used to the place being intractably dysfunctional — a quirky, cheap, low-key hideaway with a powerless board and often unresponsive county authorities — that they couldn't be bothered to read the writing on the wall. Or read it and felt nothing could be done.

One didn't need the omniscience of 20-20 hindsight to realize that by the early 2010s two things had become clear: (1) The Vista was a rudderless ship, vulnerable to drifting into potentially perilous straits, and (2) its hinterland residents either didn't give a flying leap, or felt helpless to do anything to try preserving what was, despite all, a fitfully tranquil rural lifestyle that was now dully taken for granted.

The place was leaving the door wide open for even greater misadventures.

Chapter 16

Knowing where the Vista was coming went a long way towards understanding where it was headed. Was the place's metaphorical foundation (as it were) only coming full circle? First, it was 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 significant role. As Klamath River County Estates (KRCE) landowner Will Jensen noted in long-ago blogging about his exhaustive search to find the ideal affordable rural home property with an inspiring Mt. Shasta view, “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.”

Hoping to remedy the chronic water shortage in the early 2000s, a few solution-minded residents applied for a government grant to fund a proposed centralized water distribution system. It was rejected, deemed too costly and labor-intensive a project to help too few.

The realm's need for dependable water was highlighted by its arid high-desert land — usually baking hot and bone dry in summer — and further aggravated by its volcanic terrain that baffles geohydrologists. The terrain often made hitting water through lava strata and voids touch-and-go, and even when successful, could result in water undrinkable without treatment for suspended volcanic minerals.

An early owner couple drilling for water apparently hit a lava tube. They felt a steady, cool stream of air flowing up from the ground. After sinking a well elsewhere and building their home, they installed a fan in ductwork to harness the cold air stream and naturally air-conditioned the place.

Those who had wells often had vegetable gardens. One resident, Chris Burns, on Eagle Road in Section 7, was a serious farmer. While the soil in the Vista is sandy and not optimal for growing food, he soon remedied that. He set up a diversion program with Mt. Shasta's landfill management, regularly hauling home trailers full of yard clippings and other compostable yard waste and working it into the soil. With his goats further breaking down the waste and fertilizing the land, he soon had bumper crops of dozens of different foodstuffs, including 20 pounds of garlic the year I visited.

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Back to the ‘80s

By the mid-1980s, the Vista had grown to about 150-200 residences with wildly varying degrees of ambition and code compliance. Scattered over nearly seven square miles, it was still only a relative sprinkling.

It appeared that many new city-centric owners were averse to driving on unpaved roads. They never learned to accept and respect the place's cinder-surfaced thoroughfares for the honest country roads they were. Upset for having to drive so slowly over them, in the process getting their nice, shiny vehicles all dusty, ruining the latest car wash, they found it intolerable to endure up to five miles over sometimes narrow, winding cinder roads to reach a property. A half mile of unpaved road was more than enough for anyone to have to endure.

For them, the desire for rural seclusion was weighed against the desire for easy access. One might say such people were only flirting with country living. Some residents appeared to dislike the roads so much that at one point they proposed paving them. They'd cover the prohibitive cost by special assessments (as did Shasta Forest finally, over time), which the sea of absentee lot owners would, of course, disproportionately shoulder. The proposal would never have received the required two-thirds vote. Apparently, they'd thought the cinder roads were the most pressing problem holding the place back. Their heads were so stuck in city ways, they couldn't appreciate how the place's lack of paved roads should've been the least of their worries.

In any event, with so many of the deemed less-desirable parcels scattered deep in the hinterlands, there was always a grand buffer of empty parcels around them. It lent the more remote regions a profoundly tranquil, untamed, park-like ambiance, enjoyed by anyone willing to go the distance and embrace country living rather than merely tolerate it.

But it often felt that, no matter how much pristine land one might enjoy, a foreboding undercurrent always lurked 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 living. Between the regional community that never accepted the place or wished it well, and the resolve of code-compliant residents to battle the insufferable code scoffers dragging down the place and property values for decent folk, it felt like one was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even if a resident was compliant, an almost palpable tension often filled the air. On the subtle plane, it was like living in a crowded tenement, angry landlord pounding at the door.

This was one of the grand ironies of living in the Vista. Either you detached and became philosophical about it all, or you perhaps soon found yourself over-identifying with artist Munch’s screamer.

It would drive more than a few to drink.

___________________

A missing word sank efforts

Around 2012, a handful of the more civic-minded residents launched a long-overdue effort. A committee was formed to try to revise the woefully outdated and sketchy CC&Rs. Not overhaul them outright, but at least tinker a bit around the edges to make them more relevant to current realities. After much slow sledding, a glitch in the progress report printed and sent to every owner derailed efforts. The pamphlet cover’s title was supposed to read: “Proposed Changes to Mt. Shasta Vista Bylaws." But of course, the critical first word, Proposed, was omitted, making the changes sound like a done deal.

This prompted a barely peaceable pitchforks-and-torches crowd to storm the next board meeting. Residents who usually avoided meetings like the plague were coming out of the woodwork, all but convinced the power-mad board was staging a coup.

The long and winding roads;

Whitney Creek revisited

While you had your own private parcel, the modest annual ‘road dues’ assessments, often resented, were frequently contested by residents if not getting their own roads any better maintained. Various absentee owners added to the chorus, claiming they could barely reach their parcels if they were located on the least-populated back roads. Some of these roads didn't get touched for years. Some, like the roughly 200 acres north and east of me, weren't worked for over a decade. The most neglected stretches had sagebrush crowding the roadway. Plus, they might develop deep, dry pools of tire-grabbing, quicksand-like silt so treacherous that AAA tow trucks eventually refused to come out to rescue trapped members' vehicles after once getting their own rig stuck and, in turn, having to call in a monster tow truck to rescue the rescuer.

It didn’t help matters that our part-time neighbor, Whitney Creek, got rambunctious when summer temperatures climbed above 100 degrees F. The product of the mountain's often heavy winter snowpack and melting glaciers, the surging melt could cut new courses and work its way through the earthen berms.

It once submerged much of Section 28 under up to nine inches of water, necessitating an evacuation and making regional TV news. The place's oldest longtime resident and native Arkansan, Bill Waterson, hyucked for the camera, finding it all amusing, perhaps because, as a resident since the early 1970s, he knew the place had a wayward talent for attracting disasters. (The man was a paradox: Though having a pronounced redneck streak, his grandson told me he'd smoked pot since he was 13; this explained why he found so many things amusing. He was doubtless the Vista's first and by far oldest redneck hippie.)

The worst of many floods over time until the massive earthen berm was built, the flood washed away some roads so thoroughly that the board ultimately abandoned them after buying up the parcels of those who couldn't reach them short of driving a Hummer. It figured it was cheaper in the long run than rebuilding the periodically washed-out, little-used road stretches.

Most of one road vanishes

After one notable flood along the southernmost east-west road in the Vista, three-fourths of Rising Hill Road vanished. For ages after, delivery people and first-timers used outdated maps or relied on Google Maps, both of which were misleading and got them majorly disoriented, if not hopelessly stuck trying to turn around at the sudden dead ends: They were looking for roads that no longer existed.

And they drove on roads that nobody any longer maintained. One time, I caught up with a UPS driver who'd relied on an obsolete map showing a hillside road connecting two of our sections via Country Road to Thrush Road over a mile of abandoned roadway through neglected BLM land. The board briefly maintained the road, but then decided to discontinue keeping it up because it wasn't association property. The road soon suffered extensive erosion from rainfall over long, steep stretches. The delivery person, relying on a faulty map, had barely managed to traverse it; he appeared amazed that he'd successfully run the gauntlet.

Roads destroyed by creek floods also routinely waylaid unwary drivers. Finally, the association — decades after there'd arisen an obvious need for them — installed signs at the front of the (relatively) new dead-end roads. And the earthen berm built up on Buck Horn Road at Country discouraged use of the increasingly sketchy hillside shortcut. For a while, it seemed the only ones still using it were sticky-fingered "salvagers", who, back-roads savvy, nimbly traversed it in their old, beat-up, high-clearance pickups. They'd sneak into the higher section's back entrance in the dead of night — sometimes even broad daylight — to peruse the current pickings on what were deemed abandoned properties and so fair game for salvaging in their universe.

Veritable trainwreck of a place

Vistan parcel holders were, by and large, a frugal lot: bought the land cheap, moved in cheap, wanted to keep things cheap. They often harbored pronounced stand-alone tendencies or fell into them over time as a matter of course. It seemed futile to try to rally any community awareness and cooperation in a place that harbored such an ornery, "Leave me alone and we'll get along fine" attitude.

Yet again, the situation was compounded by that sea of absentee owners who'd only bought parcels as speculative investments and came to regard their unsellable holdings as a bane in their lives. The widespread disenchantment and indifference of the majority of lot owners, resident and absent alike, was guaranteed to arrest any errant inclination one might've felt to try rescuing the wayward realm with its obvious talent for discombobulation.

At some point, lacking any solid foundation on which to sustain and build a recognized community, the Vista was overwhelmed by adverse circumstances and short-circuited. The place became the arrested development that first-time visitors routinely dropped their jaws over. Such a "left for dead" train wreck of a place set amid an otherwise seemingly peaceful and scenic backwoods seemed unreal. It was as if a long-abandoned film set for a low-budget Western was left to gather mothballs in a studio's outdoor lot. Or a place that had grown too big for its britches, trying to rise above its lowly station, and was now paying the price for its rank impertinence.

The earliest settlers who built their code-approved homes surely had fully realized that everyone would have to comply with health and building regulations if the development were to remain a respectable fledgling community. But, of course, people, not caring what they thought, swooped in on the cheap. Some with an innocent, "Hey, I'm just building a little vacation cabin here, no biggie" sentiment, others with a more defiant, "Whadarya goin' to do about it, huh?" attitude, or the most dreaded, "My land, bugger off" stance. The firstcomers realized, with sinking hearts, that their once-idyllic, law-abiding retirement hideaway faced ruination. Their only recourse, a Hail Mary, had been to demand that county authorities step in and rigorously enforce its building codes.

Anything short of that and the place was toast. And so it became toast.

___________________

Still a nice place to live, kinda sorta

Over time, the realm — a haphazard mix of approved residences, unsanctioned makeshift dwellings, unconnected mobile homes, trailers, RVs and tents — stabilized, sort of. It became perhaps not too unlike a cake that stopped rising in the oven, was removed, partially collapsed, then dried and solidified. Though essentially left precariously existing between two worlds, the Vista was de facto recycled as newcomers made like hermit crabs and moved into the rec land lot shells and houses "abandoned" by their previous inhabitants. Many came to consider the development a nice place to live despite its shortcomings and bewildering history. Sure, it was a failed subdivision, but it was our failed subdivision.

Living in the Vista in its antediluvian days, before the sea of growers poured over the land and altered its reason for being yet again, was a bit like wearing a comfy, if disreputable-looking, old pair of sneakers that had yet to develop any worrisome holes in the soles.

Such indulgent regard for the place was not shared by most of the 80% of property holders as of 2010, over 1,200 absentee owners scattered across the nation. They were not enjoying the land. Some, possibly hoping for a miraculous turnaround, had clung to their title deeds for decades, gritting their teeth and doubling down year after year, shelling out for the upkeep of roads they never drove lest their lots be repossessed — as countless were over time. The common sentiment of such clueless owners of repo-ed lots must've been: "When I invested in the place, I didn't realize I'd have to keep investing in it." Some, it seemed, couldn't get rid of their lots short of giving them away: "Take my land... please."

Unkind thoughts

Indeed, many eventually dumped them in utter dismay, if not outright bitterness, for having to take a loss. They harbored distinctly unkind thoughts towards the once-promising place that turned out to be little more than a glorious half-baked fantasy that never panned out.

The churn rate of lot ownership changing hands, often due to foreclosure, lent a persistent sense of impermanence to the remote development merrily gone haywire. And created additional billing time for the salaried manager to process the reams of legal paperwork, thereby increasing association dues. And it generated quick commissions for profit-driven realtors who kept offering the embarrassment of beleaguered low-end lots as sleeper land deals to the uninformed, impulsive, desperate and expedient- or flip-minded. It often seemed they didn't have to say a word; the generously sized, dirt-cheap lots, with their sweeping mountain views and deep seclusion, kept selling themselves.

Meanwhile, absentee parcel holders — like the hapless characters in Waiting for Godot — patiently stood by, expecting values to rise so they could finally lose the clunkers at a decent profit, or at least break even. Or, alternately, the place improved to the point that they might actually enjoy visiting, perhaps build a shelter for occasional retreats. Or, if they could afford it, maybe construct a code-approved home, sample Vista living for a while, then sell out for a nice profit once the place's charm began to wear thin, as it almost invariably did, a pronounced disenchantment soon taking hold.

"You'll love it here."

"Then why are you leaving?"

"Why? Er, well..."

Chapter 17

Beginnings re-examined:

Ten-cent parcels with million-dollar views

The earliest campers in the newly formed shared wonderland savored it like fine wine. In spring, the realm delighted the senses with surprise splashes of lavender, purple, red and yellow wildflowers. Rich lichen moss on aging and dead junipers seemed magical, dazzling the eye with its near-phosphorescent chartreuse. After a drenching rain, the pungent scent of damp juniper and sagebrush was like perfume.

Abundant wildlife included deer, coyotes, jackrabbits and cottontails; birds of all kinds; ground squirrels and friendly chipmunks and less-friendly polecats; porcupines and rattlesnakes (the last now mostly, if not entirely, gone); a rare fox or mountain lion or other wildcat; at least one wild burro; tiny, endangered kangaroo rats, with their impossibly long tails, hopping about at dusk.

The vacationers returned home refreshed, anticipating next year’s visit to their new, yet untamed wilderness hideaway, dreaming up the improvements they’d make during future rendezvous with old friends and new acquaintances. They were increasingly filled with a bold vision of carving out a happy retirement community sometime soon.

Seldom heard: a discouraging word

The vacationers gathered around the campfire at night. Coyotes yipped a storm in the distance, no doubt time-warping some back to days of the Old West and possibly inspiring spontaneous sing-alongs of “Home on the Range” and "Red River Valley." Hearing a distant train rumbling by higher up the mountain's foothills might've sparked an impromptu rendition of "I've Been Working on the Railroad."

In daytime, they enjoyed their potlucks and barbecues under the unfailing majesty of Mt. Shasta. The vantage point offered staggering mountain views, highlighting its two massive, almost perennially snow- and glacier-covered peaks. In later years, photographer Kevin Lahey would race from the city of Mt. Shasta to snap the spectacular, often surreal, lenticular, saucer-shaped clouds that sometimes flew off it. Or, on rare occasions, the impossibly huge one that hovered over it like a visiting mothership from Venus.

As evidenced by the writings in the association's twice-annual "Vistascope" newsletters, visitors shared in the euphoric waves of feel-goodness sweeping many parts of the planet during those rarefied purple-haze days (along with, of course, the gnarly uprisings, wars, race riots and protests).

...and the saucers flew by-y-y all night

Even if one was a hardline Vietnam War hawk and hostile to the emerging counterculture and its disturbing convention-rejecting and shockingly liberated ways, spirits ran high — no doubt aided and abetted by their own mind-altering drug of choice, alcohol.

But the group buzz might’ve been further heightened by something more, something quite extraordinary: unknowingly receiving a cosmic high from the multiple UFOs spotted at the time darting about the mountain and making news headlines. The embryonic community had possibly gained a rarefied supercharge from their curious, advanced beings visiting from other worlds, checking out earthlings who were merrily enjoying the mountain's then-uber-sleepy side.

Dreamland's earliest imprints

To any susceptible to the subtle charms of the high desert woodlands, magnified under the mountain’s spell, it was a nature lover's paradise. One that new parcel holders industriously worked at to make nicer. The light-duty cinder roads were kept immaculately groomed by the membership’s workhorse road truck. Those with green thumbs planted flowers at select highway entrances. Others lifted the welcoming archway into place, maybe after a little dedication ceremony. Yet others established the de facto community well and holding tank.

It’s said in metaphysical thinking that the imprint of the earliest inhabitants of a land creates a vibration that it then forever resonates with, no matter what might happen on it afterwards. If accepting this as maybe accurate... Prehistoric indigenous people hunted game here seasonally, often using Pluto Caves to trap bighorn sheep, but didn’t settle because of the pronounced lack of water. 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 sold the land to developer Martin — maybe the first lasting, indelible human imprint on the land had been made by none other than the modern-day refugees from smoggy L.A. (who, one might say, in a way moved from La-La Land to la-la land).

If so, their earliest years of extended camping and, soon, settling, bestowed on the land an euphoric, industrious, decidedly conservative, somewhat topsy-turvy energy — a DNA signature the land still resonates with, even though it often gets buried beneath the surface.

Apart from such possible influences on the subtle plane, whenever mindful visitors unwound and tuned into the land, they could sense its pronounced, soft, almost otherworldly air. In spots beyond earshot of the highway wash, no jets droning overhead or freight trains rumbling in the distance, the land held such a profoundly dreamy quiet that one might've actually felt Earth breathing. Repeat visitors and residents alike, once adjusting to the all-enveloping silence, came to embrace it like a long-lost lover. Explorers of Pluto Caves, just beyond one of Vista's borders, might've experienced something of this etheric quality.

Serious downside

However, again, this dreamy atmosphere came with a downside. Tenuous new residents, wowed by the lightly wooded parcels bought for next to nothing, could get so caught up in spinning fantasies that they never did what needed to be done to get things squared away with the powers that be. And so they were never able to bring inspired brainstorms to fruition. Instead, they remained just so many pipe dreams inspired by the mountain's rarefied energies.

Over time, countless one-time owners came and went, happy bubbles burst after a few months or years on the land, either ignoring or being ignorant of the sundry mundane regulatory realities fitfully enforced by county government. Ordinances that would make people jump through all kinds of hoops before getting the green light to build to steep and pricey standards. Until, out of the blue, a reality check shocked them awake like a bucket of ice water over the head.

It was a predictable pattern. The serene, enchanted land, for sale cheap, kept drawing newbies stoked over the remote parcels' possibilities. It was like a 'Star Trek' TV episode in which our intrepid space explorers beam down to a strange new planet that at first appears a wondrous paradise. Then, inevitably, a menace pops up, and they're lucky to get away alive.

