Up Above: The Geography of Suburban Sprawl
in Southern California’s Antelope Valley

Matthew Jalbert

Footnotes

1. Karlovich, R. J. California’s Golden Wealth.( [n.p.]: Pacific States Land Company, [n.d.; probably early 1960s]). p. 37.

2. Austin, Mary. Land of Little Rain. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950 [1903]). pp.1–8.

3. For the purposes of this thesis, we will recognize the Los Angeles–Kern County line as the northern boundary of the Antelope Valley, since it is within this political boundary rather than the physical boundary of the Tehachapis that the Antelope Valley has grown most dramatically.

4. Palmdale Chamber of Commerce. Palmdale and the Antelope Valley: 1995 Civic and Business Planner. (Palmdale, California: Palmdale Chamber of Commerce, 1995). p. 12.

5. California Legislature, Senate Committee on Local Government. Flood Control in the Antelope Valley: Organization and Financing—Summary of the Testimony Received at the Interim Hearing of the Senate Committee on Local Government. July 30, 1986. p. 18.

6. City of Lancaster. 1992 general plan: state of the city report. (Lancaster, California: The City, 1992). p. III-A-14; and California Legislature Senate Committee on Local Government, p. 32.

7. See Barrows, Allan G. “Roadcut exposure of the San Andreas fault zone along the Antelope Valley Freeway near Palmdale, California.” Geological Society of America Centennial Field Guide—Cordilleran Section, 1987. p. 48. This roadcut is currently (March 1995) under reconstruction by road maintenance crews. Visibility of the famous twisted gneiss may no longer be possible.

8. Lancaster Gazette, Dec. 28, 1889. Reprinted in Antelope Valley Ledger Gazette 50th anniversary edition 1888–1936. December, 1936. (Lancaster, California, 1936).

9. One entrepreneur in 1886 even contracted to supply the London Daily Telegraph with paper made from the pulp of the Antelope Valley’s plentiful Joshua trees. Using hired gangs of Chinese laborers to cut the trees down, his venture failed in its first year when the trans-Atlantic shipment rotted in heavy rains. (Antelope Valley Ledger Gazette. 50th anniversary edition, 1886–1936. December, 1936. Lancaster, California, 1936. p. 2.)

10. Ibid., p. 2.

11. Settle, Glen A. and Doreen B. Settle, eds. Antelope Valley Pioneers. ( [Rosamond, California?]: Kern-Antelope Valley Historical Society, 1984).

12. City of Lancaster (1992), p. II-D-10.

13. Among the Pear Groves of North Los Angeles County; in Palmdale and Littlerock Creek Irrigation Districts. (pamphlet, 1920). p. 11.

14. Antelope Valley Ledger Gazette (1936), p.13.

15. Ibid., p. 14.

16. This section largely based on Kagan, Paul. New World Utopias: A Photographic History of the Search for Community. (New York: Penguin Books, 1975).

17. Lancaster General Plan (1992): III-D-1.

18. Final environmental impact report for compound plan amendment 86-001 consisting of the Antelope Valley areawide general plan, amendment 85-010 and the housing element, sub plan amendment 86-311. (Los Angeles: County of Los Angeles Dept. of Regional Planning, 1986). p. 3.

19. Antelope Valley Progress Association, Inc.: History of Antelope Valley Progress Association, Board of Trade, 1957–1980. ( [Lancaster]: Antelope Valley Progress Association, Inc., 1981). Section 4 (no page numbers).

20. Southern California Edison Company. An Area Inventory of the Antelope Valley in Southern California. (Los Angeles: Southern California Edison Company, 1963). p. 2, II-2, IV-2.

21. Ibid., p. 4.

22. Antelope Valley Progress Association.

23. Ibid.

24. Later called the State Water Project.

25. Antelope Valley Progress Association.

26. Report on the Proposed City of Palmdale. County–City Services Division, Chief Administrative Office, County of Los Angeles, California, 1960.

27. Lancaster was to incorporate in 1977.

28. Ace Map Co. The Fabulous Antelope Valley: Topographic Map Book 5, Los Angeles County. (Littlerock, California: Ace Map Co., 1969). p. iv.

29. Ibid., p. iv, 68.

30. Ibid., p. 110.

31. Ibid., p. 110 [ellipses are author’s].

32. Karlovich, R. J., p. 42.

33. Ibid., p. 46.

34. Ibid., p. 41–43 [ellipses are author’s].

35. Ibid., p. 80.

36. City of Lancaster General Plan, 1980, p. 3–58.

37. Ibid., p. 3–4.

38. Final environmental impact report for compound plan amendment 86-001, p. IV–1.

39. North County Area Population Expected to Reach 632,000 by 1990! Los Angeles: Los Angeles County, California Regional Planning Commission, 1970.

