High Desert Daze
August 1, 2010
BORON, Calif. - You can call him F.O. - everyone in town does. Foister Odell Roe has been known simply by his initials since his early days in Boron in the 1950's. But today, it might be more to the point to call him the father of modern Boron.
Roe, almost on his own, built up the town of Boron and its modern infrastructure, including its first sewer system. He started improving the town from the first days he arrived and just kept on going. In the 50's, you would be hard-pressed to even call Boron a town; it lacked basics like paved roads and running water.
And that didn’t sit well with Roe. He says his main impetus for starting to build up Boron was that he wanted to make the place where he was going to raise his family look like and act like a real town.
New Beginnings
At 22 years old, Roe came to Boron to work at the Borax mine - the second largest in the world. He was a Bakersfield native, fresh out of the military and had a new wife and child. With his background in architecture, Roe went about drawing up plans to morph the settlement into a “proper” town.
It was no easy task. He first had to get cooperation and funding from the county - Boron was and is still an unincorporated part of Kern County. When he started drawing up plans for the town, Boron’s chamber of commerce had less than $20 in its coffers.
Roe met the right people in the county offices and asked for help building his vision. And that is essentially how modern Boron began: project-by-project with a piece-meal patchwork of funding funneled to Roe’s projects year after year.
Roe won’t take all of the credit for building Boron. He assembled a team of locals who were on board with his plans, but it was Roe who spearheaded all the efforts when others in the community said it couldn’t be done.
Expanding his Empire
Roe started a business in Boron only two years after he settled there with his young family. Then he opened another and then another. At one time, Roe owned five businesses in downtown Boron including a Montgomery-Ward catalogue store, a service station, a restaurant, a furniture and appliance store, and a military surplus store and salvage yard.
The one business he’s maintained for 54 years is his furniture and appliance store, which he reincarnated in the 1970s into an emporium that sells an amalgamation including furniture, hardware, clothes, gifts, cards and home décor items. Roe’s wife, Irene, operates a flower shop in the back of the store, and Roe’s daughter, Susan Cunningham, owns and operates an art studio and gift shop adjoining the Emporium next door.
Falling Apart
About as soon as Roe coaxed the town into a commercial center with rapidly developing neighborhoods, he watched his dream slowly disintegrate.
A union strike at the Borax mine in 1968 lit the fuse that started Boron's decline, and that decline continued into the 1970s. The labor conflict at times flared into violence. There were fistfights among neighbors and coworkers. Even some gunshots were fired. This was a traumatic time for a usually peaceful town of a few thousand people.
Roe said the fear was palpable, and that fear made people stay indoors. People stopped coming downtown to shop or socialize. There was too much tension.
A second union strike happened in 1974 and was marked by more violence. An interstate freeway was built that bypassed the town, and businesses withered on the vine. People closed shop and moved away.
Fast-Forward 36 Years
The current labor dispute at the Borax mine has led to union workers being locked-out of their jobs. Townspeople are afraid the lockout could sound Boron's death knell. But the town is struggling to hang on, despite appearances. 20 Mule Team Road, the main street that runs through downtown, is dotted with abandoned storefronts and "for sale" signs hanging from dilapidated structures.
But Roe is still optimistic. He has seen Boron through its ups and downs. Now, he shares his story of how modern Boron came to be, from a tiny mining settlement on the edge of the Mojave desert, to an area of booming commerce and promise, to a current-day ghost-town that could be fading into the desert.
BORON, Calif. - You can call him F.O. - everyone in town does. Foister Odell Roe has been known simply by his initials since his early days in Boron in the 1950's. But today, it might be more to the point to call him the father of modern Boron.
Roe, almost on his own, built up the town of Boron and its modern infrastructure, including its first sewer system. He started improving the town from the first days he arrived and just kept on going. In the 50's, you would be hard-pressed to even call Boron a town; it lacked basics like paved roads and running water.
And that didn’t sit well with Roe. He says his main impetus for starting to build up Boron was that he wanted to make the place where he was going to raise his family look like and act like a real town.
New Beginnings
At 22 years old, Roe came to Boron to work at the Borax mine - the second largest in the world. He was a Bakersfield native, fresh out of the military and had a new wife and child. With his background in architecture, Roe went about drawing up plans to morph the settlement into a “proper” town.
It was no easy task. He first had to get cooperation and funding from the county - Boron was and is still an unincorporated part of Kern County. When he started drawing up plans for the town, Boron’s chamber of commerce had less than $20 in its coffers.
Roe met the right people in the county offices and asked for help building his vision. And that is essentially how modern Boron began: project-by-project with a piece-meal patchwork of funding funneled to Roe’s projects year after year.
Roe won’t take all of the credit for building Boron. He assembled a team of locals who were on board with his plans, but it was Roe who spearheaded all the efforts when others in the community said it couldn’t be done.
Expanding his Empire
Roe started a business in Boron only two years after he settled there with his young family. Then he opened another and then another. At one time, Roe owned five businesses in downtown Boron including a Montgomery-Ward catalogue store, a service station, a restaurant, a furniture and appliance store, and a military surplus store and salvage yard.
The one business he’s maintained for 54 years is his furniture and appliance store, which he reincarnated in the 1970s into an emporium that sells an amalgamation including furniture, hardware, clothes, gifts, cards and home décor items. Roe’s wife, Irene, operates a flower shop in the back of the store, and Roe’s daughter, Susan Cunningham, owns and operates an art studio and gift shop adjoining the Emporium next door.
Falling Apart
About as soon as Roe coaxed the town into a commercial center with rapidly developing neighborhoods, he watched his dream slowly disintegrate.
A union strike at the Borax mine in 1968 lit the fuse that started Boron's decline, and that decline continued into the 1970s. The labor conflict at times flared into violence. There were fistfights among neighbors and coworkers. Even some gunshots were fired. This was a traumatic time for a usually peaceful town of a few thousand people.
Roe said the fear was palpable, and that fear made people stay indoors. People stopped coming downtown to shop or socialize. There was too much tension.
A second union strike happened in 1974 and was marked by more violence. An interstate freeway was built that bypassed the town, and businesses withered on the vine. People closed shop and moved away.
Fast-Forward 36 Years
The current labor dispute at the Borax mine has led to union workers being locked-out of their jobs. Townspeople are afraid the lockout could sound Boron's death knell. But the town is struggling to hang on, despite appearances. 20 Mule Team Road, the main street that runs through downtown, is dotted with abandoned storefronts and "for sale" signs hanging from dilapidated structures.
But Roe is still optimistic. He has seen Boron through its ups and downs. Now, he shares his story of how modern Boron came to be, from a tiny mining settlement on the edge of the Mojave desert, to an area of booming commerce and promise, to a current-day ghost-town that could be fading into the desert.
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