___________________

A fine place, by George: further speculations

On why things went so far south

Developer George Collins seemed no less smitten by the land's charms than the earlycomers he and his associates sold the lots to. Besides a fellow vacationer, he was the superglue holding the place together, serving as father, midwife, cheerleader, first board president, and daddy moneybags 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 wrote in an early newsletter with earnest feeling. He went on to wax poetic about 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.”

But alas, he'd begun what was destined to become a stark developmental misfire — a stalled-out, bare-bones recreational subdivision, lacking any more ambitious, well-defined plans at the start and, once it became a residential community, soon attracting those without the will or wherewithal to continue developing the place to accepted standards. The raw land, super-affordable and enjoyable for primitive campouts, as a would-be living community ultimately caused headaches and heartbreak for the less-affluent would-be residents, who were by necessity forced to become 'outlaw' dwellers.

That said, he was far from being your stereotypical, slick, disinterested land developer who took the money and ran. He nurtured the place along, wanting to see it flourish — at least as a collectively owned, simple camp resort — maybe more, so long as it was understood he wasn't on the hook for any outlays to build up further infrastructure. Any interested parties would have to bear that financial burden themselves.

Let George do It

He was so central to the place's early years that other property owners must have grown accustomed to leaving everything in his capable hands. Perhaps on one level they'd become like land tenants, relying on their kind overlord to do whatever needed to be done: "Let George do it."

In essence, he was the place's benevolent master, doing all the heavy lifting and sparing others the bother. (In so doing, he undoubtedly built up the wilderness turn-key condo feel to the place: Management took care of everything.) He was acknowledged as the leading man by his willing and grateful subjects for as long as he stayed in the picture. Consequently, few probably ever felt motivated or empowered to launch independent efforts to grow the place according to their own lights. Until people actually started building and moving onto their parcels, it was his baby.

At some point, though, he'd step down, for reasons unclear. No doubt it was somehow connected to the first residents-to-be gaining serious, invested interest in the place's future as a living community and, finally, empowering themselves to go for it. Perhaps they felt that if he weren't also going to build a home and reside here like them, he'd no longer fit into the picture.

In any event, vacationers and new residents would be forced to scramble on yet other fronts when their one-time master organizer bowed out. Left to their own devices, they'd face a steep learning curve, assuming responsibilities and grappling with sundry matters, some of which they probably never even knew existed.

It was likely at this point that the good ship Vista first began to seriously founder. Sure, it'd probably had its problems before — bothersome leaks that required bailing efforts to stay shipshape. But Collins, seasoned subdivision developer that he was, had seemed to know — until the electrification brouhaha went down, unraveling the early, tenuously unified efforts — how to deal with and resolve whatever problems might crop up. Now, property owners, soon to be forsaken by their captain, would be left to get their bearings and steer a course under their own steam, while also stepping up bailing efforts to avoid getting thoroughly swamped.

Alas, no critical mass

Apparently, enough original lot holders had been jazzed by the idea of building a retirement community that Collins's hopes rose after having cautiously played it by ear at first. "If enough of you want to build a residential community, I'm your man to help you get it done (on your dime, of course)" might've essentially been his attitude. But he'd lost his grip on the place once the first few dozen landowners began settling in, and future power extension costs almost certainly went through the roof.

More knowledgeable association members realized that the widely scattered residential base would likely never reach the saturation level needed to ensure that future residents would continue meeting health and building code requirements. Consequently, the development would always be super vulnerable to lot holders intent on moving in on the cheap.

Plus, water was often so deep and power so pricey — and soured speculators so unwilling to sink another penny in the place by special assessment for any reason — that its chances of remaining a respectable, law-abiding enclave appeared slim to none.

It was soon evident, after the brief burst of settlement efforts, that only a tiny number had been keen to move onto the land. It must've seemed to others that they'd be throwing good money after bad to invest in building homes in what was already showing early signs of being a stalled-out development misfire. It was a place that might, very likely, never amount to more than a sparsely settled, perpetually challenged, would-be exclusive community. One with its few dwellings spaced out amid a sea of empty, now-obsolete camping lots. One too far in the sticks to attract any beyond a few well-healed retirees, and, soon, their antithesis, the younger, would-be back-to-the-landers, living on a shoestring, who would turn the place's respectable, convention-locked, retiring ambiance upside down.

Builders and would-be builders became progressively frustrated and testy over the lack of easy water, especially on realizing that people 15 miles away could hit good water at 75 feet or less. Vistan settlers routinely had to drill at least four times that depth, costing a small fortune, and then, assuming they even hit, might then have to deal with suspended arsenic and iron.

Losing heart

It's said that it's easy to come and go but hard to stay. Lot owners who first moved onto the land after years of only visiting knew they'd have to carry on under their own steam — each supplying their own water, power and septic at great effort, time and expense. Collins's role and influence, once paramount, had shrunk to nothing beyond an honorary position as people, perforce, began forging ahead on their own.

Likely feeling hurt after all he'd done for it, feeling the uneasy divisions splitting the ranks and an eroded regard for him once losing control in the power-and-light meltdown, he might've at last said the hell with it... and his blessing turned into something less kind. At the very least, he might've copped a bittersweet, newly detached attitude of, Well, I wish you all the best of luck; I'm outta here. He had more than fulfilled his legal obligations and wanted to wash his hands of any further involvement with the place he'd birthed and nurtured and held such high (if perhaps unrealistic) hopes for.

And so, it's possible that lot holders' fading, happy vision of spending golden years in Mt. Shasta Vista's peaceful seclusion began its long, sorrowful slide into oblivion even as the first homes were being built. Without their one-time champion, constructing their future homes might have left a hollow-victory feeling, a gnawing sense of guilt for having perhaps essentially told the man who'd become an irrelevant, tiresome cheerleader, where to get off.

Something turned the wine into vinegar. Something — or series of somethings — occurred to change the entire trajectory of the one-time, ephemeral Shangri-la from incipient idyllic rural retirement community — sweet hideaway, rich with promise — into a busted dream and budding nightmare.

Chapter 18

A hundred times better deal

Vista’s raw parcels on a per-acre basis were at once 10 times cheaper and 10 times bigger than those of the almost next-door exurb of Lake Shastina. That meant that for any land shopper like me, not unduly concerned about its unabashed lack of infrastructure (or preferring it), its relative remoteness, or its quirky, haywire history, the Vista represented a deal that was 100 times better.

But to others, those of the more conventional bent, of the home-is-an-investment-first-and-foremost mindset, or one hooked on city amenities, it held precious little value indeed. Not since the lots' reason for being had gotten so hopelessly hamstrung, stuck between serving as basic camping retreats and places too pricy and challenging to build conventional homes on. As the number of non-code dwellings increased, the area had degenerated into a barrio, with a few nicer homes here and there to remind others how ambitious and hopeful the place once was.

Vista had at first attracted as much of a financially secure crowd as the second-home buyers in Lake Shastina, whom developers courted with full-on infrastructure, an artificial lake and, the clincher for some, an 18-hole championship golf course plus a nine-hole Scottish links course. But Vista's population base shifted radically once enough code ignorers moved in, its brief allure as an upscale-rustic hamlet vanishing in an instant. It became a rural ghetto to conventional thinking, scorned as a dead-in-the-water development, a place now attracting mainly only people wanting to live on the cheap. Overall, on the practical level, it was deemed as little more than an unfortunate wasteland (if a still somewhat charming one).

Comparing the two developments, situated so closely together, became like comparing apples and oranges. One was a full-fledged standard community, the other was futilely scrambling to return to one while its less solvent or convention-minded dwellers were A-okay with it just the way it was, thank you.

________________

Lookin' for a sign amid the maze of roads

One thing the Vista had long kept on top of was road signs, even if its initial four-foot-tall, wooden 4 x 4-inch ones proved undersized and short-lived.

Road signs were crucial inside the endless 66-mile labyrinth. Even longtime residents like me sometimes got lost if we ventured off our habitual routes. One moonless night, I was driving about in another section and suddenly realized I had no idea where I was. Completely disoriented, I drove on for what felt like forever before reaching an intersection. There, spotting a stenciled signpost, I climbed out and hopefully shone my flashlight on it, expecting to regain my bearings with the help of my trusty tiny road map and strong reading glasses. 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.

The second-generation signs were equally modest, four-foot-high painted-steel affairs that soon rusted. Delinquents would steal them, as well as the current third-generation, eight-foot-tall rustproof reflective-green metal signs, their poles set in concrete. Perhaps they felt the latter's slick, citified appearance clashed with the place's primitive ambiance. Or they may have wanted to make it harder for anyone to find their place, should they not want to be found, leaving those unfamiliar with the roads so disoriented that they'd switch gears to try to escape the bewildering maze.

A new version of the current third-generation signs has proved interesting. The board either started ordering them from a new source or the old one had cheapened their product. In any event, the road lettering that ws formerly durably baked on was now apparently only a transparency stuck on. It looked fine at first... then a few summers went by, and, with the sun beating down on the decals, the lettering became invisible. The current profusion of blank road signs about the place is maybe apropos in a way: "You are now here, but we're not going to tell you where here is."

___________________

The great robin invasion

Robins often find slim pickings during winter and early spring and resort to eating juniper berries to get by. There have been several documented reports — in Portland, OR, Georgia, Texas and Rhode Island — of the birds becoming inebriated after scarfing the berries, as their natural sugars ferment into alcohol when the returning warm sun hits them. The moister the weather, the higher the fruit production. We must've had a very wet winter one year (I've forgotten which year, I think sometime in the 1990s). The Vista had a particularly abundant crop of ripe berries, for the land was about to experience something quite extraordinary.

What was perhaps the largest gathering of robins ever to gorge on juniper berries in recent U.S. history happened right here. Being smack dab in the middle of an extensive spread of Western Junipers, and the warmth of spring coming here sooner than many places for being in a high-desert banana belt, hastening berry ripening, the ravenous robins' overmind must've telepathically spread the word to every member on the West Coast: Plentiful eats and a wild time to be had if you turn west at Mt. Shasta.

Doing the math floored me: 1,641 Vista lots, each having, conservatively, 50 trees — half of them female, or fruit-producing trees — and each bearing tree with thousands of berries (sometimes half ripe, half green, as the same tree's fruit can have a staggered two-year maturing cycle). With each bearing tree attracting, say, 25 birds (some mature trees, which produce significantly more berries, were easily laden with over 50 birds)... that's 1,641 lots x 25 fruit-producing trees per lot x 25 birds working each tree = 1,025,625 robins.

Over a million birds. All feasting away within the Vista boundaries alone that spring, and maybe half again as many in the surrounding wooded areas. It surely lured every single robin within migrating distance. Since robins can seasonally fly thousands of miles, up to 250 miles a day if really motivated (as no doubt they were), every robin within a 1,000-mile radius must have made a beeline for the trees.

One had to see it to believe it. Trees everywhere were alive with the noisy, madly gobbling birds, feasting away like it was some avian 1,000-year celebration, getting royally drunk in the process. It drove more than a few residents nuts. The birds made such a loud clatter on their mobile homes' metal roofs and tweeted such a deafening storm in the trees that they fired their guns to scare them away; this provided only a few minutes' respite before they returned in renewed frenzy. They often got disoriented and lost coordination from the alcohol; one resident told me he watched a bird that was so schnockered, it toppled from its perch and fell to the ground, dead drunk.

Part of me felt like reporting the extraordinary event to the media or the Audubon Society; I wish I had now. It was such an incredible event, hard to believe if you hadn't witnessed it yourself. But, living in Vista's sleepy mañana land, inertia prevailed. And so the phenomenal occurrence — a weeklong bacchanalia of myriad, ravenous, noisy robins, soon besotted, adorning Mt. Shasta Vista's junipers in an overwhelming presence — came and went unreported, undocumented and unnoticed beyond Vista's own astonished residents.

___________________

The sheer number of phantom

Residents haunted the place

Countless lot holders had snapped up the cheap parcels out of pure speculation — plus maybe, for some, to gain bragging rights for owning a piece of the Golden State and relishing the novelty of being an actual landholder. They hoped that eventual improvements, such as centralized water and extensive power lines, or at least everyone building to code and supplying their own power, would someday boost property values.

Being the first kid on the block in the wider region's advent of rural subdivisions, the Vista might've served in effect as a de facto test run for other California realtors who'd soon launch their own rural developments. They may have taken note and fine-tuned their own projects by providing more infrastructure and a formal plan for residential growth, as Vista's fast-selling lots proved there was indeed a market (if maybe only for affordable rec lots at first). Meanwhile, the Vista was held back and incapacitated by its initial low ambition despite approved homes popping up here and there.

One couldn't resist the bargain price. Perhaps the saying "What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly" proved true in Vista's case. Over the years, properties traded hands like so many baseball cards at recess. If each parcel on average changed ownership three times over its 50 years up to 2015 (probably an underestimate), the place experienced a rotation of ownership among some 5,000 parties located throughout the nation. If you added two other family members per parcel who were getting involved, the total rose to 15,000 people, each with varying degrees of vested interest in the place.

Fifteen thousand individuals — the overwhelming number absentee owners — were bound to keep the beleaguered outlands feeling more than a little sketchy around the edges.

It might have struck some that the place always seemed to be more of an abstract commercial aggregate of raw-land commodities, to be speculated on like soybean futures, than any actual physical development. Massive speculation appeared to eclipse any appreciation for the practical, useful value the parcels might have.

Trecherous psychic undertow

And a Mount Everest of inertia

After the retiree flock largely faded away and a diverse population, some short-term, came to dominate, civic interest became almost nil. Latter-day, socially minded newcomers who plugged in and became involved soon became aware of the realm's massive psychic undertow and its Mt. Everest of inertia. Such forces — reinforced by the board, the only organized group the place had other than its volunteer fire department and auxiliary fundraiser — could dampen enthusiasm for getting involved in record time. It fostered a sense of futility about ever trying to fix anything. Treading water seemed the only thing one could do; doing anything more appeared a fool's errand.

The place was like a disastrous big-budget movie misfire, where everything went wrong after a promising start, and the creative vision was never realized.

First-involved newcomers got disappointed and gave up, or hastily dialed back any errant urges to get involved. The few undeterred, more thick-skinned and unwavering could appear as so many Don Quixotes, valiantly tilting at windmills.

Meanwhile, the place remained relatively empty of residents, maybe 250 at most. That's roughly 35 people per square mile, compared to over 18,000 in San Francisco or 27,000 in New York City. Until 2015's dramatic land-use changes and population explosion, absentee lot owners still outnumbered residents by roughly seven to one.

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Fraught with paradox

The first wave of settlers was flush with cash and jazzed at the prospect of becoming modern-day pioneers and forging their own law-abiding, sparsely settled, semi-tamed wilderness community. Some must have nurtured hopes that the place would grow, as other retirees, plus maybe decent working folks willing to accept and acquiesce to their urbane ways of running things, joined the venerable oldsters.

But others were less altruistic and expansion-minded and perhaps more than a smidgeon drunk with the power born of sudden liquid wealth and having made such a momentous, bold move. Such became uber-territorial over their former camp land and hoped to metamorphose it into serving as, essentially, their own residential community, wanting — insisting — everything to be just so. With the soaring home values they'd cashed out on and being ready to downsize, they could easily afford to build fully compliant, modest homes in Siskiyou County, with its lower cost of living, and still have a good chunk of change left; they were sitting pretty.

It would become a place where they, as the well-heeled founders, had established a comfortable rural standard of living that any others, if likewise financially secure and liking what they did, would equal. Nobody would dare try to move in on the cheap amid their respectable, law-abiding hideaway, not if they knew what was good for them.

It might be hard to appreciate, in our extreme times, how such health and building codes were ever so rigorously enforced in such a remote land. But they were... or tried to be. And the first wave of owner builders, staunch upright citizens that they were, having jumped through every single blasted hoop and never thinking not to, fully expected anyone else wanting to live here to do the same blessed thing. It was the price one paid to gain entry; one earned the right to live here, dammit. Try sneaking in and avoiding the steep admission price, and it was "throw the bum out."

The way they went bonkers once instant homesteaders became a force to be reckoned with, some might've concluded that the situation smacked of supreme irony. After all, the place had started out championing primitive campgrounds. But then, when people began settling, they grew so territorial that they became wary of anyone still using the lots for camping. The place had turned 180 degrees. Residents became so leery of campers (except perhaps ones in fancy new RVs) that they practically viewed them as wanted criminals. They'd zealously track their remaining allowable camping days before they could throw them under the bus in righteous fury by reporting them to authorities.

The place began as a collection of casual, do-your-own-thing recreational lots, then tried transforming into a standard residential community, only to get bogged down between the two worlds — its reason for being becoming muddier than the Mississippi in late spring. And so it would end up supporting neither.

Chapter 19

Power to the people (some, anyhow)

In the early seventies, the handful of property owners keen on building their retirement homes needed electricity, and power lines were nowhere to be found. Others may have hoped to have electricity made available for camp visits in their appliance-loaded trailers and RVs. But if so, perhaps unbeknownst to them, authorities and the power company probably wouldn't have allowed temporary hook-ups short of restructuring the entire grounds into one humongous trailer park. Maybe they'd hoped it would expedite the creation of a facility where campers could at least do loads of laundry, shower, use a pay phone, maybe recharge a dead battery, without having to drive clear to town.

But others, almost certainly the overwhelming majority, in donating to the power fund had likely only wanted to goose lot values and sellability by adding such basic infrastructure. They hoped to make the lots more attractive to those maybe toying with the idea of building, if only a modest vacation cabin.

Enough seemed interested in making the go juice available — but not enough to vote for a mandatory assessment to fund wiring the whole place. So they made it a volunteer assessment, hoping to spread the otherwise prohibitive cost of extending power lines to the remote parcels for whoever was interested in building.

Possibly, Collins had the idea of adding electricity in mind all along, or did once he saw nearby Lake Shastina taking off. Were there enough owners interested in further developing the place, or were they more content to let it remain the way it was, a de facto seasonal primitive camp resort and modest sleeper investment, hoping to discourage anyone who might want to actually reside here?

If the former proved true, it wasn't an option but a given that the ubiquitous energy elixir on which so much of humanity was so unabashedly hooked needed to be brought in posthaste. If the latter were the case, bringing in power, while maybe goosing property values, would sound the death knell for the place's halcyon days of primitive camping.

