70 years ago – 1947
There were 300 families living year-round in the area.
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Art Morris and his county crew were busy widening Circle Drive.
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Bob Hatch, Roy Bramblett, Paul Kemp and Harold Sanborn were joyful over the arrival of a red fire engine.
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A “come-as-you-are” party was held at Fern Valley Lodge to benefit the Community Building Fund.
65 years ago – 1952
Movie shows at Hillbilly Lodge ended as the Froelichs worked to complete their new Rustic Theatre.
60 years ago – 1957
Hill folk living beside Strawberry Creek reported hearing a strange noise following the heavy rain. Few could remember when water had previously gushed and gurgled over the dehydrated boulders.
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Emax reported he had seen roadrunners occasionally around here. He wondered if it portended a change of climate in the mountains.
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Arthur Casebeer, a retired attorney who lived in Idyllwild for 15 years, passed away in San Diego.
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Work started on the horsemen’s campsite at Mountain Center.
55 years ago – 1962
A new boys’ dormitory was under construction at Desert Sun School (now AstroCamp). It was planned for 40 students plus house parents.
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County supervisors accepted an offer of 19 acres near Stone Creek as a park site. The donor was the Idyllwild Mountain Park Co.
50 years ago – 1967
A helicopter crashed and burned near the Black Mountain lookout station, taking the lives of two men and seriously injuring a third. The men were attending a Palm Springs conference of the Helicopter Association of America.
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The Idyllwild Property Owners Association asked the county to widen and repave North Circle Drive because of increased traffic between the village center and Fern Valley Corners.
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Twice-daily air service was inaugurated from Hemet-Ryan Airport to Los Angeles International.
45 years ago – 1972
At a Banning commission hearing, Tahquitz Lake Estates residents protested the application of a conditional-use permit for a mobile home development in Dutch Flat.
40 years ago – 1977
California faced its second-consecutive dry year and the California Water Commission suggested a number of proposals to ease drought conditions, but Idyllwild and the mountain area would probably not be involved.
30 years ago – 1987
The county approved the 1987-88 Town Hall Recreation Program budget of $116,240 — a 13 percent increase over the year before.
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Warning that the current enthusiasm for prescribed burning will eventually give way to another wildfire prevention measure, a U.S. Forest Service researcher told members of the Coordinated Resource Management and Planning team to think of the broader urban-wildlands interface problem.
25 years ago – 1992
Idyllwild School Principal George Nettleman was working on a grant that could earn national recognition and more than $1 million for the school in the next year.
20 years ago – 1997
Idyllwild Arts celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding with a special concert in Orange County.
15 years ago – 2002
Balmy, dry weather raised concern for the Pine Cove Water District. Jerry Holldber told the district’s directors that the lack of significant moisture that winter was made worse by drought-level conditions on the Hill.
10 years ago – 2007
Pine Cove Water District General Manager Jerry Holldber unveiled plans to develop the Dutch Flat complex, that once implemented could add 200 gallons of water per minute to district production. Holldber proposed a four-phase plan with an estimated total cost ranging from $160,000 to $300,000.
5 years ago – 2012
The local Red Cross trailer on the Idyllwild Pines property was vandalized sometime after the first of the year. Quite a lot of valuable supplies were taken.
1 year ago – 2016
Local business mogul Shane Stewart bought up property from the southwest corner of Cedar Street and N. Circle Drive to install a 79-space parking lot without removing any buildings.
