The Hilo Homestead Story
Written By Prescott McCarthy
Revised By Mieka May
Originally written July 26 2018
Updated Nov 14 2019
It’s been 2 years, 2 months, and 22 days since we saw the Redfin listing for a desert, hoarder, landfill of a property, smack dab in the middle of a dirt road town on the outskirts of the Mojave. Mieka & I were at a beautiful gathering on a magical piece of land that is tucked into the boulder gardens overlooking Pipes Canyon in Pioneer Town, neighboring Joshua Tree. That same day, almost immediately, we hopped in my truck, drove down the 2 miles of dirt road, 4 miles of windy pavement, and 10 miles of Highway 247 into the desolate, dystopian, and divinely charming town of Landers, California. More of a sprawling neighborhood than an actual town. Landers is made up of 5 acre lots that were divided and conquered in the 50’s by ‘The Homesteaders Act’ an american movement to get people to move to the area. 5 acre parcels of land were essentially given away to anyone who would hunker down and build a 400 square foot ‘Homesteader Cabin’ Many chapters of the area have come and gone, from the mining rush of gold and silver, to the bleak promise of it becoming the next Palm Springs. It is currently in the midsts of closing a chapter of trailer trash, meth head, packrat dwellings, and crime, with a rebirth of creative youthful energy as like minded individuals see an opportunity to own land for the first time at an affordable price in sunny California, and to forge a life they want to live. It is the land of endless vistas, howling coyotes, and 3 hour pink & purple pastel sunsets that will leave you with a pride immeasurable by societal standards. Those who manage to make the move do so by a form of intentional accident. The story has happened time and time again for many with a few visits to the ‘desert’, and next thing you know, you’re living full time in a place that you thought would be some secondary home fantasy away from the urban jungle. But, it ain’t easy. If its not blazing hot, its wildly windy. There are giant spiders, biting ants, venomous deadly snakes, a consistent wifi drought, and a dryness that will suck the saliva off your tongue. It is a strange phenomena that as all of these elements beat down on you, they also grow on you, and you find yourself missing them more and more while traveling to more temperate, docile climates. … Apologies, Im getting side tracked. Where were we?
As we pulled into the driveway of this strange abandoned desert trash kingdom our jaws were likely hanging on their hinges. There was just enough room for my truck to get thru between piles of debris sprawling as far as the eye could see in every direction across the 5 acre parcel of land. It looked like the house had puked up a decade of wanted & un-wanted household items. As we stopped in front of the burnt out, windowless, waste buried house Mieka looked at me, and I at her, as we each grinned. It was a guilty pleasure we both shared to take on such a project. We got out and walked around. We hadn’t made it 10 steps before a lady pulled in behind us and jumped out of her car. “Hey! What are you guys doing?” “Hi, were thinking of buying this place.” “Oh! That’d be great! There has been so many tweakers coming by and taking things that I had to check in to see who you are. My name’s Barbie. Im your neighbor that way.” She pointed to the nearest house to the north a good quarter mile away. “Well, I’ll let you kids at it. Ohhhhh it’d be so exciting to have some new neighbors, especially a girl!” We smiled and said our goodbyes while thanking her for the neighborhood watch. That was the beginning of our great relationship with the first of our quirky and charismatic neighbors. A desert family that we have grown to love.
