Oak Glen’s In-Cider Battle Is Over

In the war over apple-picking haven Oak Glen, the men costumed as Revolutionary War soldiers have won.

For two years, a spat over whether musket-firing actors could recreate battles on a farm has rankled the tranquil community -- kindling a recall campaign against a San Bernardino County supervisor and dividing the town as residents picked sides in a family feud.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday backed Jim Riley, whose Riley’s Farm is host of Revolutionary War reenactments billed as “90 minutes and over 200 years from Los Angeles.”

Some neighboring orchard owners -- including Jim Riley’s older brother Dennis -- objected to his request to expand the Revolutionary War Adventure to overnight campers and allow reenactors to continue firing black-powder muskets, arguing that it would wreck the hamlet.

“They’re changing it into a little Lebanon. They have 1,200 kids battling every day. You think any of them want to live next to that?” protested Dennis Riley, pointing to supervisors after their unanimous vote.

The board clamped down on which times and days Jim Riley and others in Colonial and British garb can “bring the American Revolution alive.” It also curbed musket firings to six shots daily and ordered the battle zone to be at least a football field’s length from other properties.

The restrictions prompted Jim Riley’s brother Scott, who attended Tuesday’s meeting for his vacationing sibling, to label the decision a “quarter-inch victory” that opponents would probably contest in court.

“If they were still ... children and fighting over something, I could take it away, but you can’t take things away from grown men,” said exasperated matriarch Beatrice Riley.

The spat is rooted in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains, where thousands travel to pick apples and sip cider during the three-month harvest season, which wraps up near Thanksgiving.

In 2004, longtime grower Dennis Riley told the county he was fed up with the racket and possible fire danger from his brother’s mock battles.

Code enforcement officials investigated Riley’s Farm. Jim Riley complained about what he called selective enforcement, and soon officials sent letters to many of the town’s mom-and-pop stores -- including roadside apple stands -- saying they were doing business without proper permits.

Meanwhile, Jim Riley asked the county for permission to build 30 more structures to accommodate 1,224 day visitors and 144 overnighters. The structures would include “period-authentic” buildings with neither electricity nor plumbing.

“The thing I like about our farm is that it really isn’t slick -- it’s not tripped-out, blacktop-and-curb, Newport Beach deli-style retail. The farm’s roots are still very clear,” he wrote recently on his online farm journal.

A split county planning commission approved the plans in March. Jim Riley’s detractors, a group called Concerned Oak Glen Residents, appealed to supervisors, and a few launched the recall campaign, convinced that Supervisor Dennis Hansberger had sided with Jim Riley. Recall proponents are still gathering signatures.

Some residents said expanding the farm was too much change for a community that once recoiled at you-pick orchards and hoedowns -- which were, ironically, Dennis Riley’s innovations.

“Christmas must be real interesting for the Riley family,” board Chairman Bill Postmus quipped last month at a hearing at which the skirmish unfolded along established lines.

Jim Riley’s neighbors had complained to the board that the mock battles attracted big crowds and that amplified square-dance calling and other noise kept them up at night.

“I consider Oak Glen to be a treasure, a gem for all of Southern California,” Anne Jackson, a Yucaipa resident who has worked with its apple growers, told the board. Residents “need more apples and less noise.”

In turn, Jim Riley sent e-mails encouraging supporters to attend the hearing, showing a picture of a gravestone with the message: “Riley’s Farm, 1776-2006, We told you they were trying to get us.”

Teachers, principals and church group leaders, most from outside the county, packed the hearing. Busing children to Riley’s Farm, they said, immersed them in Colonial history -- a tough task because Revolutionary War settings are on the East Coast.

“When Jim Riley reenacts Patrick Henry’s ‘Give me liberty or give me death’ speech ... the kids have heard part of what made this nation happen,” said Bob Brooks, a volunteer at Canterbury Elementary School in the San Fernando Valley.

Forgoing his Colonial uniform for a button-down shirt and slacks, Jim Riley showed a video of flag-bearing children and women in bonnets and corsets, scored to “Yankee Doodle.”

*

Times staff writer Melissa Pamer contributed to this report.