SECT BUILT REMOTE COMPOUND : NEW MEXICO RETREAT ABANDONED LAST YEAR.

Byline: Martha Mendoza Associated Press 

An ``Earth ship'' of old tires, a little wooden elephant and mystified people still serve as reminders that the Heaven's Gate cult tried to build a New Mexico home before moving on to California.

``These were wonderful people,'' said Jim Thorsen, a leader in the New Mexico patriot movement who bought the cult's 40-acre compound last year.

Then, peering at a long, mazelike wall of symmetrically stacked tires, he admitted he had other thoughts:

``OK, they were screwed up. But they were wonderful.''

Heaven's Gate members bought the land 55 miles southeast of Albuquerque in June 1995 and began building an environmentally sensitive, fenced and gated retreat center, apparently intending it as a permanent monastery.

About 25 members worked the land, while five or six commuted about 10 miles in Jeeps and Cadillacs to work in rented offices next to Gustin's Hardware store in Mountainair.

Patsy Gustin, who rented the three small offices for $250 a month to a group calling itself ``Computer Nomads,'' cried when she saw her ex-tenants on television, giving videotaped goodbyes before last week's mass suicide.

``It's shocking. They were very, very, very nice people. They were always smiling,'' she said, lightly tapping a table where Heaven's Gate members once worked.

The kind, peaceful cult members with cropped hair planned a thriving commune on the remote property, Thorsen said. The land, a former youth camp dotted with pine trees, sits two miles up a dirt road from the tiny, dilapidated village of Manzano.

They drew up plans for a self-sustaining community, laid gas and electric lines and installed a vast septic system.

``They planned on attracting members, but they thought they would be subject to something like Waco or Ruby Ridge. That's why they came here,'' he said.

It appears to have been incredibly arduous work.

They milled lumber one tree at a time, mixed and poured their own concrete, and stacked hundreds of tires by hand. Predawn laborers were rewarded by the chalking of ``EB'' (for early bird, said Thorsen) on the tires they placed.

When they suddenly decided to leave in April 1996, they had:

A partially completed, 3,700-square-foot building walled with old, stacked tires filled with dirt and chinked with empty soda cans.

A 4,000-square-foot metal building, which included a dining hall, kitchen and office. It was surrounded by another tire wall.

Two smaller prefabricated metal cabins, and two graded sites where Thorsen said cult members were housed in two 60-square-foot Army surplus tents.

Architectural plans they left behind include drawings of an infirmary, a lookout tower, a ``cyberlab,'' a ``nutrilab'' and a ``consuming area.''

Heaven's Gate also left behind about 300 sacks of cement and mortar, ladders, dozens of folding chairs, generators, heaters, tanks of butane gas, a small sawmill and a large sign at the gate reading ``Monastery.''

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Photo

PHOTO Jim Thorsen, who bought a wooded 40-acre parcel from Heaven's Gate, speaks at the New Mexico site.

Associated Press