We called the realtor on the listing, set up a meeting and returned later that day with Mieka’s Mom, Lori to get one more set of eyes on this utterly ridiculous idea we were actually taking interest towards. Deb, the realtor, was a sweet chipper lady in her 50’s with a British accent. She showed us in the locked door of the house and as if everything were normal gave us the tour of the place. We chatted about the potential that could be and about the history of the previous owner that had died, at a nearby motel. The bank had repossessed his home and were wanting to get it off their hands as soon as possible for as cheep as possible. They had been appraised 30k for the cleanup of the property so they essentially cut that number off the land value and were selling it for 20k. As is. She told us we could easily get water and power hooked up and she would help with any other questions we might have. All the while we wandered thru the ocean of trailers, trash, auto parts, metal scraps, clothing piles, and construction waste. With one more check in with each other eye to eye and a verified nod of acceptance for what we were signing ourselves up for Mieka, and I sealed the pact of a many year project to come. And with that, I called my dad and told him about it. Showed him the listing and asked for a loan. We came up with a 7 year 4% interest loan that he would carry. With a transfer of funds, and a mountain of paperwork to sign, I was the owner of 5 acres of trash covered desert and a new home by my 27th birthday. May 4th 2016. We returned to the event that we were attending at the time and in a fair amount of disbelief we told people what we had just done. We stayed on the land for a few days while we gutted the inside of the Homestead Cabin. We tore out the carpets, replaced the cracked in half toilet, ripped out grease smeared cabinets, appliances, removed sticky linoleum, patched the dozens of holes in the drywall, and did our best to clean out the funk from 20+ years of… who knows what. Not long after this first push, Mieka went back to LA (where we were living at the time) and I was off on a previously planned work trip to Eden, Utah. While in eden I ended up purchasing another property, this time 1.1 acres, with a quaint cabin, and no trash… but thats another story...
I returned to Landers on August 1, 2016 to meet up with a 4 man crew that I had rallied together to build 3 art installations over the course of the month for Symbiosis, a festival in September, AKA my day job. Within the first few days we made haste to clear a 40’x60’ zone in the middle of the hoarder piles right in front of the house that would become our workspace for the rest of the sweltering hot month of August. We unscrewed the plywood from the broken windows of the house, built a makeshift sink, fired up the barb-q, cleared out a few of the camper trailers to be suitable for living, set up a 240 sq ft shade structure that Mieka seamed together for us and began to work. The task at hand was to fabricate a beautiful asian inspired pagoda, engineer and build a 220ft pine bridge, and get a 1956 tug boat into working order all in 1 months time. Meanwhile, it was 100-110 degrees of midsummer desert heat! Fast forward to the end of September when all of these missions were accomplished and all was a success! We began r olling right into another festival build for a wonderful event, Desert Daze, with a new batch of refreshed crew to rebuild the Pagoda, along with a stage, shade structure, and 2 art installations all debuting mid October. We had a blast & another success! From there we moved into more projects, one after the other. It wasn’t until January that we were finally done with events for a little while aside from a February flight to Florida for two week where I would meet my commendable comrade, the one and only, John Michael. He happened to move to the desert the same time I did and was my sole assistant in taking on the enormous task of cleaning acres worth of another mans landfill. Day in and day out for the rest of that winter we would fill trailer load after trailer load of trash. 1500 lbs at a time to be exact, driving each load the 10 mile journey to the local dump, The Landers Landfill. A fine vista atop a western facing hillside in our little desert town. Often times we would manage to pull off two dumps per day. Nearly 2 tons of garbage, a day! Our savior was the Landers dump card, a free punch card we get for living in a town with no trash pickup. They allow you 4, 500 lb dumps per week. That’s 1 ton a month. normally a staggeringly large amount of household refuge but for us they were going quick. By the end of the winter I used all of mine, and two others neighbors cards. By now May was rolling around which meant our 1 year anniversary of the property, and also festival season. So I would have to shift gears from working on the cleanup to paying the bills. Those who are accustomed to the insanity that is ‘Festy’ season know that it is essentially a whirlwind of creating and destroying utopian societies in far off dreamy locations for weeks on end back to back until your body and mind can’t take anymore blissful creative expression, or brain bruising electronic music. It takes over your life for the better part of the summer into fall and you forget that the real world exists out there beyond the ticket gate, commissary, and stampedes of coming of age 20 year olds looking for the answers to life thru psychoactive plants, human connection, and dance music. But, that was my day job, and I loved it. By this time I was more than ready to leave it behind, but it’s what dotted the t’s and crossed the i’s.
