BUST, BOOM DEFINE PAST ANTELOPE VALLEY HAS SURVIVED UPS AND DOWNS.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

Antelope Valley started the last century as a cluster of alfalfa and fruit ranches surrounded by desert.

It shifted into an aerospace hub, then transformed itself into a far-out suburb.

In the meantime, it had to survive two major aerospace industry shakeups that locally rivaled the effect of the Great Depression.

From the arrival of the railroad in 1876 until World War II, the valley was a farming community.

Alfalfa, pears and almonds were irrigated by wells pulling water from deep underground. Lancaster and Palmdale were tiny towns with dirt streets, populated by railroad workers and merchants who served the farmers and ranchers.

The transformation came when the military and National Aeronautics and Space Administration created what is now Edwards Air Force Base to test high-performance jets and rocket planes, flown by pilots like Chuck Yeager.

Muroc Dry Lake east of Rosamond had been used by the Army Air Corps since the 1930s for gunnery practice. Airmen lived in a tent camp on the dry lake shore.

But the isolation was also perfect for the wartime testing in secret of America's first jet fighter, the XP-59. The clay lake bed also fit the need.

The first jets needed a long runway to take off, and the miles and miles of flat, hard lakebed gave them a ready emergency landing spot if the temperamental engines quit flamed out in flight.

The wartime military influx into the tiny, dusty towns meant some people rented rooms in converted chicken coops. After the war, housing tracts sprang up on farmland and sagebrush desert around both Palmdale and Lancaster.

Edwards' flight testing blossomed at the same time as the opening of aircraft manufacturing plants in Palmdale.

In 1950, the U.S. government bought back Palmdale Airport from Los Angeles County, which the county got after the war, and renamed it Air Force Plant 42. Lockheed opened a plant there in 1953. Other aircraft companies followed: North American, Convair, Northrop Douglas.

Lancaster's population jumped from 3,600 in 1950 to more than 29,000 10 years later. Palmdale had 1,400 inhabitants in 1940, more than 11,000 in 1960.

During the 1950s, Palmdale built five elementary schools and Palmdale High School. Antelope Valley Hospital opened in Lancaster in 1955, High Desert Hospital in 1961. Antelope Valley College, which had used high school classrooms, got its own campus.

Then came the first sign that aerospace is a boom-and-bust industry. The local economy crashed, led by Convair shutting its Plant 42 factory. Jobless aircraft workers moved out. Homes stood vacant. Real estate prices plunged.

It took until the mid-1970s for the economy to revive. Helping out were the 1974 completion of the Antelope Valley Freeway and Lockheed's L-1011 airliner production in Palmdale.

The 1980s brought a new boom. Interest rates fell and Rockwell International hired more than 7,000 people equivalent to half the inhabitants of Palmdale to build B-1B bombers. Rockwell was already building space shuttles in Palmdale.

Palmdale shot from 13,000 people in 1980 to nearly 69,000 in 1990. Lancaster went from 48,000 to more than 97,000.

The population boom again transformed the valley. Tens of thousands of those newcomers held jobs in the San Fernando Valley or Los Angeles, putting up with hours of driving each day in order to afford a new home.

Then the Cold War ended. B-2 stealth bomber production employment, expected to take on the workers laid off when the B-1B work ended, reached only about half the size of the B-1B work force.

A national recession at the same time meant newcomers who commuted to jobs in Northridge, Los Angeles or Long Beach also got pink slips.

Unemployment peaked in 1993 at an estimated 9.4 percent in Lancaster.

More than 15,000 homes went into foreclosure in the mid-1990s, drawing the valley the dubious title of foreclosure capital of the world.

The economic turnaround was slow, slower even then the U.S. or California recoveries.

New industries, which valley leaders had been courting since the 1980s as a counterpoint to the cyclical aerospace industries, began moving in.

Senior Systems Technology opened an electronics-component plant in Palmdale in 1998. The same year, Michaels craft store opened a 432,000-square-foot distribution center in Lancaster. Rite Aid opened its West Cost distribution center more than twice as big nearby.

Dillard's, an upscale Arkansas-based department store chain, opened in 1999 the Antelope Valley Mall's first new department store since 1992. Dillard's decision drew the attention of other chains: within a year, Lowe's home improvement chain, Barnes & Noble book stores and Sport Chalet all committed to open stores.

Home prices shot up 46.7 percent in Lancaster and 37.5 percent in Palmdale during 2000 among the fastest growth in California.

Not every thing is rosy. SR Technics, a Swiss-based airliner overhaul and modification company, in 2000 took over Rockwell's old B-1B plant. The investment was so significant that Gov. Gray Davis made the announcement, saying the plant could eventually employ 6,000.

Then an overly ambitious expansion plan by sister company SwissAir put the SR Technics' parent firm in trouble. The post-Sept. 11 travel dip worsened the problem.

After reaching nearly 600, SR Technics' employment was down to 285 in January as the company searched for new investors.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, box, map

Photo:

(1 -- color) The Antelope Valley's open spaces made it a perfect proving ground for aircraft flight testing.

(2 -- color) The Antelope Valley Indian Museum is one of several historical sites unique to the Antelope Valley.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographe

Box:

Your guide to living in ...

The Antelope Valley

Map:

The Antelope Valley

Gregg Miller/Staff Artist