COLUMN ONE : Making Themselves at Home : Renegade residents abuse policy allowing private vacation cabins in public forests. Some live there full time, erecting eyesores such as satellite dishes. A few post ‘Keep Out’ signs, claiming land as their own.

Richard Grillat wasn’t looking for a fight--just a peaceful day of fishing when he dropped his line in Bouquet Creek in the Angeles National Forest.

But cabin owner Janet Peters told Grillat he was trespassing, and allegedly heaved a rock at him when he refused to leave. Then her husband pumped two bullets into Grillat’s van, according to a sheriff’s report.

Their reactions seemed all the more extreme because Grillat was fishing on public land, as he had every right to do. But the Peterses blamed Grillat for refusing to be bullied.

“We have lived here off and on for nine years,” they said in court papers. “We have asked over 300 carloads of people not to fish in that area and they all listened and left without question.”

The episode reflects mounting problems with a nearly century-old policy of allowing private vacation cabins in public forest.

Nationwide, nearly 16,000 people have summer homes on public land--most paying permit fees of less than $500 per year for the privilege of keeping private retreats on some of America’s most picturesque real estate. The cabins were built decades ago under permits from the U.S. Forest Service, and most have since been sold or passed on to heirs.

But the obscure program is rife with mismanagement and abuse, a recent report by the Forest Service says. Nowhere are the problems more glaring than in the Angeles, Los Padres, Cleveland and San Bernardino national forests of Southern California, where some cabin owners--taking advantage of tight budgets and weak administration--virtually have become a law unto themselves.

Foresters say many cabin dwellers respect the rules and help them by acting as extra eyes and ears. “We’ve got some good permitees out here, and I wouldn’t paint them all with the same brush,” said Don Stikkers, assistant recreation officer for the Angeles National Forest.

“There’s a few of the other kind, too, who think they own the place.”

Intimidation of visitors is but one complaint.

Many permit-holders defy the most basic requirement that they use their dwellings only for recreation. Although that restriction is clearly spelled out--and accounts for the modest permit fees they pay--hundreds or even thousands of owners improperly use their cabins as cheap, full-time housing or as rental income property, according to interviews and the Forest Service report.

Full-time occupancy, in turn, has converted many vacation tracts from rustic haunts into suburban outposts that bristle with satellite dishes, swing sets, paved driveways, security fences, and guard dogs--along with odd piles of auto parts and construction debris. Officials also fear pollution of streams by primitive sewage systems that weren’t designed for year-round use.

Unauthorized construction is a related problem. Virtually all exterior improvements must be approved as being in character with the forest setting. But the recent study, based on surveys conducted in 21 of the 155 national forests, found unauthorized construction at about half the cabin sites.

Violations were most severe in the Angeles and other forests of Southern California. “I couldn’t believe how bad it was in the Angeles,” said study team leader Roy Droege--who attributed part of the area’s problem to climate and geography.

Although cabin owners in the wilds of Montana may have little choice but to lock up for the winter, weather does not discourage those in the Southland from staying year-round. Moreover, the proximity of the city, with its high housing costs, means a windfall for forest dwellers.

The “recreation residence” program, as it is formally known, has long outlived its original goal of getting Americans into their forests. Early this century, when long distances and primitive roads were formidable barriers to recreational use, the Forest Service began creating vacation tracts and issuing construction permits.

It was a sweet deal for permit-holders. Vacation tracts were laid out on choice stream and lakefront sites, setting the stage for future conflicts. The scenery was grand, and the price was even better. As Sunset magazine, in a how-to manual on cabin construction, exulted in 1938: “The cost--and this will amaze you--averages $15 per year for cabin sites.”

Over the years, recreation access improved, and the government stopped issuing new permits in 1976 because the program was no longer needed and was breeding conflicts with other public uses.

Although some were wiped out by fires or floods, 15,570 cabins remain. California leads the nation with nearly 6,600--including 2,026 in the four Southland forests.