As usual, Mt. Shasta's dream factory was at work. Ambition appeared poised to make a quantum leap as property owners, led by Collins, envisioned extending electrical lines to every last lot. Why not? The power company — again, possibly on the strength of developer Collins’s assurances he'd work to get everyone on board — reportedly made a tentative commitment to extend power lines throughout, pending sufficient funding by the association. Anything short of a mandatory assessment, of course, and they'd only wire as much as the limited fund allowed.

Turning point

The backwoods camp realm was possibly on the verge of transforming, if only in a haphazard, scrambling to catch up, slapdash sort of way. If enough went along, it might be on its way to segueing into an actual bona fide community of sorts. It would have met one of a place's three vital infrastructure needs, leaving water supply and hygienic waste disposal yet to be reckoned with. Any individual owners wanting to settle would themselves continue being responsible for generating these for the foreseeable future.

But not enough went along. While three in four, or some 1,200 parcel holders, chipped in — either fired up over the prospect of building or thinking adding power would boost parcel values — a quarter of the membership flat-out refused: Some 400 lot owners wouldn't contribute despite Collins' pleaful pitch in the Vistascope newsletter that started, "I know each of you bought lots out in the middle of nowhere so that you could do with whatever you damn well please with it, but...," going on to try convincing the hold-outs to reconsider.

To no avail.

It seemed that many who actually visited their parcels and savored the place's pronounced serenity had been hunky dory with the primitive parcels just the way they were. They relished roughing it on their own bit of wilderness and knew adding unsightly power and phone lines, with their intrusive, dead-tree, creosote-soaked poles and high-strung, EMF-emitting wires, would ruin things faster than you could say "power bill." They'd mar the natural realm's semi-pristine charm that they'd bought the inexpensive, primitive parcels for: simple camp vacations. They never intended to do anything with them beyond, at most, roughing in a driveway, making a tent or trailer clearing, and building a stone campfire ring; maybe, if really ambitious, fashioning an outhouse.

Getting away from it all

The whole idea of the place, as they saw it, was to serve as a getaway from the complexities of modern life — including electrical dependency and telephones (this was, of course, decades before the advent of cell phones and solar power). Get back to basics, not drag the buggers in. They wanted to push the reset button and recharge amid the still semi-wild nature of the place. Those leaning this way may have thought the place so remote that further development appeared unlikely. They'd hoped their parcels would continue to serve as private, primitive refuges — not only for themselves, but for family and friends or anyone they might decide to sell them to.

Even though the lots were rezoned for single-resident occupancy, providing a potential avenue for building up a standard living community, it must've appeared to many who declined to chip in that speculation fever was out of control. People seemed to be betting unrealistically on robust growth, like in Lake Shastina. Maybe the holdouts had sensed that it would, in fact, be only the tiniest minority of lot holders who would be all gung-ho on building, and time would prove it to be little more than a super-sparse fringe community amid a sea of empty lots.

Too late, the former realized there weren't enough others interested in settling, thereby effectively leaving some 98% of the parcels no longer attractive for camp retreats and too pricey to build on. They became virtually unusable beyond maybe getting firewood from or, for various new agers, harvesting the plentiful mountain sagebrush stems to wrap into purification smudge sticks.

Sea of disinterested speculators

Some who refused to chip in were themselves likely disinterested investors and speculators. They'd perhaps already soured on the place that they had somehow managed to get themselves tangled up in against their better judgment. Property values were failing to increase; their anticipated easy money-making proved to be a mirage.

The cynically inclined might have jumped to the conclusion that a select few parcel owners, primed to make the grand leap and build new residences, had craftily persuaded over 1,000 others to contribute to the power fund to minimize their own outlays.

In any event, various lot holders were, quite understandably, loath to sink another cent in the place. Some possibly reasoned that getting power to every lot by itself wouldn't appreciably increase the parcels' market values, due to the remaining iffy water situation and at times problematic waste-disposal issue. Possible further thinking: Not enough would ever want to live out in the middle of nowhere so far from accustomed city conveniences, having to wrestle with providing their own infrastructure, beyond a few kooky retirees who, it seemed, wanted to leave the whole bloomin' world behind. More rational-thinking owners might not have blamed them (some perhaps even envying and admiring them). Still, they would have been furious and disheartened over the almost certain line-extension cost increase from Pacific Power.

Sorry, out of luck, schmuck;

Lights out

The power-and-light fund was a flash in the pan: first come, first served, good 'til gone. It was gone fast. A couple of dozen parcel owners went for it — psyched at the idea of living in such splendid seclusion. Or of building structures for others to get enthused about after they enjoyed them until the novelty of Vista living wore off, and they sold them to others likewise smitten by the place. The power company, realizing the association wouldn't approve mandatory assessments to cover the cost of stringing the whole place, backed out of its tenuous willingness to commit to a complete wiring campaign. They'd been discouraged, anyhow, by the frequent drill-bit-shattering lava-rock strata their crews encountered that required expensive replacements. A similar problem was no doubt experienced by various owners trying to excavate workable conventional septic systems on rocky or sloping parcels.

But before the tide turned and the ambitious plan fell through, Pacific Power, showing its initial good-faith commitment, had installed and wired towering street lamps at all five highway entrances. They would perhaps still be shining away at night today but for the beacons (which gave off an eerie, cold, bluish-white glow) continually getting shot out by rowdy locals. No doubt their tribe was still fulminating over the subdivision's very existence. They must have taken especially keen delight in being able to sabotage the dratted place without even leaving the blacktop. After a few rounds of such target practice and the power company's dutiful repairs, the latter finally gave up and removed the lights. The five highway entrances once again were swallowed by darkness after nightfall.

This malicious mischief shows, perhaps better than anything, how deeply locals' bitterness ran towards the upstart development with the gall to have taken over their land: They'd undoubtedly cast one mighty hex over it. Their message, loud and clear: "It's lights out for you guys; take it back to Long Beach."

The misbegotten outlands' hapless parcel owners — forever at odds with one another over future land use, under relentless attack by intolerant locals and now likely feeling screwed by the power company — were left twisting in the wind.

Chapter 20

Short-lived cooperative efforts

Although no more than about 6% of the 1,641 parcels were connected to the power grid at the time, some who'd contributed to the fund undoubtedly had tentative plans to build at some point in the future. They were likely discouraged by the fund's rapid depletion — and furious at the power company, if it indeed raised prices so prohibitively that any affordable line extensions became infeasible. They sold their lots (or tried to), feeling dismayed and disappointed, if not spitting-nails-mad enraged: Their dream hideaway had become too costly to build on.

Some of the less informed who'd chipped in and kept their lots and thought to build sometime down the road, undoubtedly lost it on realizing they'd been left out in the cold. When they were ready to construct, the power company probably quoted them a shocking five-digit figure that could cause heart failure. The more cynical and uninformed might've concluded that the company had reneged on its earlier commitment through an underhanded bait-and-switch.

The firstcomers realized that the fund would cover line-extension costs for only a limited number of lot owners. (By 2024, extension costs were over $53,000 a mile, or about $10 a foot; I couldn't learn what it was at the time.) Being new-fledged retirees who had both the means and the desire to re-settle, they'd moved fast, maybe faster than they wanted to if having gotten inside skinny on soon-to-soar extension rates, but extra motivation to go for it while the getting was good. In any event, the limited-fund situation had favored the quick and the bold.

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The vicious circle went round and round

The way the place moved from one crisis to another was amusing, seen from the perspective of the grand, ongoing tragi-comic human drama, which one could either cry about, laugh at, or both by turn.

The earliest campers became the bad guys to the locals, who resented their land takeover. Then those who ruined the place for camping by building homes, drained the power fund and became overly territorial were the villains to the rest of the lot owners who'd taken the land from the locals. Then those who ignored building codes — suspected of growing pot, whether they were or not — became the devils to the code-legal residents who'd ruined the place for camping for those who'd taken the land from the locals. Then, unlicensed pot growers became the scoundrels to the code-legal residents who'd ruined the place for camping for the other lot owners who'd taken the land from the locals. Then the residents who didn't sell and move out were suspected if not growing pot, for having no skin in the game and able to file complaints, became the miscreants to the growers who...

The vicious circle kept going round and round. (And this didn't even include the pioneer white settlers who crowded away the land's use by seasonally visiting Indigenous Peoples.)

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The place failed to catch the solar-electric wave

Mt. Shasta Vista missed a sure bet by not going solar. Between the place's enviable banana-belt microclimate, advancing solar technology and plummeting costs, it was the ideal solution for supplying go juice in the grid-challenged area. With its high-desert location, it could be so sunshiny on some March days that one might be relaxing and enjoying soaking in the rays, while in Weed, 15 miles away, hunched-over snow shovelers still only dreamed of spring.

The first solar-electric system in Shasta Vista was installed in the 1970s by code-compliant resident Brian Green, a late co-founder of Homepower magazine, which later became the premier global resource guide for creating do-it-yourself alternative-energy off-grid systems. This was decades before mainstream industry became involved, once it realized solar electricity was the wave of the future. (While the later owner of Brian Green's home lost the property to the 2021 Lava Wildfire, which tragically destroyed dozens of Vistans' places, one thing miraculously survived unscathed: the latest bank of solar panels. It sat safely perched high on its metal stand in a clearing amid the ruins, looking for all the world as if nothing were amiss.)

In 1989, I became one of only two known Vista residents to rely exclusively on solar electricity. I'd always intended to go with alternative energy someday. In my case, it was sunshine or bust — no backup generator. A 1992 HomePower article on my modest system was featured in issue #30 as an example of a small setup. It showed that one didn't have to spend a fortune to create an off-grid system if content to have only the most basic electrical amenities covered, then use alternative sources for the rest, such as propane for refrigeration and cooking, and lots of south-facing windows and a wood stove for heating. (Although Homepower ceased publication in November 2018, its entire archives are available to download for free with a simple sign-up at homepower.com.)

In dramatic contrast to Mt. Shasta Vista, the McCloud region’s Shasta Forest rural subdivision, even further off the grid, fully embraced solar as the most affordable — not to mention environmentally friendly — solution for powering its many, sometimes quite substantial, residences. The Vista might've as well, had it remained code-compliant.

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Well, well

Developer Collins and the early owner volunteers had established the informal, de facto community well and constructed a giant holding tank, sporting an enormous overhead valve, which all Vista lot holders were welcome to tap for free by filling the community water truck until their own wells were in. A garden 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 — mostly in Section 23, where 700-foot or deeper wells were required — still found it challenging to get working wells in. My neighbor, Bill Waterson, had three costly drilling misses, ironically, given his name. (Much later, an older Hmong neighbor, Kee, wouldn't hit even after drilling 800 feet.) Affected parties formed Property Owners Without Water (POWW), an apt acronym given the place's tense social climate, and got another water truck together.

Closing the unofficial quasi-community watering hole

In 1980, it came to light at the county health department, following stricter California water-use laws, that the unofficial, never-sanctioned community well was illegal. And the water truck was uncertified to deliver potable water and lacked an ostensibly required certified delivery person. Then-department head Dr. Bayuk capped the membership of the 25 resident owners with an iron fist. He told us at a specially called meeting held at the McLarty Road home of the then-board president and POWW member, John Shelton, that since he held discretionary powers to grant a code variance, he'd let current POWW members — but only its members — continue hauling from the well.

This consideration was given in light of numerous respectable individuals having sold former homes and built in the Vista on the strength of realtors' assurances that there was a community well, so one didn't need to bring in a well before building. It seems the health department took pity on them (or maybe wanted to avoid a lawsuit against the county if they tried to shut down the long-established well outright). The building department, working in tandem with health, honored the variance, issuing permits to any well-less parcel holders who were POWW members, but then expected them to fully comply with all other particulars.

He told us that, henceforth, all other lot holders would have to drill an approved well before they could apply for a building permit. He envisioned the POWW memberships — nontransferable to any subsequent homebuyers — fading away over time as lot holders either installed wells, died, or sold properties to new owners, who'd then be expected to drill an approved well before moving in.

Honor system

We were on the honor system. Inertia, ridiculously strong in Vista's dreamy land, reigned supreme, and a way of living had long been established. Some who were otherwise compliant, rather than spring for a well, resigned themselves to continuing to haul water as the price one paid for living here cheaply. And so the audaciously non-compliant dwellers, hunkering down, hopefully below the radar of snoopy neighbors and the powers that be, kept filling up at the well as usual. Residents were keen on the idea of avoiding the high expense (assuming they could afford it) of a drilling effort that might not reach water, or good water, or sufficient water — plus the prohibitive cost of extending electrical lines to power the well pump and eventual dwelling.

As a result, although 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 and policies ignored as if it didn't exist.

Decades later, there were still over half a dozen otherwise code-legal homes in one section alone for which water hauling rights had technically been voided ages ago through property transfers. Yet current owners were still merrily schlepping away. The county apparently didn't feel the 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 otherwise, new homeowners assumed that water-hauling rights were transferable.

This gave prospective residents the impression that one needn't bring in a well before applying for a building permit. It seemed you could build first, then, sometime down the road, try for a well at your own convenience — or not, your choice. This misunderstanding was destined to further baffle many future would-be residents (as well as newer health department workers): "Lots of homes don't have wells, but they got building permits; why can't I?"

While Dr. Bayuk cautioned Vista board members against allowing anyone to use the well beyond POWW’s now-closed membership, efforts to restrict access were, of course, ineffective. Padlocks kept getting cut with bolt cutters (or patient hacksawing) by water-jonesin' scofflaws, and the idea of fencing off access was likely seen as more work and expense than anyone wanted to mess with. Obviously, no one wanted to volunteer for guard duty.

Over time, the ever-changing board members apparently either lost track of the county's well-use stipulation or overlooked it along with the county. Perhaps some felt that the well symbolized the one thing that property owners had worked on together to forge an actual community. Amid the sorrowful confusion and contention that befell the place over time, the venerable well and its giant holding tank had perennially served as a visible reminder of its once-promising prospects when landholders worked together to improve the place.

'Hey, it comes with the property... doesn't it?'

Fast-forward decades, and the well-use situation was still out of control. Residents living on the cheap, never intending to drill, kept tapping it. One short-term resident living in a shack on Placone Road would make daily hot-summer water runs for his teeming menagerie of thirsty livestock in an ancient Cadillac, back seat removed and crammed full, along with the trunk, with lidded five-gallon buckets and Jerry cans.

Some, perhaps a bit too bohemian, reportedly copped showers at the well. Risking getting naked for a quick shower in full view of the then-infrequent traffic 60 feet away must've felt no doubt worth it for the chance to luxuriate in a fast cool-down and rehydration on a scorching hot day. As mentioned, some free spirit residents often went about nude or semi-nude (albeit mainly on their own remote properties) in nice weather, so such public showering may not have seemed too outre and shocking. The Vista was such a primitive, rarefied spot that, in another time and circumstance (and with more water), it would have made a fine naturist resort.

Finally, board members, led by then-president George Gosting, feared being fined by the state or sued by the membership for permitting continued well use. Well-owning residents fumed over how their annual dues were being used to replace the pump and cover its monthly power bills. They felt they were essentially not only enabling but subsidizing code noncompliance. The board came up with a solution: Get rid of the bugger. They quickly sold it outright with no public discussion or prior notice. 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 interracial couple in Section 23, Alex and Debbie Blume, who briefly lived in an otherwise code-approved but well-less modular dwelling on Stewart Road, first owned by the Miller family, who'd been longtime POWW members. The suit pursued far-fetched racketeering charges. They likely relied on the erroneous assumption that their home had legal water-hauling rights from the well, so they couldn't sell the well and leave people who depended on it in the lurch. Alas, they lost the case, and the lawyer, for his trouble, 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 de facto community well, it must've seemed to non-compliant dwellers, told to get a well or else, that a draconian building moratorium had been 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, for having difficult water and being in such remote hinterlands — and perhaps most of all for being under Mt. Shasta's spell with its sometimes almost otherworldly energy.

The Vista was a dreamland, pure and simple. Somehow, it felt beyond the pale of the mundane world and all its nitpicky rules and regulations. It was a realm unto itself, operating on its own frequency, penciling in rules as current residents saw fit, and even then, they were only suggestions.

As a result, various land-hungry buyers on a tight budget, lured by the bargain lands and failing to exercise due diligence, felt majorly scammed when, at some point, they got hassled by irate code-legal residents and the county and told they couldn’t stay on their properties more than 30 days a year before first doing this, that, and the other thing. They’d accuse the association board, management, and realtors of being in cahoots, each passing the buck, no one being transparent. To a suspicious mind, not always able or willing to understand and deal with the frequent, unreasonable ways of the world, it might've indeed seemed as though they were all somehow slyly working together, churning out problematic marginal properties for quick gain while keeping rigid control over everything.

It was obvious, in any event, that self-interested forces were exploiting people's desire to own their own land, all too aware that many couldn't begin to meet the legal residency requirements short of winning a lottery or some rich old aunt dying. But hey, it was always buyer beware.

Unending cycle

The unending cycle, as the uninformed parcel holders saw it: A lot was sold after the realtor maybe downplayed the legal snags of residing on it as-is, offering a wink as if to say the rules often went unenforced; the purchaser, disillusioned once getting routed by angry legal residents, board members and county authorities, quit paying annual POA assessment in protest; in time the lot was foreclosed on, the Association repossessed it, and it was re-listed, realtors waiting for next sucker to come along.

In later times, many buyers knew the score but didn’t care. In a new era with a radically different social climate and sketchy building-code enforcement, they were game to join Vista’s growing population of non-compliant-and-what's-

-it-to-you? dwellers. Again, they'd been emboldened after the county axed its residential-code enforcer position during the critical five-year period following the Great Recession of 2008-09. By the time the position was finally reinstated, it lacked the will to resume enforcing legal residency requirements — at least in the Vista. Clearly, by then, the county viewed the place as only a greater mess; more than ever, it seemed best to continue ignoring it at all costs.

I attended the county board of supervisors' public meeting at which the enforcement position was at last re-funded. I was struck by their apparent reluctance to act and by how detached they appeared from the significance of the regulatory role for taxpaying residents, who, not unreasonably, expected to enjoy peace of mind in their homes for knowing that a certain threshold of living standards was being maintained.

Such a situation, with health and building codes all but unenforced for so long, had naturally lent the impression that anything went in the far-removed woodlands. While it was indeed always buyer beware, you’d've maybe thought your more sporting realtors would've posted the sobering reminder over their doorways.