40. Lancaster General Plan (1992): table IV–B–1.

41. Just inside the entrance to the Antelope Valley mall is a Kaufman and Broad home store, where people can purchase their home. Emblazoned over the entrance is the invocation, “Antelope Valley is a Kaufman and Broad Hometown.”

42. Mork, Gary. Personal interview 27 March, 1995.

43. California Legislature, Senate Committee on Local Government.

44. As if to underscore the bad feelings surrounding this fiasco, the city of Lancaster in 1991 purchased the remains of this development (called “Legends”), unfinished houses and all, with the intent of bulldozing it into oblivion. One contemporary observer suspected that “‘Legends’ bugged the city fathers of Lancaster. They hated the ugliness of those ruined skeletons, and—they don’t say this, it’s just my guess—they hated the reminder that the ’80s had retreated from Lancaster and everywhere else. It was the ’80s, after all, that created Lancaster as we know it.” (Jones, 1991). Alas, “Legends” was bulldozed, but not before a truly Hollywood outro: “People came by the hundreds,” a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote, “as if to the site of a plane crash, standing in parkas and boots in the dark frozen streets and fields adjacent to a half-built and abandoned housing tract on the outskirts of Lancaster…. Why were they waiting? ‘To see them blow the houses up.’” (Ciotti, 1992). A film company contracted with the Federal government to bulldoze the tract, but not before it was used as the backdrop for a fiery action scene in the film production Lethal Weapon III. For the honor, the company paid the Federal government $25,000—assuredly a small fraction of the cost to society after the Feds seized the lender, Hill Financial Savings Association, in the S&L debacle.

45. Lawson, Vern. Personal interview. 28 March, 1995.

46. City of Lancaster (1992). p. IV-A-2.

47. Ullman, Paul. Personal interview. 28 March 1995.

48. Methamphetamine labs and the drug’s abuse are an acute problem in the Antelope Valley. The labs, usually run by “biker” types, are often located in shanties on the edges of the Valley, far from the edges of the developed portions. Sheriffs report difficulty in cracking down on these labs because the vast spaces of the Valley makes their detection difficult. In 1990, however, several huge illicit drug operations made the news. Tipped off by unusually high electric bills at the address of a remote shack, investigators discovered giant underground marijuana farms growing 6,000 plants by the light of ultraviolet lamps. (See Chandler, John, 1990, Barker, Mayerene, 1990, and Rotella, Sebastian 1990.)

49. Ullman, Paul.

50. This is true despite a recent Los Angeles Times report which showed the Lancaster/Palmdale area as having the third highest crime rate in Los Angeles County. Sheriff’s Deputy Paul Ullman told me that the Los Angeles Times mistakenly compared the Antelope Valley’s full-year crime figures to the six-month totals of other Los Angeles County cities.

51. When I visited the Antelope Valley in late March 1995, a 14-year old boy was killed by a neighbor’s shotgun blast to the head. That was the fourth murder within two weeks to occur in the Antelope Valley.

52. Mork, Gary P. Personal interview. 27 March 1995.

53. The post-Northridge earthquake situation is a perfect example of the modernist tenet of “creative destruction”: from the earthquake’s wreckage arose entrepreneurship. (Thanks to John Bakker.)

54. Lasagna, Sherry. Personal interview. 28 March 1995.

55. City of Lancaster (1992), p. II-A-5.

56. Both figures from Roedigger, Henry. Personal interview. 28 March 1995.

57. Los Angeles County Waterworks Districts Statistics, 3/28/95. Single sheet.

58. City of Lancaster (1992), p. II-A-6.

59. City of Lancaster.(1992), p. II-A-5.

60. The only other significant demographic group I have been able to detect in the Valley are retirees, many of whom live in the numerous trailer parks scattered about. While some have lived in the Valley for many years, having been employed in the aerospace industry, others moved to the Valley upon retiring to live in its high desert climate.

61. Malnic, Eric. “Polite turf war in Antelope Valley pits Lancaster against Palmdale.” Los Angeles Times, January 10, 1988. II: 1.

62. Personal interview. Lawson, Vern. 28 March 1995.

63. Not everyone shares equally in the positives of Antelope Valley suburban life, particularly the children and spouses beaten and killed by stressed commuters. Nor is increased air pollution, flood risk, ecological degradation, groundwater overdraft/pollution, or lost time to commuting considered a benefit of sprawl, though every Antelope Valley resident is affected by these consequences.

64. This section based on PBS Front Line video, “Is This Any Way to Run a Government?”

65. Mork, Gary P. Personal interview. 27 March 1995.

66. This section from Chandler, John. “Pumping threatens to sink high desert’s future.” Los Angeles Times, March 17, 1991: B1.

NEXT | Partial Source List

© Matthew Jalbert 1995–2002