A backcountry comeback: Julian's annual apple days taking a bite out of last year's firestorms.

One morning during the Julian Bluegrass Festival, Clarence Arroyo pushed a multi-tiered cart filled with unbaked apple pies along Main Street, swerving to avoid the steady stream of motorcycles and cars bringing tourists to the mountain community for the traditional kickoff of the fall harvest season.

It was no marketing gimmick. The oven at his namesake eatery, Clarence's Cafe, broke down and the owners of a nearby bakery came to his rescue by agreeing to share theirs.

"Only in Julian," Arroyo said, stressing how the generosity of friends and neighboring businesspeople, whom pitched in their talent, time and some spare equipment, helped the insurance agent-turned-chef realize his dream of restaurant ownership in the mountain community about 60 miles northeast of San Diego.

Ironically, the cafe's biggest moneymaking day was Oct. 24, less than a month after it opened and about 24 hours before firestorms devastated some 300,000 acres across the county.

While the Cedar fire destroyed about 700 homes surrounding Julian, including the house Arroyo and his family rented nearby, it was extinguished before it reached the heart of town.

Arroyo has a following among locals who know him from his years in the kitchens at the Orchard Hill Country Inn and the nearby Pine Hills Lodge.

But Julian has experienced a significant decline in tourism--the mainstay of its economy--since last year's firestorms.

Attendance at the two-day Bluegrass Festival in mid-September was down to 2,000 from 2,500 the year before. Melissa Hague of Melissa Hague Entertainment attributed at least part of the slump to the fact that it was her first time producing the concert. But it could also be that prospective visitors are squeamish.

"A lot of people who called prior to the event asked if they'd be seeing where the fire had hit when they drove up," Hague said. "People don't want to see it. But we want to tell them Julian is still alive and kicking."

Occupancy rates at six local lodging facilities, which are part of the Bed and Breakfast Guild, were down about 30 percent during the summer, compared with the same period last year, said Linda Ediin-Stanley, who owns the Wikiup Bed & Breakfast, and speaks on behalf of the guild.

"But we're just coming into our busy season, and the phone is beginning to ring," she added.

Tyler Johnson owns the 10-acre Apple Lane Orchard, which sells apples and apple cider to customers from a retail stand. He also wholesales sliced apples to nearby restaurants and bakeries, which are known for producing as many as 10,000 pies in October alone.

"It's still been a bit slow," he said, citing a 10 percent to 15 percent decline in weekend business. Yet he thinks the bulk of out-of-towners now buying his produce are from Orange and Los Angeles counties, not San Diego, as in years past.

"Coming south through Ramona, you don't see the devastation on Highway 78 that you do if you're coming in on the Cuyamaca Highway," he said.

Getting Back To Normal

Cara Teter, a co-owner of the Julian Cafe & Bakery, said her restaurant "is never overloaded, but business has been steady" since it's a gathering place for locals.

The talk lately has been of successes in rebuilding their homes, and in some cases, problems. Yet Apple Days are just getting under way and "hopefully" tourism will pick up, Teter said.

"The merchants have been hit hard," she said, adding that visitors would be impressed to see the cleanup efforts that have leveled burned structures and trees, and have cleared branches, brush and debris from surrounding hillsides.

"People are rebuilding and replanting," Teter said.

Harlan Nelson, a partner and manager in the Eagle and High Peak Mine, which offers tours of the once-thriving gold mine, said that while business was off this summer, reservations for busloads of schoolchildren on field trips to see an actual Old West relic have resumed as they normally do in the fall.

While there are no exact figures on the area's visitor count following the Cedar fire, the Julian Chamber of Commerce and Julian Merchants Association, which claim 210 and 100 member businesses, respectively, have launched fall advertising campaigns intended to drive up the numbers.

They include advertising in the Julian Journal, a 6,000-circulation newspaper distributed free in northeast San Diego County, as well as flier inserts in newspapers published in Orange and Los Angeles counties, Phoenix and Yuma, Ariz., said Dan Manley, the president of the merchants association and owner of Angels Landing Country Inn, just north of Julian.

Mike Menghini, the vice president of the local chamber and owner of Menghini Winery in Julian, said the association also placed an ad with the tagline "Come Home for Christmas" in the November edition of Westways Magazine, a publication of the Automobile Club of Southern California. Manley isn't sure how much money the merchants association has to spend on advertising in the coming months, but some fund-raisers could augment the kitty.

Chamber President Dick Thilken said that of its $150,000 annual budget, about $80,000 is for marketing in the 2004-05 fiscal year. Both organizations derive funding from the community's 9 percent hotel room tax.

Just how long it will take before tourism resumes its normal pace is uncertain, however.

"People may kick me for this, but I'm kind of conservative," Thilken said. "I'm going to say it's going to take awhile."