People with enough resources to pay maybe $30,000 or more to put in a well and perhaps half again as much to get powerlines extended, had enough to buy land — and more than any piddly two-and-a-half acres — with far easier water access and unencumbered by the endless squabbling of disaffected neighbors. Why would anyone spend so much to buy into such a discombobulated place?

Cheap land with million-dollar views could only go so far.

Chapter 21

Plenty of room left in Hotel California:

Early Trouble in River City reconsidered

Most, if not all, of Shasta Vista’s two or three dozen founding families had either known each other from down south or met during their annual summer camp rendezvous. Mostly couples ready to retire, they could easily afford to build code-legal residences and so become instant lords and ladies of their own fledgling backwoods hamlet. With the territorial imperative so strong, many likely hoped to make — and keep — the one-time camp lands their own de facto rural retirement hideaway, let the chips fall where they may. Too bad if it disappointed or angered those who'd bought parcels for camp retreat use. Or had wanted to build but waited too long to tap the limited power-and-light fund; you snooze, you lose. Or that investors now felt stuck with parcels no longer suitable for camping and too expensive to build on, becoming white elephant properties whose seller's market was so sleepy it bordered on catatonic.

Theirs was a distinctly convention-minded culture. The alphas of the group held a pronounced buttoned-down, breezily urbane SoCal sensibility and a hell-for-leather law-and-order mindset. One that some might've viewed as a bit out of place at the top of more freewheeling Northern California, even allowing for its location in a conservative neck of the woods. It struck more impressionable souls like me that an urbane L.A. culture had somehow been weirdly transplanted, fully intact, onto the top of the state's wild and woolly hinterlands. (But then, it wasn't unlike how an Asian culture would quickly superimpose itself on the place a half-century later, so maybe it wasn't that strange after all.)

In ways that counted, the Vista essentially became their place. Their tight-wound influence lingered for decades, long after the rabble began taking over their former, would-be exclusive Shangri-la. It would continue to shape the development's social climate and collective mindset through the old guard's increasingly futile efforts to salvage what remained of their one-time backwoods paradise and arrest any further degradation.

The modern-day pioneers were angst-ridden over their place losing its brief legitimate community status after the invasion by non-compliant dwellers. Unofficial duties suddenly expanded to include blowing the whistle to the county over any unapproved construction or overlong camp visits brought to their notice by their bloodhound cohorts combing the maze of roads as if in search of escaped convicts.

Early on in the code-enforcement battle, desperate to preserve the endangered retirement haven, they rang the phones of Siskiyou County's Planning, Health, and Building Departments off the hook. Board members demanded the county hold the latest-discovered scofflaw's feet to the fire for trying to invade their law-abiding domain on the cheap — especially those with an infuriatingly taunting, "hee-hee-whadaryagointodoaboudit?" attitude that no doubt drove the blood pressure of many into the danger zone.

Bottomless cup of trouble

If enforcers failed to do their job and the culprits got away with it, it would amount to selective enforcement, grounds for a lawsuit against the county. So, for many years, the stretched-thin code enforcers obliged, trying their damnedest to stamp out the scourge festering on the would-be tranquil lands that could never catch a break.

Then, at some point, they gave up. They'd ground their teeth to the gums, addressing the perennial problem child with the relatively slim tax-generating base. One whose situation, no matter how much they tried getting a handle on it, proved to be a bottomless cup of trouble. As with a boat springing new leaks faster than one could plug existing ones, bailing was futile.

Of course, this seeming shirking of duty was deemed unacceptable by the heavily invested, tax-paying residents. Gone round the bend, they clung to the belief that strict enforcement of law and order was the only means of saving their new community from wrack and ruin; it must persevere. In seeming denial of the insurmountable challenges they faced with brazen code ignorers sprouting like hydra heads, their volunteer search parties kept blitzing, scouring the maze of roads, never-say-die, determined to run to earth any who dared be in the Vista while ignoring the residency requirements they deemed chiseled in stone.

With Whack-a-Mole efforts in overdrive, posse members soon stopped trying to even talk to the culprits and point out the error of their ways. Operations went covert. 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 rules and regulations. Realizing they were dealing with a shameless, possibly even violent, group of scofflaws who refused to respect authority, they began driving by furtively instead, stopping just long enough to scope the scene from the road and ascertain the lot's exact location. Later, they obtained the parcel assessment number from the master map index and filed a formal complaint for every last minutiae of noncompliance their painstaking efforts brought to light.

Sub-zero Tolerance

It was for such a scorched-earth crusade that the unflattering moniker of "the gestapo" got bestowed on the board of directors by the Vista's more pragmatic, live-and-let-live residents. Some had gone through the compliance process wringer themselves or bought from those who had; they knew how expensive it was to meet code for anyone wanting to live in the country and simplify their lives if on a modest income. They were shocked and dismayed that an ugly, sub-zero-tolerance existed; playing such ruthless hardball didn't seem to go at all with living in the would-be tranquil backwoods.

Even though the place was seriously derailing from conventional expectations, people must've thought there surely had to be a better way to resolve matters. Maybe not, though. Not short of changing legal-residency regulations, or suing the county for selective non-enforcement. Perhaps, for better or worse, it was simply the way things were. A cascading series of unfortunate events had locked residents into a state of perpetual conflict.

Living in denial

In time, the situation was so far gone that one might've thought the only thing left for the twisted-into-knots legal residents was to accept that their one-time paradise was history and try to make the best of it; the system they'd depended on and supported their entire lives had failed them. But that would've been too painful; these were to be their golden years, a carefree time after lifetimes of toil. So instead, they lived in denial. And, as dubious consolation, took a certain grim satisfaction in making things as thoroughly unpleasant as possible for any miscreants who dared to crash their party — even long after the party was a fading memory.

Sometimes they were successful in getting a few of the newer arrivals kicked out. Driving around the back roads of neighboring Section 13 in the nineties, one day I met a high-spirited man and his very pregnant partner in front of their remote parcel on Bounty Road. He'd just thrown up a tiny, makeshift two-story cracker-box palace of 2x4s and pressboard: instant home. A goat or two was contentedly grazing on the nearby sagebrush. I returned with a sense of foreboding a month or two later. Sure enough, they were long gone. A bulldozer had leveled their shelter to the ground; the place looked like a tornado had hit it.

This was far from an isolated incident.

One might've said it was people's own fault for not doing any better research. But some knew the score and rolled the dice anyway, thinking it was such cheap land that it was worth a shot trying to end-run a system seen as unreasonable.

Bottom line: The fondest dreams of many would-be country dwellers of cultivating simple, affordable living were obliterated during that intolerant time. Here and there, half-completed structures of varying ambition and construction levels stood forlorn, mute witnesses of their own disasters, abandoned and radioactive from code-violation busts, their builders having run out of cash, the will to comply or both.

Over time, many would be picked off by the furtive lumber 'recyclers'. "Hey, it's just going to waste; I'm doing a service, doncha know." Such dubiously resourceful people considered any parcel fair game if it looked more abandoned than inhabited — that is, if there were no recent vehicle tracks at the entrance way or vehicles parked on the property.

The place that at first had seemed easy come, easy go, often instead proved to be easy come, hard go.

_______________________________

Welcome to Mt. Shasta Vista:

My own first impressions

The large, imposing signs planted at each of the place's five county road entrances, beyond the welcome sign, plus at every section corner, made the board's policy crystal clear in large, bold, black print. The signs all but shouted:

HEALTH AND BUILDING CODES STRICTLY ENFORCED

Woe betide any poor soul failing to heed such a no-nonsense warning.

So, in late 1978, along comes this rambling, residence-shy 29-year-old nature boy of limited means, burned out living on the road, nurturing a dream of building a bower in the wilderness. With champagne taste but living on a beer budget, I soon warmed to the notion of settling in the bone-dry, semi-wild, super-affordable juniper outlands, instead of the redwood creekside of my dreams... to blasted code, if that’s what it took, and as my limited resources and the steep learning curve allowed. Although it would prove by far the biggest project of my life up to then, at least lumber was still relatively cheap, and the building code a smidgen less onerous — if then rigorously enforced. I planned to join the POWW's water-hauling group to avoid having to drill a well, which I couldn't have even begun to afford.

To my ridiculously impressionable mind, the growling entrance signs were of more than passing concern. Even if the lots were relatively affordable — most listed between $1,500 and $1,750, with easy terms of $250 down and $25 a month — the place struck me as more than a tad unfriendly. To me, the signage seemed to be saying: “Welcome to Mt. Shasta Vista; no this, no that, no the other thing under penal codes such and such; violators will be hanged by their toenails. In fact, we DARE you to even enter, bub.”

Or, more concisely, "Welcome, now leave." Or, perhaps most to the point, like the scrawled-in-blood-red greeting sign posted on the outskirts of town in Clint Eastwood's Western revenge flick, High Plains Drifter: "Welcome to Hell."

On reading the top warning, in even bigger black lettering — “Private Property, Trespassers will be Prosecuted” — part of me felt like I might get arrested any second for having so foolishly entered, especially since it was after nightfall. I'd just driven over 300 miles and was too psyched to wait til morning to scope the place. (My realtor had sent me a map circling a dozen parcels up for grabs.) I felt like I’d stumbled into some top-secret government compound and should turn around while there was still time. Residents were probably even then peeking out from behind their curtains and calling the sheriff to report a suspicious vehicle.

But, as was also the case with countless land seekers of limited funds before and after me, cheap lot prices won out over due caution, eclipsing any first impressions that screamed red alert.

_______________

Bad feng shui

Such sign wording, of course, served many purposes. Yes, it was meant to discourage any would-be substandard dwellings and, perish the thought, any white trailer trash, hop-headed bikers or scraggly hippie types like me from ever trying to invade their would-be respectable scene.

But it was also meant to dissuade wood poachers, unlicensed game hunters, trash dumpers, vehicle abandoners — and, in the earliest, vacation-only years, miscreants harboring designs on plundering goods trustingly left in or outside trailers and mobile homes on unfenced parcels. Even decades later, with hundreds of residents spread across the domain, a hulking 12 x 50-foot-long vacant mobile home was once boldly snatched in the dead of night from one lot and hauled over two miles to another without consequence.

They probably needed that loud bark, for all the good it did.

But the Chinese feng shui principle holds that the energy at a place's entrance creates a vibration that resonates throughout it. Sadly, the essence of such barking words indeed seemed to ripple throughout the realm, more so for being reinforced by similar huge signs at every section corner. Acquaintances visiting me decades later, as if wanting to play it safe and not risk someone towing their vehicle away, parked it forward of the baleful entrance sign and walked the entire 1.3 miles in.

That intriguing, welcoming wooden arch that once spanned the main entrance, seemingly filled with hope and promise? After being treated to my own 'unwelcome wagon' in due course, the cynic in me thought it might have just as well proclaimed:

Abandon All Hope

Ye Who Enter Here

Chapter 22

'Let's Do the Time Warp Again':

Lost cause revisited, one last time

It perhaps came as no surprise that the rigid attitude conveyed by the Vista entrance signs was on full display at the monthly board meetings. Open to all parcel owners and family members, the proceedings, though dull as dishwater sometimes, were more often a caution. Gnarly shouting matches were not uncommon. At least once, a fistfight broke out on the floor.

It was as if the place had developed a deadly cancer; left untreated, it was fatally metastasizing. The tsunami waves of bickering among malcontent dwellers were so phenomenal, the place would've made rich fodder for 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 firstcomer prospectors of California's 1849 Gold Rush. Briefly having the rich diggings to themselves, intoxicated with their great good fortune, things turned to pandemonium the instant a flood of fellow prospectors chasing the same yellow stone poured in like the sea.

Similarly (if nowhere near as dramatically or quickly), the earliest Vistan residents, beyond the occasional visiting camper, luxuriated in having the idyllic woodland domain all to themselves at first. They'd transplanted to the top of the state and were jealously guarded of the place, but had faith in local government to keep law and order intact. But, like the first miners, they got run over. Eventually, beside themselves with anguished frustration, they became like so many mad King Lears shouting imperious commands to the four winds.

When less-solvent people began moving in and dared to ignore health and building codes, the firstcomers still had the ball in their court. They'd established relations with county code enforcers and enjoyed a lock on board membership. They ran with the ball, clinging to it for dear life, dismissing as idiots anyone at meetings who took exception to their hardball tactics against the scofflaw intruders. Such people obviously didn't understand the gravity of the situation. Beyond desperate, their bottom line was that, come hell or high water, they'd dedicate themselves to keeping the county health and building codes strictly enforced.

For the alternative was unthinkable.

To arms, to arms

Desolated and shocked beyond endurance as the relied-on county enforcement began failing them, the overwrought board members and their cohorts remained loaded for bear. With their dream village facing imminent ruination, they engaged in a desperate take-no-prisoners war of intimidation against every code ignorer they located — with or without county support. They must have thought that, through sheer will and collective determination and the knowledge that the law was on their side, they might at least stem the tide of any further miscreants swamping their domain, and maybe some of the thorns in their sides would tire of the war of attrition and finally move on.

Steeled to win or go down fighting, for a while at meetings, board members tried to dodge public discussion of hot-button issue proposals by steamrolling their "comply or else" agenda. They'd mumble, "public comments?" quickly out of the side of the mouth, like a crooked politician, 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 supporters: "Robert's Rules! Robert's Rules!"

But despite their most valiant efforts, the well-heeled firstcomers' dream of an idyllic backwoods retirement haven was quickly turning into a nightmare; the Vista they'd known and cherished was being torn asunder before their very eyes by scofflaw invaders.

Tipping point

As more and more lot buyers of limited means settled in, bearing rebellious attitudes that rejected the idea of building to code, the country's limited resources for enforcing the code reached a tipping point. Beyond that, they were unable to effectively impose the codes and ordinances (the very ones that people living in town, nowhere to hide, perforce always toed the line on). This, despite, or perhaps because of, officials continually being apprised and updated on the intolerable situation by the apoplectic residency. Bees in their bonnets, they bugged them without letup over the latest-discovered infractions needing swift response. The idea of taking early retirement undoubtedly started to look good for some.

Over time, authorities all but abandoned code enforcement in the beset hinterlands. One got the impression officials liked to pretend it didn't exist (perhaps not unlike the place's outlaw dwellers' attitude towards their building ordinances). At least not beyond the county's property assessors' unfailing attention — eventually via satellite zoom-ins — to every parcel and what improvements, if any, were being made, to squeeze every possible shekel through the annual tax assessments.

Before authorities reached that tipping point, it seemed that the only responses aside from actual emergencies were to the more persistent calls from fuming parties who knew the law and possibly threatened legal action if they didn't respond. They became such pains that it was finally easier to drag themselves out and tell the culprits, "Hey, you can't be doing this, you'd better stop it, or else; we mean it", accompanied by a cold, pointed stare, and hope the admonishment would stick.

Some scofflaws indeed at that point cleared out, having no stomach for unpleasant confrontations and their fantasies of cheap and easy country living suddenly clobbered to death. Others, thicker-skinned, kept on the way they were, almost as if daring them to try their damndest. They felt that inertia, the long-enshrined sacredness of property rights, and the county's enforcement resources being spread so thin would ultimately win the battle.

Eventually, they more or less proved themselves right.

_________________

White bread outpost

Though later early arrivals like me often felt scorn over the firstcomers' intolerance of non-code construction, in due time, long after getting settled, I couldn't help but sympathize with their plight. What a heartbreaking situation it must have been, seeing the place they'd invested so heavily in, doing absolutely everything by the book, nurturing the fondest hopes of enjoying the land they'd pioneered through their golden years, only to have their dreams met with a rude awakening. The Vista could've, should've, would've been such a nicely settled, enviable, peaceable backwoods community of forthright, hail fellow well met, law-abiding residents...

... if only a white bread one.

While, at least in later years, absentee ownership appeared somewhat racially diverse — based on a 2014 scoping of the board's list of owners — the actual residency was still overwhelmingly white. Though there were a few Hispanics and a Native American or two, there were no Black people to my knowledge, and only one Asian (Debbie, who, with her white husband Alex, had sued the board over the well closure). Having grown up in the polyglot melting pot of San Francisco, I didn't find anything too 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 adapt to any ethnic mix — or lack thereof — of a place, given an even playing field and an absence of any expedient intentions.

The scene perhaps reflected rural Siskiyou County as a whole, so predominantly white that it might've appeared, not without reason, as a narrow-minded, passively (sometimes overtly) racist backwater to any people of color arriving from large melting-pot cities that leaned towards a mutual racial tolerance and inclusivity born of everyday intercultural mingling over time.

Prejudice against Asian Americans

Was aggravated by the illegal seas of green

A more diverse Vista residency from the get-go might've made the would-be community culturally richer. But it was a moot point: Wonder Bread it was for a full half-century. Then, starting in 2015, residents of their all-white world were shocked to find themselves suddenly surrounded by new Asian American neighbors. People that some had probably never interacted with as equals were suddenly living right next door to them and down the road.

What caused the sudden influx? It soon became apparent that, with deep pockets and coordinated efforts, an ambitious campaign was in full swing to buy up parcels by the hundred and homes, too, with the intent of salvaging the largely failed subdivision and remaking it to suit themselves. Working together in overdrive with an astonishingly tight sense of unity, they hoped to establish an instant rough-and-ready Asian American community...

...and support it by growing unsanctioned, scaled cannabis.

It goes without saying that the mutual assimilation of races, often problematic, in Vista's case, would've had a much better chance of succeeding without such massive illegal pot growing going on to overcomplicate matters.

As residents and the surrounding community got up in arms over the blatantly open illicit growing efforts, the newcomers threw the race card into the mix. Of course, it was a justifiable charge; prejudice against Asians ran deep throughout United States history. But it now seemed to be used as a diversionary tactic to confuse and dilute issues, trying to leverage to one's advantage the awakening guilt of a white-dominated society, its systemic racism baked in so long that many were in denial that it existed.

The charge indeed worked to divert attention away from the large-scale, audacious illicit efforts underway. Their operations were so bold that one Vista board member thought they must have obtained an ordinance variance to do what they were doing, or they obviously wouldn't be doing it. At first, they tried to explain away the growth of so many plants by saying many people needed massive amounts of cannabis buds for doing therapeutic soaks to effectively relieve the lingering pain of war-related injuries.

