Holy Jim was a sanctuary from modern life. After this latest fire, it could soon become a memory

Katie Saalfeld sat on a stone wall, her head turned toward the creek below, where, as a child, she whiled away many an afternoon chasing salamanders.

She wiped away tears.

Behind her lay the ruins of her late father’s cabin.

Farther down the narrow, dusty road that winds through Holy Jim Canyon, there was more destruction, a forest’s worth of evidence of wildfires’ unbridled, yet capricious, power:

Where cabins once stood, stone foundations encircled ash heaps. Charred elder trees and the fallen, brittle leaves of dead sycamores. Scorched earth. And more ash, endless ash, ash blanketing the road out of the canyon, smothering the once idyllic hillsides and flitting through the air with each gust. It filled my lungs.

The odd cast-iron stove here, a spared footbridge there, and a handful of cabins for which the fickle fire granted a reprieve. These are the few reminders of what once was, a palatial wood from a bygone time that had long served as an escape from the suburban, modern sprawl of Orange County.

The blaze, which began on Sept. 9 just down the road from Holy Jim Canyon, tore its way through the Cleveland National Forest, igniting more than 23,500 acres and destroying 160 structures. The fire, as of Friday, was 97% contained.

Among the felled structures structures, 27 were in Holy Jim, a community that dates to the Reconstruction Era. Some cabins there were built a century ago. Others are merely a few decades old. All of them had been survivors of past fires. And some of them had recently been renewed, thanks to what cabin owners say, described as a recent renaissance.

“People were putting so much money and love into their cabins,” Saalfeld.

Now, only seven remain. They are the last ramparts protecting this historic community from being resigned to the past.

I first visited Holy Jim in September 2017 at the request of Mike Milligan, Saalfeld’s late father and the longtime chief of Holy Jim’s volunteer fire department.

He initially reached out, via email, the previous winter. Heavy rains, just months after a major fire had scorched the Cleveland National Forest, had caused a mudslide and he wanted to get the word out that the canyon was impassable and dangerous.

“No creek crossings are safe to cross at this point,” he wrote, “and the material in the burn scar is soft like quicksand.”

Fire and mudslides have always been the dual threats in the canyon. And Milligan, a Vietnam veteran who initially sequestered himself in Holy Jim to decompress after the trauma of war, had spent much of his life protecting the cabins there.

But he was worried about the future of Holy Jim. He invited me out to show me why.

Getting to Holy Jim isn’t easy. I drove south down Live Oak Canyon Road, which begins at Cook’s Corner, the iconic biker bar, for about 3.5 miles, until arriving at the easy-to-miss mouth of Trabuco Creek Road.

That road, largely unpaved and uneven, cuts through desert chaparral and leads to the entrance of the Cleveland National Forest. From there, the desert becomes a wood. And the road becomes treacherous.

The first real sign of a community is the fire barn, where I met Milligan.

His face was weathered and he smoked a cigarette. His handshake was firm, like a vice. And his demeanor, at first blush, was that of a man who has no time for fools.

We toured the canyon. Sycamores, oaks, wild grasses and even cactuses enveloped the hills. The only noise came from birds, other woodland creatures and the creek. There was a resident peahen named Henny.

It was idyllic.

But there were also scars: A few skeletons of burned-down cabins.

Out here, Milligan told me, fires were inevitable. The heat and vegetation, and the topography of the canyon made it a tinderbox.

It had burned before. And would again.

At the time, Milligan was tilting against various rules preventing him from using the creek to fill Holy Jim’s fire engine, restrictions intended to protect the habitat.

Another thorn was that when cabins are destroyed, either by fire or mudslide, federal rules make it nearly impossible to rebuild. While the cabins are the property of specific owners, the land itself is owned by the federal government.

Taken together, those restrictions meant Holy Jim could, eventually, disappear.

“Hopefully,” Milligan said at the time, “I’ll be dead by then.”

Milligan made it through one more blaze, the 2018 Holy fire.