The Angeles’ 732 cabin owners typically are charged permit fees of $200 to $800, depending on the size and location of lots. About 10% of the dwellings change hands each year, selling on the open market at $12,000 to more than $100,000. New owners must obtain their own permits, often for 10-year terms, but these are issued routinely.

Angeles officials estimate that 50% or more of these cabins are occupied full-time. The annual fees--based on vacation use only--clearly “are not commensurate with the kind of use we’re getting. If you’re a taxpayer, you’re subsidizing somebody to live here,” said Lee Urquhart, special use permits coordinator for the Angeles.

But most full-time residents are determined to stay. “I plan on dying here,” said William Jackson, who lives year-round in San Dimas Canyon. “They’d have to take me out of here by gun,” he said--adding that “people would come up here and break all the windows” if he weren’t there full-time.

Although perhaps worse than ever, full-time occupancy has been a chronic problem. In a halfhearted effort to eliminate it, Angeles officials declared in 1970 that they would allow cabin dwellers who had been living full-time to stay, but would enforce the rules once their cabins changed hands. That amnesty still covers some full-time forest residents. Most, however, are newcomers who have simply refused to honor terms of the permits they’ve signed.

Foresters concede the scofflaws have little to worry about. Proving full-time occupancy is time-consuming and difficult--involving extensive surveillance, case preparation and lengthy appeals. “There’s a real reluctance . . . to get into one of these things because you know it’s not going to happen easy,” said Angeles Forest Supervisor Michael J. Rogers.

Thus, while occasionally going to court or taking administrative action against violators, foresters usually try coaxing them into compliance or look the other way.

“It would be nice if we could wear blinders, because every time we go out there to take care of a problem we find 30 more,” Urquhart said. “I don’t think we have a lot of credibility.” Indeed, enforcement is so weak that about 100 cabin owners don’t even have permits--having refused to sign a new one when the old one expired.

“Personally, I would like to clean it up,” said Mike Wickman, who heads the Angeles’ Saugus ranger district. “But I’m pretty well handcuffed, and some of those people up there know it.”

On a recent driving tour of cabin tracts, Angeles officials seemed frustrated by a host of obvious violations.

In a tract of cabins in the Mt. Baldy ranger district, a man standing in front of a cabin told foresters he had been renting the place for months. The owner had ignored requirements to seek permission and rent for short periods only.

At a nearby stream, officials were surprised to see a new bridge that the Forest Service had neither built nor approved.

Arriving in scenic San Dimas Canyon, foresters learned of the unauthorized burial of a new septic tank a few feet from a tributary of San Dimas Creek.

And in Bouquet Canyon, unauthorized signs on ancient oak and sycamore trees inaccurately proclaimed: “Warning! No Trespassing. This is Private Property.”

Many cabin lots were tidy, but others held boats and motor homes, old car batteries, metal drums, and battered furniture. Some had non-indigenous trees and flower gardens--pretty, but inappropriate in a place reserved for native vegetation. Although required to be chained, large, menacing dogs roamed free.

Officials said austere budgets have made it impossible to enforce the rules. Nationwide, cabin permit fees provide $7.2 million per year--more than enough to overhaul the program. But that money goes to the U.S. Treasury. Meanwhile, “permit enforcement is minimal and declining,” said the Forest Service report, because funds for the program “are almost nonexistent.”

The squeeze seems particularly tight in the Angeles, whose operating budget has plunged 25% during the last dozen years to about $16 million. This, despite the fact that the Angeles is among the most heavily used forests, with a near-doubling of visitors since 1980. Nonetheless, the forest in recent years has closed 13 campgrounds and four picnic areas. The picture is so bleak that Angeles officials last fall appealed to forest users to help identify the agency’s most important tasks--since “we are no longer able to maintain the level of service we once provided.”

Diverting staff to the cabin program is impossible, Rogers said, because “we’ve got too many other forest users that we need to provide services to.”

Yet in a forest where litter, graffiti and vandalism are endemic, Angeles cabin owners hardly see themselves as part of the problem.

Instead, they consider themselves a calming influence, whose mere presence serves “to mitigate some of the destructive behavior that forest visitors engage in,” said David A. James, head of the Forest Preservation Society of Southern California, a cabin owners’ advocacy group.