Some might've viewed the efforts as magical thinking on a gigantic scale that somehow successfully defied and ultimately checkmated mundane realities.

Of course, similar scenes were happening all over California: unlicensed growers, acting en masse, openly defying grow restrictions as if daring anyone to do anything about it. Sound the trumpets: In California, home of the Emerald Triangle of serious legal medical cannabis cultivation and underground networks supplying so much of the nation, the outlaw growers' day had come at last.

Alternative scenario

One wonders how the course of the place might have gone if just as many Asians had moved here for some reason, but instead built or bought code-legal homes and pursued legal livelihoods. Sure, there undoubtedly would've still been the same ugly reactions by any who demonized those of a different skin color. But once they'd either bailed or come around once healing their poisoned mindsets, residents would've worked through the initial mutual culture shock and, in time, gotten to know and appreciate each other.

Alas, that didn't happen. The inevitable result was a triple whammy: prejudice flaring up, illicit scaled pot growing openly going on, and the resulting severe erosion of civil order, the environment, and tranquil country living.

_______________

Fine line

Anyone respecting the reasonable rule of law might hold that a development needed residents to work together on some level and to follow established rules to keep things safe and pleasant — the acid test being one's own children — so everyone felt good about hanging their hats there. Otherwise, the weeds of civic indifference, unruly attitudes and shady goings-on often sprang up, filling the social vacuum and choking a place's livability.

But on the other hand, it could make simple country living all but impossible if the rules were too strict, too expensive, or too onerous for the majority of would-be residents to want to conform to.

It had always been the case in the Vista, with a fine line between having enough enforced rules and regulations to maintain a semblance of fair-minded order and having too many and courting sure rebellion. Developer Collins could never have gotten the place greenlit if he hadn't set up the CC&Rs so that every buyer, by signing the legal title paperwork, agreed to comply with every last applicable county, state, and federal rule, law and ordinance under the sun. (A disillusioned Vietnam War vet neighbor in the eighties, Aldrich Anderson, once told me, "The government makes liars, cheats and horse thieves out of everyone.")

No one around to say 'boo'

The rush of having one's own land in such a relatively remote region, under the often surreal sway of Mount Shasta's energy, could easily obscure the reality of there being any such regulations to conform to. There wasn't anyone around to say 'boo' — especially after the county abandoned its residential code-enforcement in a budget-slashing move for some five years during the first half of the 2010s.

As respect for the rule of law waned, the likelihood grew that the Vista, its very reason for existing getting befuddled early on, its 1,000-plus empty lots lying fallow for decades, would become irresistibly attractive to any chasing the lure of fast riches by growing lucrative cash crops of illicit weed. With recreational cannabis legalization around the corner and current enforcement laws losing their teeth, the time was right: The underground pot market was taking off to supply an insatiable jonesin' public for anyone willing to roll the dice.

Many saw the Vista, with its embarrassment of remote, forever-gone-begging, cheap-as-dirt parcels, as just what the doctor ordered.

Chapter 23

Interlude:

Highlights

of my first years

'I say we got Trouble... with a capital "T"...'

In early October 1978, I snapped up the two-level, gently sloping corner lot in Section 23's least inhabited uplands, with a staggering mountain view, for $1,750, at $250 down and $25 a month. That particular month, the national economy was experiencing the tightest dollar in ages; I think I came to value the land all the more because of this; it was a time when the dollar held extra-high value. However small such costs may seem today, at the time they represented a massive investment to one of limited means like me.

While I'd hoped to find land with water, there was excellent compensation for the place's lack of it: Lots of room to breathe. The Native American proverb came to mind: "Go to where there is no water, for that is the only place the white man will leave you alone."

I intentionally sought a parcel far from the blacktop. And as far from the few existing power lines as I could get. I wanted to live off the grid and knew someday I'd have my own wind- or solar-power system. For 11 years, I'd get by on kerosene lamps and candles and charging an extra 12-volt battery in my vehicle, before at last going solar in 1989, when panels cost about eight times what they would in 2025 — not even adjusting for inflation. (A 1 x 4-foot, 50-watt panel ran $400; factoring in 35 years of inflation, which drove up the average price of things about 2.5 times by 2025, that'd be like paying the equivalent of over $2,000 for a 100-watt panel that one might now grab almost as an impulse purchase at Harbor Freight.)

It was an early fall, and I scrambled to make a quick camp. While days were still pleasantly sunny, overnight temperatures were already plunging to a bone-chilling 13 degrees F. (-10 C.). My first night was spent shivering in my feather-leaking, down sleeping bag set in a shallow trench, with plastic sheeting thrown over vertical sticks driven into the ground.

'You gotta permit for that?'

I was heating water for coffee the next morning, trying to warm up over a small rock-lined campfire in a clearing 40 feet in from the road, feeling grateful to have my own bit of land at last. Suddenly, an approaching pickup broke the silence that was fast becoming my new best friend. Its occupant, an older man, slammed on his brakes on spotting me. He wasn't part of the volunteer posse. Still, he was definitely wound up, the same as most every other compliant, year-round resident, I'd soon find out, who felt the place was in danger of being overrun by shiftless yahoos like me who needed to be told what's what. He climbed out, stared at the campfire, and asked me point-blank, “You got a permit for that?” Thus spoken were my first words of welcome from the would-be community before I could enjoy my first sip of morning coffee.

I wasn't feeling the love.

Fast-forward six weeks, and I apparently waited too long to apply for a building permit — and, crucially, join the POWW water-truck club rather than have to drill a well before qualifying for one. As a result, I got the full "Unwelcome Wagon" treatment from sundry busybodies of the peculiar development that, in my youthful haste to get my own land, I'd hitched my wagon to, determined to try to make the best of things. A place that, I was fast learning to appreciate, was more than a scosh squirrelly around the edges.

Reluctant conformist

I'd intended to conform all along, if reluctantly, being an essentially timid, law-abiding soul, yet also possessed of a contrary, intellectually radical streak and being a dream warrior of sorts (perhaps only making me your typical walking human paradox). But I was gearing up slowly; it was a daunting project, building a house to code. Over the winter, I planned to research tiny home design, study construction methods and building codes, and fine-tune a plan to submit come spring. I was staying in the third-mile distant 12 x 16 foot cabin that the kindhearted neighboring couple, the Schumachers, had generously offered to let me winter in out of the blue in our first and only meeting. They'd been out for a walk, getting ready to leave as the pleasant-weather season wound down, and took pity on my situation.

This, so I wouldn't freeze to death trying to weather winter in my flimsy 10 x 13 foot Sears cabin tent, as I'd first resolved to do. I'd wanted to stay on my brand-new land and future homeland no matter what. Cold alone I could endure with my accustomed spartan lifestyle, plus some extreme-weather bedding and a jury-rigged wood stove for the tent (not recommended). I even had a pair of heavy-duty, super-insulated military-surplus pants once worn by airmen for Arctic jumps.

Unbeknownst to me, the region was notorious for its furious seasonal windstorms. They were so severe they beggared belief. Coming out of nowhere, they'd roar across the land like a runaway freight train; wind gusts of 70 to 80 mph were not uncommon. In the late 1980s, we'd get hit by a particularly severe storm packing gusts of 100 mph; the Safeway in Weed reported its front glass blown in and 25-pound sacks of dog food going airborne like feather pillows. Years later, while visiting my elderly neighbors, the Sheltons, I noticed some old wreckage lying in their yard and asked about it. "That's what's left of our old trailer," he said matter-of-factly. "A mini-twister got it. It used to be over there," he said, pointing a ways off. "You should've seen it sailing through the air before it landed here."

December windstorms kept blowing my tent down, no matter how hard I tried to secure 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, named Cat, and I moved into the couple's vacated cabin. Thereafter, I made daily hikes 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 I secured the all-important building permit.

Hot on my trail

Before I could get it, though, I seemed destined to experience the full wrath of my unknown neighbors and their intolerance for anyone not doing things strictly according to Hoyle. It appeared that ever-vigilant Vista board members and their cohorts had established a pipeline with local realtors for every Vista parcel sale. My so-called neighbors, most living several miles off, learned how yet another rambling upstart of apparent threadbare means had dared to invade their would-be respectable realm, doubtless with no intention of ever paying the piper. My Strout Realty seller gave me the heads-up. He said that while he'd admitted selling a lot to a certain young man, he wouldn't say who or where.

I found that sporting of him.

But now a determined posse was on my trail. They were systematically combing the endless backroads, determined to run me to earth, along with any others they might encounter. (My "you-gotta-permit-for-that" neighbor, to his credit, hadn't reported me; he turned out to be a decent guy, named Seburn.) Weeks later, they discovered my lair while I was away in town. They took one look at my thrown-together, mostly underground structure (then strictly a storage shed), plus a verboten outhouse, and promptly reported me to the Siskiyou County Health Department. They didn’t know, or, I suspect, care, that I had every intention of complying and building to code. (Again, it wasn't that I particularly wanted to — I'd've preferred building a free-form underground home — but I valued peace of mind and knew I'd never experience it if I didn't toe the line.)

Their scorched-earth policy allowed no such wiggle room; I'd already been on the land longer than the 30-day-a-year rule allowed. Equal opportunity hasslers, anyone noncompliant — especially those they didn't cotton to as not their kind — were zealously reported to authorities as if they'd just discovered the lair of one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted.

Busted

I was duly summoned on the carpet of the then-head county health department honcho, Dr. Bayuk, who'd just capped the POWW membership, determined to make every other lot owner now bring in a well before becoming eligible for a building permit. No doubt smarting from a wrathful earful he'd endured over this latest upstart's audacity, I was given the bum's rush. But then, oddly, he offered me an out (if grudgingly): He'd give me 120 days to get into make-shift compliance by digging and 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 to use in the meantime. Otherwise, he said, he'd see to it that I'd be thrown off my land by the sheriff. “And don’t think I won’t!”, he growled, jowls shaking like Nixon's. He no doubt felt I needed an extra dose of fear to get me properly motivated.

It turned out that at the last moment, another kindhearted neighbor, Mrs. Norton, had come forward on my behalf and explained to him how they'd promised to let me join POWW once I was ready to build. He thus allowed me to slip in and become the water-truck group's 26th and last member.

Being thin-skinned, the experience traumatized me. It happened within months of arriving, overflowing with excitement at the prospect of at last fulfilling a decade-long dream of having my own land. Despite the last-minute reprieve, at first I felt like giving up on the place that, it was now clear to me, seethed with an unfathomably intense, dark spirit of intolerance for some strange reason, one that bordered on being outright spooky.

Devastated and demoralized, part of me felt like I was once again fading away into a cold, cruel world. (Being homeless can be an amazingly effective dispiriter. Some say people become homeless because they have a mental illness. Though doubtless true sometimes, often it's being homeless that makes people start losing it.) But though my fondest hopes and dreams had been hopelessly mangled, the wind taken from my sails, I dredged up reserve willpower from somewhere. I became newly determined to try to make the best of a lamentable situation.

I paid the $125 water-truck membership fee and was set to invest whatever time, money and effort it took to get legally squared away. Then I'd at least be able to live on the land with a modicum of dignity and hopefully salvage some of my enthusiasm for the poet's dream of building a bower in the wilderness. This, while doing my level best to tune out those who seemed to live only to give others grief, due to, as I'd later appreciate, their own fondest dreams having been savagely mauled by the vicious circle of intolerance already wreaking havoc on the land when they arrived.

Green light

I passed the perc test and dug and installed the approved septic system. As per the agreement, I built an outhouse over the tank once it and the leach field passed inspection and were backfilled. In part for the benefit of any busybodies driving by to check out the scene of the troublemaker's almost-bust (damn, I thought sure we had him), no doubt hoping to find some new reportable offense, I painted on the side facing the road, in big bright blue letters: “Welcome Halley's Comet in 1984.” That should baffle 'em. Then I built another outhouse, more to my liking, set farther in, and used it until I moved into the completed cabin years later. It was a low-slung squatter affair cleverly disguised as a doghouse, with a water bowl and leash in front, and a piece of plywood and a large cushion over the opening. No one ever discovered the ruse.

Over a leisurely three-and-a-half-year period, I built a code-approved, one-and-a-half-story, solar-tempered, shed-roofed, cathedral-ceilinged, little-big cabin (625 square feet). Although I was required to fully wire the structure for 110V electrical, I was thankfully off the hook for connecting to the grid because I was beyond the mandatory hookup distance.

Meanwhile, I lived 20 feet away in my tiny hobbit home, a cozy 8-by-12-foot. On the door — made of old planks I'd salvaged from far-gone ruins of the rumored one-time stagecoach rest station below Sheep Rock (they had square nails, which phased out around 1890) — I posted a Shakespeare quote from Hamlet:

"I could be bounded by a nutshell and

count myself a king of infinite space..."

I used only hand tools, wanting the building experience to feel intimate and relaxed, and I had energy to burn, being in my prime. I briefly hired help for the open-beam roof and electrical work. I'd met Jack Yerke, a professional carpenter, while scrounging at the Weed dump; for a modest fee, hhe agreed to guide the roof work, which involved manually lifting eight 20-foot, 4 x 10 rafters, each weighing some 200 pounds. I scrounged for reusable lumber at the dump and the town's Opportunity Center whenever possible.

It appeared I was on the verge of becoming a quasi-respectable resident. Not that I was longer interested in being accepted as such by the place's league of dedicated busybodies and certified hasslers. It was like the classic Groucho Marx quip made over a restrictive country club offering him a membership despite his 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 warm up to the board and appreciate its potential, at least, to do good for the floundering, perpetually at odds with itself, rural community I'd thrown in with in my impetuous youth.

Working under the gun of the county code enforcers and soon getting a tad paranoid — I imagined them trading notes with wary Vista board members and cohorts on request — proved so depressing, it drove me to drink. I was learning firsthand how board members and their ilk had a notable talent for radicalizing the place's denizens in their abortive efforts to restore it to its former genteel glory. Or, barring that impossible dream and as an abject, warped-out consolation, demand a pound of flesh by giving holy hell to anyone who dared be in the Vista without strictly hewing to every last rule and regulation.

At times, it felt as though the place were eternally locked in its own little contention-drenched time warp.

On the wings of getting my new shelter signed off in early 1983, I was a timid if rebellious 33-year-old who was now well familiar with and thoroughly disenchanted with the Vista's imperious would-be overlords.

___________________

Rainbow family welcomes the Vista home

So naturally, I got myself into more 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 rainbow gathering, with its countercultural visions of living together in peaceful harmony on the land, was to be held in California for the first time since its inception 12 years earlier in Colorado. It would be happening in an area two hours distant, in the Warner Mountains wilderness, a ways from the towns of Alturas and Likely, in the remote northeast corner of the state. Come spring, a flood of psyched early-comers, some returning for the first time in decades to their new age roots, would be pouring in from everywhere, including overseas. Many would have nowhere to go until the specific public forest site was chosen, still months away.

I wanted to reconnect with my roots after 15 years adrift from my hometown of San Francisco, with its once-rich hippie counterculture, while evening the ledger for the countless people who'd helped me during my years of hitchhiking and riding the rails. I realized I'd be helping liberate the often dreary, fuddy-duddy development in the process. Come February, I opened up my land to all comers for what turned out to be an eventful five months destined to shake loose the place more than I imagined.

As the Vistan firstcomers had built their homes amidst a de facto recreational development, seemingly unmindful of the troubles their move might create for the over 1,000 other lot holders, I was equally determined to let the chips fall where they may for hosting a motley group of merry refugees from conventional living. People whose lifestyle was the very antithesis of my law-and-order fellow inhabitants of Impossible Acres.

Party-hearty space travelers

I solemnly tendered my invitation by letter to the rainbow steering committee, then holding its monthly steering committee sessions in the city hall chamber (of all places) of faraway Chico. Word spread fast, and though it would never be recognized as an 'official' rainbow camp for being held on private land, for months hundreds of wired earlycomers — often in colorful, glad-rag garb and driving outlandish rigs — traipsed in and out of the buttoned-down-and-proud Vista hinterlands like so many party-hearty space travelers vacationing from another galaxy. In a way, the scene came to feel like the animated feature Yellow Submarine, where the Beatles' triumphantly happy music turns the bleak, frozen, black-and-white world into dazzling technicolor.

Rainbow elders Whitney Loman and Richard Eagle Feather oversaw the setup of their three 28-foot yurts — formerly belonging to the Seattle region's controversial Love Family spiritual commune sect — on the parcel's lower back acre. "There's your UFO, Stuart!" someone shouted to me as the central yurt went up; earlier, I'd mentioned how I once liked to imagine a scout ship someday landing on my parcel. I'd even named my place Earthbase, a whimsical homage to the former Seattle Capitol Hill fire station, which had been repurposed as a community center and renamed Earth Station. My place was thereafter referred to as Earthbase for years, even after I stopped letting friends hang out, as I needed to reclaim the space for private healing.

Of course, the rainbow gathering (technically only a pre-seed camp) wasn't all peace and love... far from it. Off-putting power plays, ego trips, and less-than-understanding attitudes erupted regularly, people being people, and the eighties being trying times. And rainbows were hard-pressed to gear up full-tilt to their absolute-freedom mindset on private land rather than the accustomed public forest land. Even so, incredibly juiced and transcendent energies often prevailed. I had to work triple time to get into the fast flow of things after having lived alone for so long. I needed to detach from ownership of the place as best I could in my mind if I hoped to feel one among rather than an improbable landlord.

Royal conniption fit

When my convention-locked neighbors heard what that Ward was up to now, they had a royal conniption fit. Though a few more liberal-minded retirees would seem tickled by it all — possibly themselves rebels at heart and not seeing anything too threatening about the surreal scene — others were beside themselves. No wild, uncouth long-hairs, with their insufferable, flagrant pot smoking (then very much illegal), shameless public nudity, and unsettling tribal drum jams pounding into the night in their one-time Shangri-la now going to rack and ruin, dammit. One family per parcel; that was the Vista rule etched in stone. (Reminding them that “We are one family" wouldn't cut much ice.)