As the season slowed to its usual dissolve in the late fall I was able to focus on the property again. I would pick an area, sort out items to keep that interested me, (mostly the metal objects, unique trinkets, or items of repetition), fill up a trailer with the un-wanted, bring load to the dump, punch the dump card, empty the trailer, come home. repeat. Wax on, wax off. Wax on, wax off. The haze of where I was, what I was doing, and what I had become became very blurry lines. My usual seasonal depression would find me second guessing my existence and wondering if I was in fact an artist with a vision of a beautiful property, or just a hoarder with a love of trash, terrible taste, and inability to throw anything away. -There is no way you can feel the depths of this despair unless you find yourself knee deep in such a project with no one around but yourself and the occasional helper who all the while verifies your concerns by wondering the same things himself. “We’re getting closer” I’d say, “Nope. Looks like the same shit pile it did yesterday, last week, and last month.” John Michael would reply with his deep southern accent. We would trudge on. During the nights we wood burn the scrap wood. Mountains of decayed 2x4s, ply, brush, and anything else burnable. We stayed away from the plastics, and rubbers, but if it seemed semi natural we’d throw it in one of our two burn pits or many burn barrels. Those nights were the best of the cleanup. Walking around in the cool winter air in tee shirts (JM shirtless) with two 10ft tall walls of flame on either side of us raging like hell itself. We learned early on that the burns had to happen at night after trying to light a pile on fire midday only to watch as the black smoke rose hundreds of feet into the air becoming visible from every house in the whole 12 mile valley. Throwing water on it would only make it smoke more and it was like standing on the highest building yelling, “It’s me! Im putting your house in danger!!” Neighbors came over to shun us with their concerns of burning down the desert. We apologized and only burned under the cover of darkness after that. (side note* I’ve had close to 100 fires on the land by now 80% for utility purposes 20% for pleasure, and I can say, it is extremely difficult to catch the desert on fire. Not to say you shouldn’t be careful. you absolutely should. I’ve heard of many large fires in the area, they happen in the foothills where there’s more foliage. However, as far as trying to light this barren wasteland ablaze myself, I’ve yet to succeed…)
We were now a year and a half in and if you squinted at it just right you could almost see the progress we had made. Actually, if you had been there since the beginning it was rather impressive, but without fail it was always difficult for me having friends out for the first time because without knowing how far it’d come you could only see that it was still a burnt out crack house looking property with scattered piles of slightly more organized trash everywhere. And time after time again I’d explain the story of cleaning, restoring, sorting, organizing, where it had come from, and my idea of where it was headed. Always painting a picture on top of the tattered and beat up existing canvas. When the people would go home and it was just Mieka and I, the doubt bugs would crawl into my ears and fill my head with all the self conscious worries of existential failure.
It was Christmas time this year when two integral things happened. First, Mieka signed the lease on a roadside storefront in our neighboring community Flamingo Heights. Taking on a new and exciting project, opening a retail store for hand crafted goods, art, and apothecary. It would be her new baby, a committing project that would over the next year, anchor our existence in the desert, and intertwine a large contingent of the desert creative community we now call family. It meant Mieka would move to the property full time with our two cats, and two dogs. (She was still back and forth from LA up until this point) And she would now have a business to run, which she has done such an impressively professional job at, I’m so proud of her every day. The second of the noteworthy incidence to happen that Christmas was a man by the name of Tim Mezin stopped by the property for the first time. He stepped out of his shiny white official San Bernardino county SUV with his clipboard and started poking around. “Im a county citation officer" he explained, and I smiled and greeted him welcomingly, unaware of the maniacal inhuman, robitic, droidian plans this man had in store for me and the property. He walked around slowly nodding and smiling as i told him the usual story. He was aware of the property as it had been on the books for close to a decade getting innumerable citations year after year for the trash, inoperable vehicles, illegal power chords running out to all the trailers, and many others. None of which were ever paid. Michael Kraft, the man who made this mess, claimed he couldn’t read, and that was that.