“The more cabin owners that you have, the better your forest will behave,” said Barret H. Weatherby, a long-time cabin owner in San Gabriel Canyon. For those reasons, said James and Weatherby, the Forest Service should be trying to expand the number of cabins.

Indeed, some cabin dwellers help with trail maintenance, litter pickup and graffiti removal. Others have performed rescues and other exemplary deeds.

When an ice storm stranded motorists near their cabin at Manker Flat several years ago, Frank and Carol Tapia suddenly found themselves hosting--and feeding--43 grateful overnight guests.

The positive side is also reflected in the cabin community of Big Santa Anita Canyon, which may best approach the original ideal.

Strung along Big Santa Anita Creek, these 80 cabins can be reached only by hikes ranging from one to four miles. That discourages full-time occupancy, and explains the lack of suburban amenities.

“That’s where it all went wrong--when the roads got built,” said Glen Owens, 53, whose cabin was built in 1913.

A wiry man whose sandy mustache is going gray, Owens bought his cabin 30 years ago, paying $1,200 for the small wood-and-stone structure above the creek that gushes among alders and rocks.

Despite waterfalls that attract day hikers, the canyon seems free of the trash and graffiti that spoil other forest sites. According to Owens, cabin owners and other volunteers are largely responsible for keeping it clean.

“Because the people care about this canyon--that’s why it’s this way,” he said.

There are other owners, however, who take too literally their roles as keepers of the forest. Some “get very possessive,” even though their cabins are “a privilege . . . not a right,” Urquhart said.

“Most of us have personally experienced use conflicts with some recreation residences and their owners,” said a dozen retired Forest Service officers in a letter to top agency officials a few years ago.

“More than a few permitees have been unpleasant . . . and attempted to exercise exclusive jurisdiction over use of the waterfront areas adjoining their cabins. These encounters can spoil a whole trip.”

In the Angeles, such efforts often take the form of bogus “No Fishing” and “No Trespassing” signs. Those who don’t take the hint, like Richard Grillat, may be in for a rude reception.

Grillat’s trout fishing adventure unfolded in July, 1992. As detailed in court records and interviews, he was about to try his luck in Bouquet Creek when he was intercepted by Janet and Russell Peters and told he was trespassing.

Skeptical, Grillat drove to the Saugus ranger station, where foresters assured him he could fish the creek. So he went back, grabbed his pole and waded into the stream.

Enraged, Janet Peters screamed at Grillat to leave, and threw a large rock when he would not go. Grillat said he soon heard several bursts of gunfire, and looked up to see Russell Peters standing on the cabin porch holding a smoking pistol.

Grillat thought Peters was firing into the air. But the next morning, he gashed his leg on the door of his van and looked down to see jagged metal from a pair of bullet holes.

Peters, 66, acknowledged trying to drive Grillat away. “We’re paying $400 a year to live there. Four hundred bucks!” he said in a recent interview. Yet “(Grillat) just said, ‘Nuts to you, I’m fishing here,’ ” Peters recalled, as if he still could not believe it. According to the couple, however, Janet Peters threw the rock to splash Grillat, not hurt him. And they said Russell Peters didn’t shoot up the van--explaining that the spent shells which investigators found at the scene were from an earlier encounter with a rattlesnake.

Authorities charged the couple with disturbing the peace, shooting into an unoccupied vehicle and assault with a deadly weapon for throwing the rock.

Still, the Forest Service did not revoke the Peters’ cabin permit. And the charges were dismissed when prosecution witnesses did not show up the day of trial.

Grillat said prosecutors gave him the wrong the court date and he “was pretty upset” the case was dropped.

His run-in with the Peterses was not his only bad experience in Bouquet Canyon. Another time, Grillat said he was harassed by dogs and told by another cabin owner: “I planted the fish here, so they are . . . like my pets.”

“These people are pretty wild,” Grillat said. “Every time I go over there, I have some kind of story, so actually, I don’t go over there anymore.”