Practically frothing at the mouth, they reported me to every enforcement agency they could think of: county sheriff, health, planning and building departments, fire marshal, forestry... But, saving grace, earlier on I’d coordinated a meeting between then-county sheriff Charlie Byrd, a deputy, and the rainbow elders, held on my land in what was designated the prayer-and-meditation yurt. Law enforcement was keen to learn what they might expect with some 33,000 (as it would turn out) rainbow celebrants soon to invade their turf. I laughed out loud when one irate resident would later demand to know whether the event would be held on my parcel. (A surreal image flashed through my mind, as one brought on by the question, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?")

The sheriff — at least tenuously reassured our ragtag group appeared to be a basically harmless if freaky bunch beyond the obvious pot smoking and nudity, likely to only cause a temporary glitch in the conventional order of things — must've told my apoplectic neighbors to chill out a while and grit their teeth, it'd soon be over.

Jaws surely must've dropped; the system was failing them again.

Of course we're occult

Local TV station KTVL Channel 10, based in Medford, Oregon, sent a reporter and cameraman to capture footage of our group and interview Eaglefeather, our ad hoc media spokesperson. He was decked out in his rainbow finest and in rare form, answering questions in the yurt with deliberate thoughtfulness. When the reporter asked him, "Are you occult?" I thought, "Well, of course we're occult; we're into astrology, numerology, metaphysics..." But I'd misinterpreted the question, as I realized when I watched the segment aired later that week; it was, of course, a snarky, "Are you a cult?" query. In a half-hour interview, they used only about 10 seconds of Eaglefeather speaking, noting that the event would bring in lots of extra business. Those challenging the long-entrenched social paradigm by living differently always made people uneasy, as if they were being forced to question its validity.

I went on the road for a month in June with my girlfriend, who was meeting her sister in Indianapolis and flying to visit their brother stationed in Germany. While I was gone, irate neighbors came by, demanding to see me and probably hoping to intimidate me into throwing in the towel and pulling the plug on the scene, then four months along. Whitney was one of the most forthright men I'd ever met. I later heard how he confronted them like a lion of Judah, reading them the riot act for giving me such a hard time that my pregnant girlfriend and I had to leave to get some peace (not strictly true, but it got to them). He asked why they couldn't just let it be. He spoke straight from the heart, no doubt fixing them with such an intensely earnest look as was his way, that it undoubtedly left them feeling chagrined and never so righteously rebuked in their lives.

Rebellious offspring and grandkids of the outraged residents, visiting to score some pot, soak in the vibes and ogle the free-spirited nudity, loved it. The camp became Vista lore (what little there was of it). A mostly free-spirited half-year happening, it served to loosen the stranglehold of the place's long-oppressive regime. People breathed a little easier. Maybe it did so at the risk of encouraging an anarchistic spirit to gain too strong a foothold in the former, depressingly strait-laced community. Maybe not. It was hard to say.

__________________

It seemed that over the decades the place could swing from one extreme to the other: from the firstcomers' honeymoon period, happy campers giddy over the endless possibilities of their new pristine homelands; to a ruthless law-and-order-minded, "No nothing, we mean it" regime; then back to "Whoopee, anything goes!" spirit, if perhaps now on a bit more relaxed, more diverse, more live-and-let-live level.

The place was a chameleon. It changed into whatever the majority of its current residents wanted. Or a chimera: a bizarre hybrid of opposing energies cobbled together like some improbable mythological beast.

Chapter 24

Being gone 11 months a year

Created thorny problems

The long-ago firstcomers' overwound control-freak stance, replete with barking signs everywhere, was, as mentioned, in part born of an earlier, urgently felt need to protect the place and vacationers' belongings while living 700 miles away for 11 months of the year. Mischief-minded offspring of embittered locals who'd taken strong exception to the takeover of their former stomping grounds had a hell-for-leather field day during their long absences. Which, of course, got the latter spitting nails mad on their return, their hoped-for carefree vacations, anticipated all year, met with a rude awakening: The beloved new hideaway was being violated, their belongings vandalized and stolen.

They were already seriously bent out of shape years before the code scoffers showed up.

The locals — some maybe fourth- or fifth-generation descendants of the region's pioneers and set in bucolic ways — were worlds away from ever welcoming the big-city-based, parcel-buying newcomers who'd seasonally invaded their long accustomed backwoods. They mounted what was basically a pitched, "You may think it's your land, but it's still ours; we'll never recognize your damn place" campaign. It lasted decades; some might say it's still going on. The endless miles of non-gated, groomed back roads had been irresistibly inviting to the region's mischievous kids on their dirt bikes for gouging deep donuts in the freshly poured, sometimes deep, cinder topping, while older, more delinquent-minded youth engaged in more serious hell-raising and outright thievery.

A need for fences wasn't felt

So it was that unruly youth — having absorbed the deep upset of their elders and coming to their defense, as it were — geared up a protracted war with the foreign La-la Landers who dared to commandeer their favorite hunting, grazing and kegger-partying land. Law enforcement had limited capacity to work with absentee owners, and only a few people oversaw the seven square miles of ungated entrances and 1,641 unfenced lots during the extended absences.

Over the decades, the eventual residents often never even fenced their estates, perhaps at most setting a few rocks in from the bordering road or fashioning some other 'friendly' fence; the place had seemed so tranquil and protected, at least while they were there, that the need hadn't been felt. The problem was that the actual landowner had to file an incident report to start any investigation, and some belongings, no doubt, went missing over half a year before the owners even realized it.

By the time parcel holders started living here, it almost seemed too late to mend fences with the longtime locals. As in a tradition-bound Japanese village, they were deemed perpetual outsiders for not having been born here. Not even after they'd merged with the larger community, attending church services and, later, as a tiny number of younger families moved in, enrolled their kids in the local schools and joined the PTA. The longstanding vicious circle continued spinning round, perhaps fading a little with each passing year as more and more new people moved into the region. However, it was still there in the multi-generational residents' DNA. Dislike and suspicion of the development and its invasive lot owners and their progeny seemed permanently ingrained in the old-time locals, their kids, and their grandkids...

And all this happened, again, ages before the flocks of code-scoffing back-to-the-landers or the sea of unlicensed scaled pot growers flooded the place.

Mt. Shasta Vista and its inhabitants were already persona non grata.

______________

'Permit? We ain’t got no permit...

I don’t need no stinkin’ permit!'

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the county fitfully enforced its health and building ordinances. Unless one didn’t mind being deemed an outlaw and never earning recognition and acceptance as a legal resident — and in time, more and more wouldn't mind at all — landowners wanting to live on their parcels complied as a matter of course. Or at last gave the appearance of complying: "See here? I started my well; I'm 50 feet down and waiting on my next paycheck to drill deeper; cut me some slack here, okay?" Good, I think he might be buying this.

After the Great Recession of 2008-2009 that devastated the global economy, county supervisors were forced to make some tough calls. Among other measures, they axed the position of residential-code enforcer, which seemed to be having so little effect anyhow, leastwise in the Vista, a lost cause if ever there was one.

Over the next half-decade, residential-code enforcement essentially disappeared from Mt. Shasta Vista as if it never existed.

With no official telling you anything different, it was easier than ever for a newcomer to foster the illusion that one could do whatever they wanted on their lots with next to no fear of consequence. The old threatening signs were by then seriously biodegrading, dire warnings fading into illegibility. They now lent the place the air of a forlorn, all but abandoned rural ghost town living out its peculiar zombie half-life in sleepy obscurity.

No legal power to fine; liberty vs. license

Other subdivisions forming in the region about the same time apparently sought to better ensure they established a respectable residency. Accordingly, they gave the property owner boards the legal power to levy fines for violations of agreed-upon rules. If not paid, they could put a lien on a culprit's property, which had to be cleared before the land could legally change hands. In nearby Lake Shastina, visible clotheslines, solid fencing and dirt bikes were all verboten. In the McCloud area's Shasta Forest, one could be fined $50 for changing oil on one's own property, even if every drop was captured for recycling.

No such legal powers ever existed in Mt. Shasta Vista.

This has always been the place's two-edged sword. While its relative lack of sometimes nitpicky, overreaching rules and regulations empowered residents to feel more like lords and ladies of the manor, as it were, such freedom could also attract scofflaws. Example: The place long ago had a monumental eyesore in a lower section: wall-to-wall junk, surrounded by undisturbed bordering wooded lots, like a junkyard had been surreally plopped in the middle of the woods. It took the board ages to get the county to condemn it and demand that the owner clean up the place.

In a democracy, it always came down to giving people the freedom to do whatever they wanted so long as it didn’t interfere with the rights of others to do whatever they wanted: 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: The greatest good for the greatest number. The fact that the rules sometimes seemed to favor the interests of the wealthier at the expense of the less fortunate, who so often seemed to get the short end of the stick, was doubtless what made people want to rebel against the system in the first place.

___________________

Can a place get centered without a center?

As mentioned, not many Vistan parcel holders — either absentee owners or residents used to going it alone — ever felt the need for a community center. Even though its population had grown enough to merit one, there was never enough interest in establishing a center 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 and litter patrol, hold swap meets — and have monthly board meetings on actual Vista land rather than next door in a tiny, borrowed, cold-fluorescent-lit fire station's backroom.

But indeed they were long held in that cramped, cold backroom. And the annual property owner meeting? For many years, it was held 12 miles away in Lake Shastina. One had to walk through the golf club's bar lounge, often littered with schnockered tee enthusiasts, to reach the conference room. In the earliest years, they were held hundreds of miles away, at places like many members’ favorite at the time, the Madonna Inn, in San Luis Obispo. The board wanted to make it easy for the many Southern California owners to attend. This shows the substantial influence that South State residents had during the place's formative years.

At the risk of stating the obvious, it was hard for a quasi-community to find its center without having a physical one. Leave the place for monthly meetings and drive 12 miles away for annual meetings? It didn't compute. While it struck more than a few as weird, the situation was only in keeping with the place's astounding degree of wrongheaded discombobulation.

_______________

'Wouldn’t give you a dime...' vs. 'Only $29,999!'

Due to the place’s sundry shortcomings, the sale values of parcels stalled for decades, barely keeping pace with inflation. The lack of interest in the parcels took the meaning of 'soft market' to new lows. Until 2015, unimproved two- to three-acre lots went begging at $5,000. Lacking any easier water, sewage, electricity or a more can-do, fair-minded, empowered board and practical CC&Rs, the development all but screamed: "Beware! Failed subdivision!"

The place was so sketchy that it struck few as a promising place to want to drop anchor, or at least not for long. But subsets of landhunters were attracted to it: those maybe with an austere streak, who might actually enjoy roughing it a while, or those determined to live on the cheap and wouldn't lose any sleep for being non-compliant, "Screw the system" being their motto.

Also, those renting houses and mobiles from code-compliant owners who'd moved away, for affordability more than anything, and then tried their best to tune out the place's shortcomings. And those few who, while maybe well aware of the place's flaws, ventured to build a code-legal home anyhow, hoping the pluses would outweigh the minuses in the long run. And those who'd known the place in kinder times and invested so much time and effort to establish their residences that they were braced to weather changes that had others fleeing in a heartbeat.

Long ago, I met a former realtor who said with a disdain apparently then common in certain local property-peddling circles, “I wouldn’t give you a dime for any of them!” He said this with such fire-breathing intensity, you'd've maybe thought the realm was sitting on top of a toxic-waste dump or something. It made me wonder whether he and his colleagues had skirted ugly lawsuits and been accused of misrepresenting a property's status, or endured some other unpleasantness that made it not worth the paltry commission fees the sale of such problematic, low-end properties might bring.

Eventually, two out-of-region realtor groups, perhaps not knowing any better, tried taking fresh approaches. Specializing in scouting for rural developments deemed undervalued, in the late 2000s they snapped up hundreds of the bedeviled hinterland parcels at a steal, in the process at long last relieving many long-stuck owners. They mounted slick sales campaigns to remedy an obviously underexploited situation, intent on making a mint through fast turnover and high markup.

'The Ponch' pitches parcels

The first outfit was National Recreational Properties, Inc. It hired former "CHiPs" TV star Erik Estrada as its aggressive pitchman. Out of Irvine (possibly the same town as Vista founder Collins), it apparently had a penchant for going after failed, “left-for-dead” subdivisions as easy prey, sharp talons squeezing out what quick profit they could before swooping off to the next rural roadkill. In their ad promos, "the Ponch" enthused that the place was so great he even owned a parcel. (Of course, he was given it just so that he could say that.)

The outfit reportedly offered to fly prospective buyers in to enjoy a champagne brunch along with the big pitch and a grand tour of the prime affordable properties that offered such enviable solitude, fresh air and dazzling mountain views. But when they held the grand open house, helium balloons festooning the highway entrances, rumor had it that no one even showed up. (They were more successful with their Alturas, California area development, California Pines, which boasted over 15,000 one-acre parcels. Though, for some unfathomable reason, it demanded the installation of super pricey, individually engineered septic systems, hindering its development.)

Campgrounds for the homeless?

A few years later, around 2012, the other group, Billyland.com, also grabbed a mess of raw Vista parcels, possibly taking some off the former's hands. They, in turn, appeared to be aiming at the less aware, more easily snookered or desperate, land-hungry Internet surfer crowd. They hawked the parcels online, eBay-style, the 'winner' being the one who'd made the highest down-payment bid when the timer ran out. Buying land sight unseen with a few simple clicks and no credit checks; such an idea's time had apparently come. “Only $29,999!” they gushed.

Of course, with low monthly payments and high interest rates, the ultimate cost would exceed $50,000. Predictably, their campaign attracted many living on a shoestring. The three Billyland lot buyers I met were all soon growing cannabis plants, no doubt in part to try keeping up the monthly payments and avoid losing what some legal residents, perhaps uncharitably, deemed to be little more than private campgrounds for the homeless.

80 code-legal residences amid 1,641 lots

At the start of 2015, according to county records, the Vista had 80 approved residences. That meant that out of 1,641 parcels, roughly one in 20, or five percent, held site-built homes or brought-in mobiles and modulars that met code. The rest — some 1,556 lots, or about 95% — either had non-permitted dwellings, were once informally lived on and since vacated, or, most often, were as pristine as the day the place was launched a half century earlier. (Minus, of course, the scars of tree poachers, off-roaders, abandoned trailers and windblown detritus thoughtfully donated by residents of upwind lots.)

But hope sprang eternal for the various speculative landholders still intent on trying to wrangle profit from the clunkers. They set overblown prices on their lots when listing them, thinking to snag an eager, uninformed buyer with perhaps more dollars than sense, oblivious to their depressed market value and the development's perverse penchant for disaster. "Secluded," "The perfect spot to build your dream house," "a slice of heaven," the realtors enthused in their shameless, time-worn tradition.

In the early teens, the sale of a lot in Section 13 to a conventional-minded woman was about to close. She was taking one last look at the parcel before signing. A nearby longtime scofflaw resident, Sean Miller, was determined to keep out his own "wrong kind of people." He strode out buck naked and pranced about, expressly for her benefit.

The ploy worked; the deal fell through.

Chapter 25

'Maybe if we ignore them, they’ll go away.'

It was no great secret that the county supervisors rued the day they greenlit what became such a gloriously failed development. Former Vista board president stalwart Jeannette Hook, who often met with county officials in the course of her work, said they viewed Mt. Shasta Vista as "the red-headed stepchild no one knew what to do with."

Although the place was entirely at the mercy of county officials to keep intact whatever shreds of respect for the rule of law remained, the vast, mostly rural county, on an overstretched budget, had of course long ago given up trying to deal with it. Enforcement and policymaking parties grew so numb to the perpetual thorn in their side that they disconnected from the inconvenient truth that its legal residency paid the property taxes funding their salaries, and they rightly expected them to earn their keep, dammit.

Despite — or because of — the number of non-compliant dwellers flourishing, it seemed authorities were increasingly unwilling to respond to requests for help short of an actual emergency. One would think they must've appreciated the growing likelihood that the place was an even greater disaster waiting to happen. But what could they do, even so? Authorities couldn't drive on private roads without cause or formal permission from the Vista board, and the association might've had to pay higher annual assessments to fund such patrols, so that was a nonstarter. Besides, as bad as things were, it seemed many didn't want deputies cruising about, reminding them of the trying urban life they'd left behind; people would deal with the challenges of their new rural surroundings as best they could on their own and hope for the best.

Things had gone wrong so long that the place baffled and bewildered most everyone, perhaps none more so than its residents. It was a strange beast that had somehow gotten away with defying many of the 'normal' world's rules and regulations and was now experiencing the unpleasant consequences. Residents shrugged, feeling it was beyond repair. Countless absent lot holders, in turn, indifferent to the place's needs, knew only that they wanted out as soon as possible without losing their shirts. And officials, for their part, kept kicking the can down the road, coasting on autopilot, determined to avoid dealing with the waywad backwater whenever humanly possible...

... until the great day of reckoning came.

_____________________

A tidal wave of community and

Fortune seekers discover the Vista

I was taking a stroll along my road one day in the winter of 2014-2015 when I noticed several long-slumbering, unfenced vacant lots had received fresh attention. New surveying posts were planted with scrawled bearings and Day-Glo ribbons fluttering off their tops — no doubt like at the start of the subdivision a half century earlier.

There they go again, I thought dismissively. Realtors, still trying to sell the unsellable. Will they never learn? Then, over the next few days, I noticed similar survey flags and boundary sticks planted along my route out. I started to wonder then. It seemed that something was going on, but what? Was some new back-to-the-land movement afoot? Was a developer building a major attraction nearby that would make people suddenly want to live here? Had gold been discovered?

I tried putting it out of my mind with my first suspicion: It was only the latest half-baked realtor campaign to entice a new crop of ill-informed land shoppers to part with their hard-earned money for all but useless parcels.

Baffling sound

Then, several weeks later, I awoke to the persistent sound of metal striking metal.

Baffled, I stepped out to the porch. Actually, the noise seemed to be coming from several directions at once. It sounded as if a surreal flock of persistent metal woodpeckers had descended on the region and were rat-a-tatting up a slow-motion storm. Walking out to the front of my driveway, I saw a slight Asian man about forty yards away, pounding a metal stake with focused determination, preparing to string barbed wire along it to others.

This was a surreal and unsettling sight in a place whose lot owners often never put fences around actual residences, let alone barbed-wire ones around empty lots. I had no idea what to think. (Yes, the obvious could escape me.) I felt a vague uneasiness, an unsettling forboding. I didn't feel compelled to walk over and introduce myself to find out what was going on. (I got to know him later; his name was Bonzai (my spelling), and he turned out to be a decent guy.)