“You’ve done an impressive job here." he said. “Wow, this is a lot of work you’ve done!” I smiled, and thanked him. It felt good being commended by a county official! He hopped back in his car joining another woman officer who never got out of the passenger seat. He typed on his dashboard computer for a few minutes and came back out. “Looks like the house isn’t permitted" he said. “What does that mean?” "Well, you’ll have to get it permitted." My smile had left but I still wasn’t too concerned. At this time I didn’t at all comprehend the absurd can of bureaucratic nightmares this man just opened in my lap.
About 2 weeks later I got a letter from the county in the mailbox, the first of many more to come. I opened it. In bright red all caps letters it read
CITATION 1 TRASH ON THE PROPERTY $100
CITATION 2 INOPERABLE VEHICLES ON THE PROPERTY $100
CITATION 3 UNPERMITTED HOUSE $100
FINES PAYABLE TO SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY
IF UNPAID IN 30 DAYS ALL FINES WILL DOUBLE
As it turns out, the trash pile that I had purchased in a dirt road town in the middle of nowhere for the purpose of creating an artistic ranch with the freedom to build and dream and shoot for the stars was actually within the jurisdiction of the largest county in America, San Bernardino. The land of sprawling suburbs, a decaying metropolis with a long history of crime, corruption, and the American dream. I mean heck, McDonalds was invented here, this place is all bad. And the county headquarters is located in the middle of the million person city. A city which has absolutely nothing in common with my 2000 person dirt road town. But the county doesn’t care, they sent Tim Mezin to my doorstep to collect my dues. To fine me for revitalizing a desert landfill, and beautifying a neighborhood with a project that will inevitably raise property values and in turn get them more money in the long run anyways! But $300 bucks wasn’t so bad, so I paid it and continued on my way. Pick up trash, put in trailer, click click click punches on the dump card… my usual meditation. A few months past and Tim came back. Once again congratulating me on the hard work I’m doing, and again a few weeks after that I received another letter in the mail. Only this time the fines had doubled.
CITATION 1 TRASH ON THE PROPERTY $200
CITATION 2 INOPERABLE VEHICLES ON THE PROPERTY $200
CITATION 3 UNPERMITTED HOUSE $200
FINES PAYABLE TO SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY
IF UNPAID IN 30 DAYS ALL FINES WILL DOUBLE
$600!!! This time I was pissed. I called the county, listened to their terrible hold music, tried to dispute it, nothing. Talked to building and safety, talked to code enforcement, talked to planning. It was always the same go around: You wait 5-10 minutes listening to the same song. (I know this song by heart) then a low level desk jokey answers and asked for your parcel number, then I ask a few questions, something like, “Hi, Im getting fined for my house not being permitted can you tell me what I do in order to permit my house?” They reply, “Um, I’m not sure. I can have a Building & Safety officer call you back in 48-72 hours.” I say, “Okay, thank you.” Hang up. Then I may or may not get a call back. When I do I live in a desert town with aggravatingly poor cell service so the call either drops or never gets to me in the first place. Over and over I do this. Hours of culminated hold music, countless unknown answers to my unanswered questions. Perhaps driving over to them is easier so I talk to someone in person. Oh but wait, they’ve decided that our far off corner of the county jurisdiction can only be open on Wednesdays from very specific times. So, for Wednesday we wait along with everyone else who they’ve slapped with big all caps red letters and we sit in uncomfortable chairs patiently waiting out turns to talk to a fellow human finally to help us answer our questions. There is a bit of digression here as I can fall down this dark rabbit hole for a long time as it has held up a substantial part of my life for the better part of the past two years, but you’re going to have to continue reading more of it because the absurdity of their requests get worse before they can get better…
