*Pala Indian Band to Buy Warner Springs Ranch
Resort is on land that was once tribe’s home
BY ONELL R. SOTO, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2009 AT 12:01 A.M.
More
than 100 years after government agents marched the tribe out of its
ancestral village, North County’s Pala Indian band is getting it back,
using $20 million in profits from its casino to buy what is now known as
Warner Springs Ranch.
The tribe, San Diego County’s largest, said it plans for the ranch to continue operating as a resort.
“We’re
going to keep it the way it is and run it like a business, make it
successful,” said Pala Chairman Robert Smith, noting that the tribe is
already in the hospitality business through its casino.
The tribe
said it has no plans for a casino at Warner Springs, 65 miles and
seemingly a world away from downtown San Diego. The 2,522-acre resort
features its namesake hot springs, horse trails, a golf course, a
landing strip, tennis courts, a dining hall and 250 bungalows, including
17 adobe casitas in which the Pala’s ancestors lived.
Straddling
state Route 79, it is located next to the tribe’s old cemetery and a
small church built in 1830 by missionaries to the Indians.
Purchasing the ranch seemed out of reach for years.
“It was like a dream for myself and the tribe,” Smith said. “Fifteen years ago, I never thought we’d be able to do it.”
Pala
began to set money aside for the purchase in 2001, after opening the
casino on state Route 76, hoping to regain what it lost at gunpoint
following a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Smith said.
“We’re
pretty lucky that when the economy was good, we put away for when this
opportunity came up,” he said. “It’s such a good feeling to know we
could accomplish it.”
The purchase still has to go through
escrow, Smith said, but the decision a couple of weeks ago by two-thirds
of the resort’s owners was the biggest hurdle. The resort is held by
2,000 individual ownerships, most sold for $30,000 or more to families
from Southern California and beyond in the 1980s with the promise of
having the option to stay at the resort.
If the sale goes through, each ownership will get about $10,000.
“We’re one step closer, optimistically, to getting back our original homeland,” Smith said. “It’s been a long process.”
The
vast majority of the 900 or so Pala tribal members consider themselves
Cupeños, meaning they trace their history to the place they know as
“Cupa,” where their ancestors lived for centuries near a bubbling hot
spring northwest of Julian.
Many recall relatives who, in 1903,
were uprooted and marched 39 miles in three days with all their
belongings to the Pala Indian Reservation. By order of the federal
government, they joined the Luiseño Indians living there.
The
Pala consider that federal action their own “Trail of Tears,” a
reference to the removal of about 16,000 Cherokee from the Southeast to
what is now Oklahoma in 1838. Thousands died during the trip and as a
result of the relocation.
In the Cupeños’ case, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled in 1901 that they didn’t have title to the land they had
long occupied. The court ruled the title belonged to John G. Downey, a
former California governor and successor to a 48,000-acre Mexican land
grant given to an Easterner named Jonathan Turnbull Warner.
In
the ensuing years, the stagecoach stop became a Hollywood hangout, with
celebrities such as writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and actors and directors
including Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and John Wayne
spending time in the resort’s adobe casitas and near pools filled with
water from the natural sulfur springs.
In the 1980s, San
Francisco hotelier and developer A. Cal Rossi turned the ranch into an
ownership resort, with those who bought having the ability to stay and
the responsibility for part of the upkeep.
While initially
successful — 1,400 shares were ultimately sold — the resort fell victim
to changing times. Families spent less and less time there; some stopped
coming and paying their dues.
By last year, despite deferred
maintenance, dues had risen to $382 a month, and owners couldn’t find
anybody willing to buy their share.
It took the better part of
the year to get two-thirds of the owners to agree to a sale, with the
tribe ultimately buying 40 or so ownerships to get to the necessary
number.
The tribe told owners they would have the opportunity to
return to Warner Springs Ranch, but as paying customers, said Richard
Bye, president of the resort’s board.
“The majority of the board
is happy with it,” Bye said. “It’s the people that count, and over
two-thirds of them assented to the sale.”
The decision to sell
wasn’t difficult for owner John Meana of North Carolina, who inherited
part of an ownership share from his late brother.
“I’m not able
to use that out there, but I keep writing the check,” Meana said. “The
Pala Indians need their property back, and I don’t want to pay for it
anymore."
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