A few days later, a small party of white people was talking among themselves on the corner lot across from me. Not used to hearing voices close by in my remote neck of the woods, curiosity compelled me to walk over and try to find out what the heck was going on. Naively, I hoped they might be new homesteaders planning to build, as they were busy methodically pacing off an area. But they were evasive, as if they'd rather not even talk to me. I couldn't understand why. Out of the blue, mistakenly thinking I surely knew what they were up to, one blurted, "We're not bad people." This, of course, only further mystified me.

Big duh

Over the following weeks, I noticed barbed-wire fencing was going up everywhere — along with "No Trespassing" and "Posted: Private Property" signs — around lots that had been vacant for generations. Finally, it dawned on me: People were snapping up the long undervalued parcels to grow pot on... lots of pot on... lots and lots of pot on.

And all illegally.

_______________

Slam dunk

California was once again gearing up to vote on legalizing recreational cannabis in next year's November election through Proposition 64. An earlier proposition had almost passed; this time it was a slam dunk. But new cultivation regulations and restrictions wouldn't roll out for a good while, and pot dispensaries wouldn't start selling their buds until over a year after the following year's election, on January 1, 2018. And the populace's appetite for getting stoned was growing keener with legalization around the corner, plus more and more were getting into cannabis's natural healing virtues for various health issues over Big Pharma's sometimes dubious laboratory concoctions with their sobering may-cause-death disclaimers.

Those in the know realized there was a ginormous, once-in-a-lifetime window opening up. Growers who jumped the gun and were willing to play outlaw could easily grow and sell tons of bud — literally — underground to the underserved, pot-jonesin' and natural-healing seeking population, both in California and beyond, especially in states where even medical marijuana was illegal.

After California became the first in the nation to legalize medical cannabis, but then resisted legalizing recreational use, the line between the two blurred, and a massive groundswell of rebellion sprang up, growing stronger each passing year. Eventually, Washington State, Colorado, Alaska, Nevada and Washington, D.C. legalized it. But not California. Finally, emboldened growers decided to go for it, daring to openly defy the laws on the books to supply the insatiable black market for those wanting to get high and enjoy a mini-vacation from mundane realities or for medical use. With legalization a sure thing, they knew existing pot laws were quickly losing their once formidable enforcement teeth. They were like a lame-duck president whose authority vanishes as election day approaches.

A monumental open rebellion by unlicensed pot growers was gearing up to go full-tilt boogie in California.

______________

'There's gold in them thar buds!'

Word spread that countless remote banana-belt Vista lots were for sale at dirt-cheap prices. No doubt this was in large part because the former Vista board president's realty outfit knew what was in the wind. They'd rushed to mount a massive marketing campaign in the poor rural county that would likely be late out the gate, lagging behind neighboring counties in passing restrictive ordinances and getting any handle on the soon-to-unfold events. Siskiyou County would always be playing catch-up, struggling to reckon with the tsunami of sudden, scaled-up, illicit cultivation on private property soon to shock its residents speechless.

Those intent on growing cannabis commercially for the underground market were determined to grab Vista's cheap, long-unsellable lots, at lightning speed, before everyone and their uncle descended into Vista's bargain basement and realtors jacked up the asking prices in the sudden, scorching-red-hot seller's market. As if on steroids, people would snap up the long-overlooked lots like a starving junk-food junkie grabbed potato chips.

Bidding wars

The lot-buying frenzy triggered bidding wars for Vista's more desirable, secluded lots. One neighbor, an early small-scale black-market grower, was cashing out on land he'd bought five years earlier for $8,000. He now hoped to get $85,000 for his super-remote lot off an otherwise uninhabited cul-de-sac. It had a tiny shack, a water tank and an irrigation system. He didn't get the $85,000; a bidding war broke out, and he ended up with $105,000.

While it was hard to believe, unimproved lots, ignored and deemed useless in 2014 and going begging at $5,000, were being snapped up like prime real estate for $150,000 or more by 2022, when buying fever reached its peak. (It declined just as quickly, soon after, due to a series of adverse events, including the ever-changing underground cannabis market.)

_______________

Story of the Hmong

Although a handful of the new lot holders were white, the vast majority were Asian American, including Koreans, Laotians, and Vietnamese, and later, Chinese and Taiwanese. Mainly, though, they were Hmong.

The Hmong are one of the larger minority tribal groups in China (similar in population to the Uyghur and Manchu). Many migrated south into neighboring Asian countries centuries ago, mainly to Laos, after having endured long oppression and persecution by China's dominant Han rulers.

For several generations, they lived in the mountainous jungles of Laos, then a French colonial outpost. The French taxed them heavily, and the only viable cash crop they could grow in their home region to meet the crushing tax was poppy flowers to supply the heroin market. There are horror stories of parents forced to give away a daughter into bondage to corrupt Laotian enforcers instead of paying the burdensome tax to avoid worse consequences. They grew poppies to survive, not as an inherently criminal enterprise. Heroin and morphine use were socially frowned upon.

Laws and their enforcement, at least as they affected them, were often historically so oppressive, first in China, then in Laos, (what would America's be?), that it had been no doubt easy to develop a wary contempt for them. They'd never had the opportunity to forge their own broader government with a fair-minded system of laws in place, so a disdainful regard for the law tended to be ingrained in many. Convincing them that laws could be fair-minded and worthy of following, rather than inherently oppressive and corrupt, was a challenge. The couple convicted for trying to bribe Sheriff Lopey was a case in point; they had naturally assumed he could be bought off.

Early in the Vietnam War, Hmong were secretly recruited to help combat communist forces in Laos. Two of my neighbors, both about my age, showed me the vintage U.S. military ID cards they'd saved for 50 years; they bore images of young teens who looked too young to be fighting a war. One told me that, before he joined, skirmishes came so close he once witnessed one unfolding from his classroom window.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency looked the other way on the Hmong's heroin trade, even helping smuggle the product to market (some say unknowingly). They needed the troops for the war effort in fighting the communists, and heroin was supporting the local economy.

Perhaps in the process, such overlooking in time created something of a wink-wink Hmong acceptance, or at least tolerance, of any supposed illegal drug so long as it was marketable and no other decent-paying work could be found. Just like their forebears, they would undoubtedly have preferred to grow their bitter melon, mustard greens, and squash rather than any controversial drug source, but circumstances wouldn't always allow it.

Opium wars

Of course, it was the imperialistic British who, long ago in the mid-1800s, had pushed opium on the Chinese people as aggressively as any inner-city smack dealer. They wanted to trade with China for its teas and silks, but there was a trade imbalance; the Chinese demanded payment in silver for the remainder. By creating a commodity demand once they got enough Chinese hooked on opium (grown primarily in then-British India), they generated enough silver to buy the coveted items.

Maybe what was now emerging was only a kind of delayed consequence of white Europeans having pushed forbidden opium onto the Chinese people. Along with the drug-trade realities of the tragic Vietnam War, what was happening was perhaps no more than the chickens coming home to roost.

Sitting ducks

The Hmong were sitting ducks the second U.S. forces pulled out of Saigon on April 30, 1975; it left them at the mercy of the Viet Cong. Those known to have sided with Americans and allied forces were summarily shot; two of my immediate neighbors told me they witnessed family members get killed as they were running for their lives. They hid in the mountainous jungles they knew so well before making their way to refugee camps in Thailand, and eventually gained refugee status to come to the U.S., some 300,000 over time.

Though still reeling from the traumas endured, they must've held guarded hopes of making a fresh new start in the vaunted Land of the Free. They settled primarily in California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. While some welcomed them with open arms, they were no doubt shocked by the rank racism and indifference of others.

Remarkably clannish, with a phenomenal one mind bordering on psychic (as perhaps any persecuted people might be, needing to work closely together for mutual survival), they longed to re-establish the tight-knit communities they'd known overseas. Though agriculture was in their bones, in the early years many had lost out to Mexican migrants in Southern California's growing fields for lack of English-language skills and a sometimes slow adaptation to the radically different ways of the new adopted homeland. While some, over time, adapted their agricultural skills to the American market, and others entered mainstream jobs like factory work, services, and professional fields, others came to rely on welfare to get by. (Been there, done that.)

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Mt. Shasta's vision factory at work

Now, the rural-friendly, farming attuned people were getting swept up in Mt. Shasta's vision-a-minute factory and California's historic impending cannabis legalization. They wanted to believe they'd at last found a place in the Vista where they could establish their own rural community. They poured their life savings into it and hoped to support their new rough-and-ready community by cultivating and marketing unlicensed cannabis through thriving underground channels. While some Hmong elders strongly frowned on such pursuits, the momentum behind the cultivation of unsanctioned cash crops proved too strong and tempting for many to resist.

It was, of course, a line of work that people of all colors and nationalities and financial classes suddenly found irresistible. The long-established national black market for cannabis was destined to leave the slowly emerging legal one in the shade. Their product could be sold far cheaper without the steep licensing fees, grow space requirements and multiple taxes to drive up its retail price.

In California, the combined local, state excise, and state sales taxes could add as much as 40% to the cost of cannabis purchased at legal pot dispensaries, depending on the region. One might've thought that regulators would've realized, duh, that this would guarantee the black market's continued thriving. But then, given that the differing bureaucracies and government agencies tend to act without a coordinated big-picture overview, this was perhaps to hope for the impossible.

Everybody loves pot

Countless adventurers became part of the tidal wave of scaled pot growing surging through California. All those pesky, numerous restrictions and regulations being devised, casual pot entrepreneurs boldly chose to ignore.

Siskiyou County, again, had opted to ban commercial pot growing outside city limits, as was their right under the new state law. One couldn't gain approval to grow commercial cannabis in the Vista even if willing to play by the rules, as the rules specifically prohibited it.

Ostensibly, you could grow up to six plants on your own residential property for your own use, but that was it. Any more and one might invite trouble. Among other things, the new rules reduced unlicensed commercial grows, of any size, from a criminal offence to a simple civil misdemeanor. At first, the relatively few hoop-house operators who were raided paid the $500 civil fine and were usually busy replanting the next day. (In recent years, harsh, seemingly selective law enforcement and excessive penalties were imposed on growers for having technically illicit structures and other infractions, along with the confiscation of their crop and the standard fine. This would prompt growers to get their lawyer in State Court in 2025 to successfully end the practice.)

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Pandemonium

As spring 2015 progressed, the Vista was hopping with worlds more traffic than it had ever seen: a genuine land rush, a feverish moving onto Vista land, like something out of another era.

An example of the degree of pandemonium afoot: Driving along Placone Drive one day, I spotted some litter, pulled over to the left side, and stopped to pick it up, as was my wont. It had been a sleepy, narrow back road stretch for ages, probably seeing fewer than a dozen cars a week traverse it. In the few seconds I'd stopped and stepped out, two vehicles came roaring out of nowhere like bats out of hell. Their occupants, never slowing down, sped halfway off the road on the right to get by, leaving clouds of dust in their wake.

No doubt they were hightailing it to the realtor's office to stake their claims.

Chapter 26

Supplying a stoned

And natural-healing nation

By 2010, California was already growing enough cannabis to supply over three-fourths of the national underground market. With lax medical marijuana laws allowing massive quantities to be legally grown, and only if selling it outside state-permitted channels becoming illegal, people grew pot like crazy. The value of legitimate and illicit pot exports soon eclipsed the state's combined production of almonds, dairy, walnuts, wine and pistachios.

While the warp-speed scramble to cultivate unlicensed, large-scale cannabis was no doubt an oft-told tale in maybe every last one of California's 58 counties, Siskiyou was phenomenally popular in 2015. It was a seriously rural, thinly populated county with a relatively low cost of living. Some growers were getting chased out of neighboring Trinity and Shasta counties after authorities began crackdowns on illicit operations there. Many lots in Siskiyou's out-in-the-boonies subdivisions looked enticingly affordable. And again, because the county lagged behind other counties in enacting restrictions, it became an even stronger magnet.

Ground zero

As it happened, long-obscure Mt. Shasta Vista was possibly briefly ground zero in Northern California for the massive new illicit grows that were suddenly springing up everywhere on private properties. It offered over 1,000 remote, good-sized, dirt-cheap parcels for rapidly launching a group-organized cultivation enterprise, such as the well-funded, unregulated entrepreneurs were systematically rolling out.

Sometimes becoming instant homesteaders as well, other times daily or semi-daily commuters, the buyers snapped up the long-overlooked parcels in a frenzy, seeing them as steals (as, of course, had always been the case throughout the place's long history). They sold like crazy to anyone willing to take a chance and bypass what would quickly prove to be the county's woeful unpreparedness and all-but-unenforceable ordinances.

Ignoring the system

The regulations (if the county had permitted commercial grows in the Vista) meant that growers had to deal with state and county agencies, tons of paperwork, regular inspections, strict bookkeeping, individual tracking from seed to store, fees, taxes, more fees, more taxes... arghh! Who needed that? As one new neighbor put it, they worked outside the cage; legal growers worked inside it: It was a cage either way.

If one could grow seas of green with little chance of getting busted, and, initially, a minor fine and crop confiscation if so, and supply the thriving underground market already well established in California and beyond, who wouldn't go for it? At least, anyone with an ounce of daring and enterprise in them. Besides people like me, that is, who valued tranquility and peace of mind too much and knew such dicey pursuits would destroy it in a heartbeat; anyhow, I already had a thriving (and legal) cottage industry. (And a black thumb: I managed to drown the one unfortunate cannabis plant I bought at a Mt. Shasta dispensary just for the novelty of it.)

Although it has long since become a hackneyed comparison, it really was akin to brewing bathtub gin during Prohibition; the temptation to pursue quick riches proved irresistible to all sorts of otherwise law-abiding citizens.

Disturbing flashbacks

At first, the situation often made sporadic crop busts relatively little hassle, not much more than a speeding ticket. But not always. Periodic high-intensity raids by sheriff deputies and California National Guard units bearing assault rifles so terrified some growers, unaware that such hardball tactics could be employed in the U.S. to any so cavalier (or naive) as to ignore laws like they didn't exist, that it triggered PTSD in older Asian cultivators. They flashed back to the killing fields they'd barely managed to escape from with their lives. (Being a historically oppressed minority in an overwhelmingly white, quasi-good-old-boy local culture wouldn't help matters, either.)

The Vista's initial unlicensed commercial-scale cultivation efforts might be compared to having a fantastic run of luck playing the roulette wheel. Now and then, the winning streak was interrupted with the steel ball landing on 0 or 00, but growers managed to cover even those positions by setting up an informal crop insurance and legal fees pool. Disregarding the grief, the loss of face and the setbacks if busted, grow operations were assured of making a mint for as long as the market held, if one knew what they were doing. (Apparently, not all would-be growers had a green thumb.) The odds of winning on any given spin were 18 in 19, perhaps about the same as cultivations not being busted. Such fantastic odds proved too tempting for anyone willing to weather potential adversity to pursue the chance to make serious, fast money.

Anarchy-R-Us

A selective form of anarchy thus became acceptable for droves of people of all races, nationalities and socio-economic backgrounds. It harked back to the earlier situation in the Vista (if on a far lesser scale), when people dropped anchor and ignored building codes like they didn't exist. Financially scrambling people wanting to get ahead were easily tempted to take a chance and ignore laws and ordinances deemed unenforceable, arbitrary and unrealistic.

Obviously, Siskiyou County's old-guard citizens were more than a skosh conservative. Their refusal to allow regulated commercial pot growing in the county's unincorporated area (along with about 26 other counties statewide, roughly 47%) struck more open-minded residents as out of step with fast-changing times and growing awareness. Especially for happening in what was dubbed the future state, over time being the vanguard of a dizzying number of things: surfing, skateboarding, blue jeans, personal computers, AI, medical cannabis, the countercultural movement, the entertainment industry, LGBTQ+ equality, eco-friendly clothing, stricter emission standards, sneakers, T-shirts as outerwear, topless dancing as non-wear, fast-food drive-throughs, motor inns...

...but not recreational cannabis.

It almost seemed as if the future state was mortified that four others and D.C. beat it to the punch on something that should've been another slam-dunk first. So much so that, in their haste to reestablish their future-state creds, legislators got careless with the bill's details. It seemed odd that they didn't cobble together any more carefully considered, practical and effective policy, especially given the opportunity to observe how legalization was playing out elsewhere.

'You want it, you got it'

It might've appeared state legislators were fearful of a meltdown of society and business as usual (plus concerns over increased health risks, as cannabis smoke was determined carcinogenic), if the long-dreaded weed became too easy and cheap to get and got too many stoned off their gourds too often. So they put up hurdles to any more unrestricted and affordable use through a flurry of steep seed-to-store regulations, sky-high dispensary start-up costs, annual licensing fees, all administered by new, high-salaried bureaucratic overseers, driving up the retail price of legal pot... and enabling the underground market to thrive like never before.

The new laws no doubt struck some as unrealistic and maybe even naive, almost as if legislators had imagined the black market would magically fade into the sunset once legalization took effect. As the new law of the land, obedient, law-abiding citizens everywhere would of course fall in line with the latest regulations for yerba buena, Spanish for 'good herb.' (Considering that Yerba Buena was San Francisco's original name, and how in the Sixties that town's storied Haight-Asbury denizens championed this one particular good herb, the synchronicity was delicious.)

To growers unfamiliar with the finer and often convoluted points of law and perhaps holding more simplistic thinking, cannabis was either legal or it wasn't. If it were, in their black-or-white reasoning, there could be no restrictions on growing and selling it.

'Welcome to Weed!'

The fact that the Vista was a half hour from Weed, California, didn't help matters any. Named after Abner Weed, early 20th-century lumber baron, the town's stony moniker was, naturally, long the butt of jokes and source of endless snickers. A town couple's popular mountain-photography and souvenir shop paid for their daughters' college educations by selling products that lightheartedly punned on the town's name. It came as no surprise, then, when that town's outlying regions became the early epicenter of unregulated seas of green as hundreds of growers banded together to rapidly produce large-scale, unlicensed (and unlicenseable) cannabis.

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'There's gold in California!'... again

The consequences would prove enormous for California when it decriminalized unsanctioned commercial growing, often reducing it to a civil misdemeanor, at worst, no matter how many plants one grew. It helped pave the way for the rallying cry "There's gold in California!" to be heard once again, 166 years after the historic 1849 rush. Word again spread like wildfire, as would-be grow-happy entrepreneurs were irresistibly drawn to the Golden State from across the nation and overseas. The state was once again a billion-ton magnet, attracting myriads from around the globe to the fabulous, new, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get rich quick.

