BOOM, BUST, BEYOND; FLIGHT HISTORY REFLECTED IN ANTELOPE VALLEY AVIATION FLEW HIGH HOPES TO TWO CITIES.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

Antelope Valley in 1961 was going through an experience that would look familiar 30 years later: job layoffs, abandoned homes, plunging real estate prices, weed-choked front yards.

Aircraft industry cutbacks, led by Convair shutting its Air Force Plant 42 factory, put the valley into its worst economic tailspin since the Great Depression.

``Discouragement just permeated the whole community,'' said Larry Chimbole, then a Palmdale hardware store owner and president of the Palmdale Chamber of Commerce.

He couldn't blame jobless aircraft workers for leaving, Chimbole said. The valley had almost no other industry, and the Antelope Valley Freeway didn't exist. Trying to hold a job in the San Fernando Valley or Los Angeles meant a commute of at least 90 minutes each way on two-lane roads.

The abrupt reversal came after the aviation industry had brought explosive growth in the 1950s that transformed the valley from agriculture. Civic leaders set about trying to deal with the new reality.

In Palmdale, cityhood proponents embarked on their fourth incorporation attempt. This effort succeeded. Chimbole was the top voter-getter in the 1962 election and became mayor.

``I always tell people city incorporation wasn't an act of God. It was a lot of work,'' Chimbole said. ``We knew we had a platform we never had before. We had revenue we never had before.''

But not much revenue. In the first contract with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for a Palmdale police force, the new city could not even afford a staffed patrol car on duty all the time. It settled for one-fourth of the time.

``That was all we could afford,'' Chimbole said.

Then hundreds went to work when the Federal Aviation Administration opened its Palmdale air traffic control center. Work ramped up on two experimental XB-70 supersonic bombers, creating more jobs, although President Kennedy had already killed plans to build a whole fleet of B-70s.

Antelope Valley residents lobbied for a freeway. They touted the economic development potential of the region and even claimed a valley freeway would be a good escape route for Angelenos during an atomic attack.

The first segment of the Antelope Valley Freeway opened in 1963. It was a 15-mile stretch around the Sand Canyon area of the Santa Clarita Valley. The California Department of Transportation completed the freeway in 1974.

Growth in Palmdale didn't really resume until the mid-1970s, said Chimbole, who served 12 years on the City Council before he was elected to the state Assembly in 1974. Now he is an Antelope Valley Hospital board member.

He said a big growth spurt came with construction of the Joshua Hills subdivision along 25th Street East and the opening of new shopping centers along Palmdale Boulevard. By then, the new freeway made daily commutes ``down below'' realistic.

And by the mid-1970s, Lockheed was employing thousands on its L-1011 Tri-Star airliner. The company had announced in 1968 that it would build a $50 million assembly complex in Palmdale, where the first jetliner rolled out in August 1970.

But Lockheed was having financial problems because of its C-5 military transport plane program, and then the engine supplier for the L-1011, Rolls-Royce, went bankrupt in February 1971. Lockheed laid off 2,000 workers in Palmdale and more in Burbank.

After a loan guarantee from the federal government, Lockheed restarted the L-1011 production line. Competing with the similar DC-10 from McDonnel Douglas, the L-1011 was never a financial success. Lockheed lost an average $10 million per plane, according to company historian Walter J. Boyne. In 1981, Lockheed canceled the program.

Also at Plant 42, Rockwell International was assembling the space shuttle fleet for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The valley was still so sparsely populated that the shuttles could be rolled north along 10th Street East, which was later renamed Challenger Way, and across Rosamond Dry Lake to a NASA 747 carrier aircraft at Edwards Air Force Base.

While the valley had its economic ups and downs during the 1960s and '70s, it retained a small town atmosphere.

``Everybody seemed to know what was going on,'' said Fred Hann, a 1956 graduate of Antelope Valley High School who became a paramedic and fire inspector. ``You'd go to the fair and see all your friends. Now I go to the fair, and I don't know anybody.''

The valley prided itself on being different than Los Angeles, Hann said. Businesses posted signs saying ``We care what they do in L.A.'' or ``If you don't like our prices, go down below.''

Fifteen years after Palmdale voters decided to incorporate their city, Lancaster voters decided to do the same for theirs, rejecting fears of creating another layer of government, opening the door to more taxes or giving power to a pack of ``good ol' boys.''

``We wanted to make our own destiny and not have to worry about the county doing this or the county doing that,'' said Hann, who was elected to the first council as the No. 2 vote-getter among 37 candidates.

One project that appeared a sure route to prosperity in those decades still is a matter of debate.

In 1969, Los Angeles officials announced that the city intended to buy 17,000 acres of desert east of Palmdale to build the Palmdale Intercontinental Airport.

``It was heaven-sent,'' Chimbole said of the announcement.

Palmdale put up a sign reading, ``Welcome to Palmdale - Home of the Palmdale Intercontinental Airport.''

Los Angeles bought the land in an acquisition process that extended into the 1980s, but never got around to building the airport, whose name was downgraded from ``Intercontinental'' to ``International'' to ``Regional'' as the idea ran into environmental opposition and momentum waned.

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Photo: In 1979, spectators see the space shuttle Columbia being towed from the assembly plant at Palmdale to Edwards Air Force Base.