By the time I had received my fourth letter from the county, I was able to find and mount axels on the truck that had been sitting on cinder blocks making it moveable to a designated parking spot which took care of the ‘INOPERABLE VEHICLES ON THE PROPERTY’ fine. I was able to contact permit research and have them find the original homesteader cabin permit after 3 months of looking for it in their archival files, and I had, what I thought was cleaned the property to a state where you could actually see sand instead of trash. I figured it was to a point that they would accept it as an exceptionally, and unconditionally impressive clean up from where it had been 2 years before. I imagined them awarding me a blue ribbon of community good doing for my services... Or at least stop fining me. This was not the case. The first of my accomplishments worked but latter two not so much. I had rented a tractor to do some earth moving on the property. I began building a terraced garden in our front yard, and leveling a couple of man made hills on the property. However as it turned out, as above, so below. He had buried trash in the hills. Without even the curtesy of digging down to keep them level to the ground they were just dirt mounds of buried trash. Without the energy, finances, or means to dispose of these piles properly, I pushed them to the far south east side of the property behind my shipping containers to focus on other projects for a while. Ones that didn’t entail me sifting thru trash. This last lone mound of trash sat exposed for a little too long for ol’ Tim’s liking and aside from the fact that I had turned a hoarder, landfill, nightmare into a seemingly respectable, desert, rancho. He felt the need to snoop around, take some pics, and slap me with a big fat TRASH ON THE PROPERTY $500. Five hundred dollars!! Bull shit! I was so pissed. I paid the fine immediately, which I learned from a past letter where I had felt like saying, “Screw the man!" to one of my previous citations only to receive another irreversible, indisputable letter a month later telling me it had doubled, then a third a month after that saying it would go to collections, then later present issues on my taxes. So I paid my doubled fines and continued. Pick up trash, drive to dump, click, click, click… As for the house, there had been a 200 sq ft add on to the homesteader cabin at some point in the past 20 years and therefore the UNPERMITTED HOUSE fine converted to a ILLEGAL ADD ON fine and once again raised to $500
Let me just state that I am very good with my hands, I can build, fabricate, and execute most any physical project… What I am not good at, and never have been is paperwork. School just wasn’t for me, and adult school is no different. I pushed my distain aside, and learned how to blueprint a house from scratch. I read a few books, looked at some other plans, and started on my own. I designed the house first in Sketchup, then later converted it to Photoshop as those were the programs I understood. I submitted them the county and on a second or third rendition was granted approval! At least approval for them to accept my $1500 and take a look at what I’d come up with. Though this didn’t mean very much, I would soon learn. Advancing the ability for the powers that be to actually allow me to remodel my own house, but what it did mean is they couldn’t fine me anymore because I had submitted plans and was now in a safe zone and holding pattern. The thing with these holding patterns is you must have a new update back and forth from the county every 6 months or else the permit will lapse and the money paid will not be refunded. Apparently the plans that I submitted are actually not at all what they want to see. Let us just say there are some issues with bringing a 1954 homesteader cabin up to 2016 California building codes for a single family residence. To start: the walls are 2x4 studs. Structurally this is ok, but the issue lies in the insulation. Code requires R-19 insulation and 2x4s can only fit R-13. so I gave it some thought and came up with ripping off the exterior, wrapping the house in ply, then a layer on R-5 rigid foam insulation then stuccoing on top of that. This would totally work for meeting our R-19 goal. Next is the concrete pad and footings. They must be 18” deep below ground level so, I dug a hole at the north side of the house till i reached the bottom. 15-18ish… yeah, I think that could work if the right inspector looked at it from the right angle. Next, the windows that I put in were new double pane windows early on. They checked out. Electric and plumbing, all seems like it will work, and if not I can replace when I rip off the exterior walls, check. This leaves us with the roof. Firstly, it has to have R-39 insulation. This would mean covering the exterior of the roof in 2 layers of the thickest most robust rigid foam they make. I did the math and technically this would work even if it would look a bit funny. But then they sent an email back saying they would need to see structural engineered stamp of the existing roof rafters because they are 2x4’s and lower than a 1' in 3’ pitch. Sigh. Okay it’s pretty much official. I will have to tear off the existing roof of this house that has been standing