Asian attraction to California as a stepping stone to riches was, of course, nothing new. Beginning in 1849, Chinese immigrants, like other nationalities around the world, had flocked to the state they called Gum San, or "Gold Mountain", often to escape extreme poverty and political unrest at home. So many came, it led to widespread social disruption here — ostensibly over how Chinese were taking away jobs from whites for being willing to work more cheaply. Some historians maintain it was more about maintaining white purity.

Still wound up after the Civil War;

Historic racism against Asian Americans in the U.S.

Their presence and a growing belief in their unassimilability into Western culture fueled ugly racial violence. Feelings were still at fever pitch after the Civil War, with all its racial tension. Incidents included major massacres of Chinese immigrants in Wyoming, Oregon and California — including one of the largest mass lynchings in U.S. history, in Los Angeles in 1871. In 1882, U.S. President Chester Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited Chinese immigration to the United States for the next 61 years. It grew to restrict other Asian groups — including Japanese, Korean and Filipinos — by setting near-zero immigration quotas, before finally being repealed in 1943. (For an eye-opener, check out PBS's 2017 special by Ric Burns and Li-Shin Yu, The Chinese Exclusion Act.)

A recent example of continuing racial intolerance of Asian Americans in the U.S.: Sunisa Lee had just done her Hmong people proud by winning the 2020 Olympic Gold medal in women's gymnastics in Tokyo. She and her friends, all of Asian descent, were waiting for an Uber on an L.A. street a few months later when a carful of rowdies drove by shouting racial slurs and yelling, "Go back to where you came from!", one pepper-spraying her arm.

Another, closer to home: Until ordered to stop by State Court as racial profiling, reportedly 19 out of 20 vehicles pulled over along the Vista's fronting 18-mile two-lane highway on one pretext or another had Asian American drivers. I was once pulled over, lights flashing, for making a U-turn at my highway mailbox, but was let off once the highway patrolman saw I was white; had I not been, I suspect his eyes would've quickly scanned the inside of my vehicle to see if any drug-related items were in plain view and thus subject to seizure and probable-cause grounds for a warrantless search.

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Shoulda gone fishing

Siskiyou County supervisors might just as well have gone fishing for all the dutiful compliance their new restrictive ordinances would muster, ordinances they no doubt liked to think of as chiseled in stone. The hundreds of new Vista lot holders had intuited that the ever-changing cannabis laws and ordinances, untested, were prime candidates for being openly disregarded with little fear of consequence.

Especially if pursuing ambitious cultivation in the remote outbacks of Mt. Shasta Vista, with its chaotic and rebellious history and cheap parcels, making it the ideal place to go for the gusto. At first, individual parcel production exceeded the state's allowed six-plant personal-use limit by a factor of 12. Within a few years, as growers broke the once-tacit 99-plant limit agreement, it could exceed it by more than 400-fold.

Asleep at the wheel

The massive land-buying and systematic cultivation efforts seemed to catch county officials flat-footed, asleep at the wheel, off guard, out to lunch, pick your metaphor. I briefly met the new code-enforcement officer, Jim Beam, at the Planning Dept. after the position was re-funded. He'd been pulled out of retirement as a Yreka Fire Department officer. He struck me as one who indeed looked more ready to enjoy a leisurely day of fishing than tackle any wildly out-of-control illicit growing epidemic. But his mindset was perhaps typical among many officials, detached from what was going on. "No one could've predicted such a thing would happen," opined one official to the media, head firmly in the sand.

Media alert

It was such an extraordinary development that the Los Angeles Times ran several feature stories on the rapidly unfolding phenomenon, and The New York Times, 3,000 miles away, did a piece on the town of Weed and the region's unlicensed pot-growing mania. For better or worse, the former, long-obscure, sleepy backwoods realm was having a moment — again. It first caught the national eye two years earlier, in 2013. There was apparently already enough pot growing and intrigue going on in the Vista to rate a segment in the Discovery Channel's sensationalistic TV series, "Weed Country." (It undoubtedly gave would-be informal pot entrepreneurs ideas: "Hey, let's check out that place; looks promising.")

But the Vista's long-festering plight — born of a county perhaps too provincial-minded and lackadaisical to keep up with fast-changing times, or (like most any place, probably) able to enforce its own ordinances and regulations if enough people opt to ignore them — had been careening on a collision course with reality for ages...

...until avoiding dealing with it so long at last proved an unwarranted luxury.

People had long predicted that Mt. Shasta Vista would be an unmitigated disaster. It came as no surprise then, when, a half century later, in a largely self-fulfilling prophecy, they proved themselves absolutely right.

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Mega-change

Despite being devastated by the abrupt change in the once-sleepy backwoods, part of me found it encouraging to see the long-disregarded parcels finally appreciated and used; the half-century of development's stuck energy pattern was obliterated almost overnight, fresh energies giving the place a new incarnation. But it felt as though the perennially wayward place had only traded one set of unsolvable problems for another.

I was stunned to see the single-minded pursuit of private gain through massive illicit grows turning the place upside down at the expense of its established residents, the environment and civil order. It was heartbreaking to see the area's fragile ecosystem being so grievously disrupted and the land soon trashed... and the wildlife endangered. For decades, I'd enjoyed hearing coyotes yipping up a storm in the distance, but had never seen one. I finally saw one, but it was dead. It had given up the ghost right on my lot, bearing a frozen grimace of extreme agony. I felt sure it had ingested poison, probably from devouring a jackrabbit carcass that had eaten toxins put out by one of the less thoughtful growers to prevent wildlife from munching on the product.

Stark raving mad

Like a few other longtime residents who weathered the mega-changes rather than bail, I would gradually adapt. But only after going all but stark raving mad the first year or two. Being sound-sensitive, I'd moved here in part because the often prevailing quiet was a much-needed balm for my nervous system, shot by long years on the road. The sudden noise pollution from roaring generators, water pumps and barking dogs, and the rush of traffic with unending streams of noisy, fume-belching, barrelling water trucks, pushed me over the edge. I tried to cancel out the decibel onslaught by cranking up ocean-wave sound devices, wearing a headset, and screaming at the top of my lungs until hoarse. Finally, as in The Doors' song, I'd break on through to the other side: Though still sad, I knew I could adapt to the radically new situation.

I had considered moving, as most did, but the thought of uprooting after so long here and finding another place to live was all but unimaginable; I'd settled here for life. Whereas many moved from town to town, or at least house to house, growing up, sometimes even state to state, I'd grown up, overprotected, in the same city (San Francisco), in the same house, in the same friggin' room, from birth until striking out on my own. It was a supreme struggle to adjust to any new environment and find a way to make a living. It'd taken me seven years to shake free of the supergravity of my home and the Bay Area, and another nine years before I finally felt at home in the Vista, despite living in structures I'd built with my own hands. (It had taken the rainbow family visiting to make me at last feel at home in my own house.)

During the first months, all my new neighbors kept behind locked gates. This made it impossible to introduce myself and hopefully work through some pressing concerns. Loud hellos at the gates either went unheard or were ignored. It would've been so much easier to adapt to the new situation if I'd actually met my new neighbors right away. But day after day, week after week went by, and there was no outreach. Hundreds of cars drove past my place as if I didn't exist. It felt like some faceless invasion force had taken over the place.

A broken system;

Mutual forgiveness

Beside myself with anxiety, I, along with others, filed flurries of formal written complaints with the Planning Department, where such complaints were now submitted as a civil matter rather than with the Sheriff's Department, until my writing hand went numb. But it was an exercise in futility. The new system couldn't begin to get a handle on the out-of-control situation. (I imagined the place's firstcomers in heaven watching the scene unfold and saying, "Now he knows how it feels.")

Then, mercifully, things began to quiet down. People settled in. Generators whose sounds were disturbing even to them were either swapped out with quieter models or muffled. Dogs quieted down as they settled in. Some of my more Western-assimilated neighbors (some only spoke little or no English) finally introduced themselves.

They were disarmingly friendly, if a little guarded. After all, they didn't know if I was racist or if I'd accept what they were doing (not realizing I'd already been there, done that). They assured me they wanted to get along and would be sensitive to my needs and concerns. They asked only that I come to them with any problems rather than call county authorities. Since I'd bitten the bullet and was quickly changing my tune (and had realized that the authorities were essentially useless anyhow), I gladly agreed. If they could (unknowingly) look past my having reported many before we'd met, I could cut them some slack for pursuing their grand, illicit commercial enterprise. Obviously, I could no longer afford the luxury of standing on my principles in certain areas if we were to get along. Call it a practical stalemate.

I was always too chagrined to confess my campaign to try to keep them from growing here. I realized that, despite the extreme provocation, in my mind justifying the desperate recourse, I'd become something of a fascist myself in the process.

Some have remained wary of me (beyond my having no skin in the game and not being Asian), as if sensing my intolerant campaign of 10 years earlier. Karma's a bear.

Among the Hmong

The wife of one of my new neighbors, Ricky (Americanized name), often brought over specially prepared vegetarian spring rolls fresh from the oven. Another, Chris, gifted me with his extra jump box (which invention I didn't even know existed) after I asked for help with a dead battery. Another shared a score of delicious black cherries with me one hot summer day. Others gave me generous amounts of bud from their first harvests. (I didn't know what to do with them, not having smoked the herb in decades, and it never having been my drug of choice; I was already naturally spacey, all but the tiniest microdoses of THC weirding me out, like perversely trying to get "low.") I was invited to parties for a while, but didn't exactly fit in, for, beyond being the only white person, I was also a non-smoking, non-toking, non-drinking vegan and not much of a party person to begin with.

While we don't often intermingle, living in different universes, as it were, I, a retiree no longer hustling to make a buck like them, for the most part we coexist peaceably. Apart from the occasional roaring water truck, there's a quietude here once again, in some ways even quieter than before, my neighbors valuing tranquility and a circumspect, quiet mindset more than some former rowdy residents did.

You become a philosopher

I'd gradually adjusted to the new, intractable reality of the development and resigned myself to making the best of the situation that others ran away from screaming. (I'd stayed and screamed.) I resonated with the saying of Socrates about marriage: "... If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher." I'd long ago become a philosopher on joining the squirrelly development, and was now one more than ever, possibly having earned my PhD from the school of hard knocks.

Humankind is nothing if not adaptable.

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Possibly in time, county pot ordinances will change. More likely, though, as the underground market becomes further saturated and the wholesale price declines, it will simply no longer pay to grow cannabis on water-challenged land that requires every drop of the precious liquid to be trucked in at no small cost. Then, those still here who have come to love and respect the Vista and its elusive potential to once again become a peaceful, law-abiding land (but a mellow one this time) — there might be more than one imagines — might shift to, well, more legitimate lines of work. (Or, again, the law changes.) The place could yet heal and become a no-longer dysfunctional backwoods community on a new, more grounded and integrated level. (Well, it could.)

Burying the hatchet

Of course, it would take a good dose of mutual forgiveness, amazing grace, burying the hatchet and outgrowing silly racial intolerance among its residents, the community at large and county officials alike to spur such a turnaround. The years-long backlog of well-dwelling permits issued, for instance, would need to be remedied as the seemingly current no-way stance of county officials shifts to a more can-do one, clearing the way for people to become official residents and thus gain some elusive peace of mind.

Pollyanna thinking? Wonky Vistan delusionality alive and well? Maybe.

The Big Sagebrush flourishing here, constantly purifying the land with medicine long recognized and used by Native Peoples, offers hope. The sage (Latin name: Artemisia tridentata) has been scientifically proven to possess antimicrobial and antioxidant properties, making it ironic that a place where the healing plant flourished so prodigiously was so ecologically devastated in recent times.

But by the same token, it gives hope that the land will more readily bounce back, mending itself, the way our self-healing planet does, rejuvenating over time with so many purifying plant factories at work. The land experienced by far the biggest baby-boom of new sage plants I've ever seen in the spring of 2024: There were thousands of the tiny new plants sprouting up on my parcel alone, as if Earth was saying, "time to heal."

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Synchronicity at work?

Was the Sixties' back-to-the-land euphoria

Reactivated during Vista's unheralded 50th anniversary?

To anyone giving credence to the existence of metaphysical realities, such as there being a sublime synchronicity at work in the universe, I submit the following: The year 2015, being the golden jubilee of the Vista's founding, served on the subtle to reactivate and further amplify the euphoric, topsy-turvy DNA of the place's founding a half century earlier. The excitement that was indelibly imprinted on the land by people, first psyched over it being a sweet spot to camp, then retire at, then get back to the land at, was, a half century later, infused in a modern-day land rush of people thinking it a great place to grow pot at as a cash crop and start a rough-and-ready Asian American community.

And that the time stream's exact moment — a confluence of the 50th anniversary of the Vista's founding with the pending, long-anticipated pot legalization — sparked the manifestation of yet another — and one magnitudes more dizzying—incarnation of the Vista as an incurable dreamland. A community as blissfully unmindful and stubbornly disregarding of certain mundane realities as ever.

Something to ponder, anyhow.

But whether one dismisses the convergence of events as mere coincidence or sees it as part of the grand synchronicity of the Divine's universe at work, no one will deny that the place experienced something extraordinary.

Or that the recent events, astonishingly outlandish as they appeared, were only Mt. Shasta Vista's latest chapter in its tattered book of misadventures writ large.

Afterword

Without verifying specific key facts, I'll never know with absolute certainty the exact trigger or triggers for the place's extraordinary unraveling over time. Namely, whether the land sold to developer Collins indeed created such an intense uproar among other family members and the community at large from the start that the place never had a chance. Or whether the power company in fact jacked the line-extension rates prohibitively after the first settlers moved in.

While I'm over 90% sure both are essentially true, I'm of course left with a bit of niggling doubt.

I called Pacific Power's Medford, Oregon office, hoping someone there would help clarify things. But after 20 minutes of wading through endless menus and futilely seeking a "speak to an operator" option, I knew I'd struck out: They didn't seem to want to talk to anyone (especially anyone who'd gotten by without their centralized go-juice for nearly half a century). I might've driven 350 miles to their headquarters in Portland and maybe stood a better chance of getting a definitive answer, but life is short.

And I might've tried contacting some members of the Martin family's current generation, who are still living in the area, to confirm or deny the circumstances of the sale. But I learned that some longtime residents have a reputation for being a bit cantankerous. I suppose a part of me was afraid that, if it were true, they'd still be so mad over how their uncle, or whoever it was, sold out his inheritance just so a bunch of outsider yahoos like me could live in their former treasured backwoods that they wouldn't even want to talk to me. That, or I'd be given a fresh, time-warped taste of the hell the firstcomers experienced. (Another part of me hoped time had healed the hurt and they no longer held ill feelings towards the development, even such as it is now, but obviously the cynic won out.)

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The fifth century B.C. Chinese philosopher Lao Tse said that the cause of anything is everything, and the cause of everything is anything. Perhaps it could be thought oversimplistic to try to attribute what happened — or didn't happen — in Mt. Shasta Vista to any one or two causes. It's hard to say.

In any event, there was an extraordinary confluence of complex factors at work over time, countless ingredients in what became the place's grand recipe for disaster — for non-grower residents, anyhow. Obviously, it was a deliciously fortuitous situation for the extended group of adventurous entrepreneurs willing to snap up the forever fallow parcels and work together to remake the place to suit themselves while taking their chances with the law.

- - - - - - - -

For any who might appreciate it, here's a concise recap of the ingredients in the recipe for... oh, let's call it The Vista Misadventure Supreme:

The landholder's sale of the property to developer Collins reportedly greatly upsetting the rest of the land-owning Martin family, if true, resulting in a contentious vibe infecting the place from the very start
Dutiful efforts to follow legal building procedure by the first few dozen retired resident couples not being followed by sundry later dwellers, isolated conditions making it easier to get away with
Some first residents possibly envisioning a growing community, but others maybe having no such intention, preferring to keep the place their own de facto exclusive retirement community — and tough luck for the 98% of lot holders left with properties ruined for camping, too expensive to build on and impossible to sell without taking a bath
Tenuous plans to extend power to every lot, initially funded by voluntary assessment, failing after 25% of parcel owners refused to chip in, creating a grand falling out over the place's use
Pacific Power, facing higher electricity production costs, almost certainly increasing extension-line costs so steeply after the few initial line extensions were made that it sparked a meltdown of anger and disappointment among those who'd likewise hoped to build homes or cabins

Add:

A sea of indifferent absentee owners, often mere speculators, many soon nursing buyer's remorse and refusing, through voting, to sink another cent in the boondoggle through special assessments to try improving the place
Firebrand property-owners board members, along with other heavily invested firstcomer residents, reacting to the growing rash of younger residents refusing to conform to health and building code by declaring war, in a battle of wills, and creating an uber-contentious social climate that dragged on for decades
Detached, profit-minded realtors who didn't care diddly-squat what one did with their lots
Limited-involvement association managers and, sometimes, even former board presidents, indifferent to or ineffective in helping the efforts of more civic-minded residents to build community, one becoming an actual major participant in the realty campaign to sell to growers, knowing they'd be flouting the law and disrupting the lifestyle of hundreds of residents

Stir in:

County officials, in time all but abandoning the enforcement of health and building regulations for a full half-decade, starting with the Great Recession of 2008-2009
Cannabis-cultivating entrepreneurs, seeing a golden opportunity to cash in on the state's imminent recreational pot legalization, intuiting that new ordinances and restrictions would be all but unenforceable if enough people went for it

- - - - - -

Mix together and bake 60 years. Result? One giant question mark of a place the public shakes its head over, viewing it as an unfathomably tangled mess that defies even wanting to try wrapping one's head around.

Was it any wonder the place became such a basket case?

Countless influences shaped the Vista into its current state. From shared recreational land to an ephemeral standard rural community to rebellious hippie scene to anarchist collaboration of unlicensed pot growers, it always seemed to be a realm yearning to become something more — whether realistically or not — despite the cards being stacked against it from the start...

...and people being people and the Vista being the Vista, will keep trying to anyway possible.

# # #

Welcome, Now Leave

How a Would-be Shangri-la Went Hopelessly Astray

​

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Rainbow family welcomes the Vista home

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

How a Would-be Shangri-la
Went Hopelessly Astray