FARMING ROOTS EDWARDS AFB CHANGED ANTELOPE VALLEY.

Byline: - Charles F. Bostwick

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

Alfalfa, pears and almonds were irrigated by wells that pulled water from deep underground. Lancaster and Palmdale were tiny towns with dirt streets, populated by railroad workers and merchants.

The transformation came with the creation of what is now Edwards Air Force Base for testing high-performance jets and rocket planes, flown by such pilots as 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.

After World War II, 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 and renamed it Air Force Plant 42. Lockheed opened a plant there in 1953, and North American, Convair and Northrop Douglas followed.

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. Rockwell International, which was already building space shuttles in Palmdale, hired more than 7,000 people to build B-1B bombers.

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

The population boom again transformed the valley. 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.

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 than the U.S. or California recoveries.

New industries, which valley leaders had been courting since the late 1970s as a counterpoint to the cyclic aerospace industries, began moving in.

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

Dillard's opened a department store in the Antelope Valley Mall, and Lowe's home improvement chain, Barnes & Noble bookstores and Sport Chalet all committed to open stores.

Now a Sam's Club, Wal-Mart's warehouse-style chain, is under construction across the Antelope Valley Freeway from the mall, and another shopping center, Amargosa Commons, is planned just south of it.

More businesses are moving into the Lancaster Business Park and Palmdale's new Fairways Business Park, many of them shifting out of the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys because of affordable space for expansion and affordable homes for employees.

CAPTION(S):

photo SPECIAL SECTION: The Good Life

antelope valley

Photo:

(color) The sun sets on a Joshua Tree in the Antelope Valley area.

Jeff Goldwater