Driving into the Lucerne Valley

Driving into the Lucerne Valley

The Lucerne Valley was on the dead side of the San Bernardino Mountains. There’s a scientific term for that side of the mountain, leeward. The Lucerne Valley felt and looked like desert. Driving down from Big Bear Lake on Highway 18, the pine trees disappeared after only 10 miles and then there were only boulders, dirt and a road snaking through the canyon until it levels out in the valley. In the valley, there were a few Joshua Trees, but mostly there were only dirt fields and one ranch, ranched off by wood posting and a house pinned fearlessly up against the mountain as if to say, peril be damned here.

Here, a rancher lived. He owned four horses. They could run among the ranch’s 100 acres, if they were so inclined. But that day, like most days, they did little except stand near the troff in the corral against the little ranch house. They were sickly mustangs, thinning and boney. One colored black, one brown, one beige and one white, so American.

The American rancher who lived there was Gram. He was the last rancher in the Lucerne Valley. But his lifestyle was one that he could no longer sustain. And even though he owned the property -- property his father had purchased in 1917 -- Gram could no longer pay the property tax, he could no longer purchase feed for his four horses and there were few prospects in southern California’s High Desert for a rancher to do whatever a rancher does. The bank he borrowed money from was going to do what banks do when payments aren’t made.

Gram was 85 years old.