fine and dandy since 1954. Ok, thats a bummer but I can get thru that. So, I wait for Wednesday our holy county sabbath to return to the church of building and safety 25 miles away on the east side of Joshua Tree to discuss my new plans. I write my name on the usual clipboard, and wait in the usual line. This time it’s a new face that I haven’t seen before but he seems friendly. We chat about the situation and I re-explain my dilemmas and scenario to this city dwelling BS officer who drove two hours from San Bernardino (city) to listen to us simple minded desert folks. We chat about the usual things I’ve heard many times before, and as usual I get similar but varying answers to my usual questions. Im feeling confident in the ability to pull off this big kid homework assignment. Carlos (we will call him) does the usual typing on the computer I cannot see the screen of. This time he replies with a new and not so usual statement… "Uh, oh.” he says. “...You should probably just sell this property." "Excuse me?” I say. Spinning the screen around he points. “You're on the fault line." His finger slides across the screen along a red line that cuts through the south west corner of my 5 acre parcel. What’s this? I ask. "Thats a fault line. Your going to have to get geological testing done.” "Okay… and what does that entail?” “The permit is $1500 and the surveyor is at least 3k.” Of course it is. I later learn more from a local architect that this is no small matter. He too told me, “It's time to sell the property." And that he’s dealing with one now that has the owner 20k in the hole and he’s not even finished yet. I’ll line this out for you to understand…
In 1992 the largest earthquake ever recorded in America took place in our fine little town. It split the highway in half in multiple places and sent underground cracks out in a multitude of directions. The county recently took these cracks and drew a big red bubble around them in all directions. They then decided that if you have a property within this big red bubble you would not be aloud to build a house (or remodel an existing one) until you have geological testing done. Easy right?
Here is what geological testing entails; You need to have three 15 foot deep trenches dug on the property. 15 feet! Thats 1 and a half times deeper than our house is tall. You then need to find a county approved geologist. (no easy feat) to climb down into those holes and look at the soil lines assessing weather or not there are fractures in the sediment layers. This Procedure can cost 5-30 thousand dollars and at the end of the day Mr.Geologist might find a crack, and you are now not only out that money, but no longer aloud to build your dream home because another 100 year earthquake might hit this small desert town again and your house might shake even though it may be long after your dead and gone. Our house survived the ’92 earthquake just fine and we’re having no problems living in it now, aside from the fact that the county is fining for it. As you are starting to see, this is a rather enraging story, and one that has yet to come to an end. This is where we find ourself today. Stuck in a limbo, with a countdown to an expired permit, a seemingly criminal citation officer, and one highly paid geologist short of a humble desert existence for ourselves, our soon to be child, and a few of our friends, and extended family to come visit and make art from time to time.
I am not writing this as a call for help, I am writing it as an eye opening reality check of how this corrupt system works, and how if we can’t create our dreams, especially in a barren desert, on a dirt road, far from any stop lights, Walmarts, and fast food joints, then Im not sure what the point of any of it is.
If you think you may know someone who could assist in green lighting our little project in the desert please let us know. We are simply looking for the means to an end of this nightmare. One that will allow us to live the life we want in peace.
In all this instability, and thru every curveball that has come our way theres one thing that feels for sure, we’re not throwing in the towel. The vision is as strong as ever and there is always a way to get there, I think. I thank all of my friends who have helped us along the journey with all their their physical labor, moral support, contracted projects intern funding this endeavor, idea sessions, art creations, stories of property back history, and so many other gifts. When we get thru this we will celebrate. And your all invited to join in the fun. Desert style.
thank you for reading. If you want to reach out about anything, you can do so in for from below or email:
HiloHomestead@gmail.com
Before & Afters:
An up to date look at the HiLo