When I drove out to the canyon to meet Milligan again, the fire was still raging. The cause, investigators said at the time, was arson. (The man accused of starting the fire, a cabin owner who had apparently had multiple issues with his neighbors, was acquitted of three felony counts of arson last year.)

The effect was the same: Devastation. At least 13 of the cabins, about 45 all told, burned.

Milligan looked weary as he stood in the fire barn. Each cabin, a few of which he built himself, was precious to Milligan. He knew that every time a cabin was likely gone forever.

“A lot of people I’ve spoken to say they want to rebuild,” he said. “But it’s up to the discretion of the Forest Service.”

The Forest Service provides 20-year permits for the cabins, with the current ones set to end in 2028, according to agency spokesperson Jake Rodriguez. A decision on whether to renew the permits is expected next year, after intensive study, Rodriguez said Thursday, Oct. 4.

“The Forest Service goes through a process to renew them and almost always does,” he said while sitting on a bench at the Orange County Fire Authority’s Station 18, at which the Forest Service leases a building. “It’s very rare we would do that. The intent is not to not renew the cabin permits.”

It’s too early, Rodriguez said, to say what will happen this time. The priority, he said, is surviving the winter rains.

But even if the permits are renewed, the ability to rebuild a destroyed cabin isn’t assured.

Most, if not all, of the cabins are in a floodplain. The permits for those cabins specifically say that cabins destroyed during a flood can’t be rebuilt, though it’s unclear whether a mudslide counts as a flood.

Resurrecting burned cabins, meanwhile, would require the owners to propose a rebuilding plan, which would then be evaluated, Rodriguez said. The ultimate determination would fall to the Trabuco District ranger, Rodriguez said, though cabin owners could appeal.

The biggest consideration is keeping people safe, he said.

Rodriguez, who has worked with the Holy Jim Canyon community for 20 years, repeatedly expressed sympathy for those who lost their cabins. But he also acknowledged that getting the OK to rebuild would be difficult.

“After the Holy fire,” he said, “none were able to rebuild.”

The fire came quick – and left a community in grief.

On Sept. 9, an Orange County Public Works crew, working in triple-digit heat, was using heavy machinery to move boulders along Trabuco Creek Road. They accidentally sparked the Airport fire.

The fire’s origin and the timing of it were the worst-case scenario for Holy Jim.

It rushed up the canyon, causing boulders and trees to fall on the road, the only way in or out.

Holy Jim’s fate was sealed.

While some cabin owners have criticized the Forest Service for not doing more, such as dropping flame retardant on the cabins, others have come to the agency’s defense, aware that firefighters were already stretched thin because of the Line and Bridge fires.

“There were million-dollar homes and million-dollar equipment on Santiago Peak that were at risk of burning,” said Leslee Riddell, president of the Trabuco and Holy Jim Cabin Owners Improvement Association. “And those are primary residences. If they had to make choices, I get it.”

Rodriguez, for his part, said the Forest Service didn’t forget about the cabins – but the priority was saving lives.

A Forest Service official, he said, immediately went into the canyon to try to make sure anyone inside got out.

But then the rock slides happened – blocking the road. The official was trapped.

The official and a few others had to be airlifted out of the canyon, Rodriguez said.

With the road impassable, meanwhile, there was no way for firefighters to get into the canyon, Rodriguez said.

What followed, for residents, was a sleepless night.

Betsy Crutchfield, for example, stayed up watching a live feed of the fire, captured by cameras mounted around Santiago Peak.

Crutchfield, a native of North Carolina before relocating to Washington D.C. and then Florida, is a former attorney who retired and moved out to California several years ago to be closer to her sister’s family. She wanted to watch her nephew grow up.

Around April 2022, Crutchfield, who lives in San Clemente, learned that a Holy Jim cabin was up for sale and went to look at it. She quickly fell in love with Holy Jim – and bought the cabin.

She labored on the cabin over the following years and frequently brought her nephew and his friends up there to enjoy nature.

“It was the most beautiful place I’ve seen in Orange County,” Crutchfield said on Wednesday afternoon. “I had turned it into the quintessential summer cottage.”

On Sept. 9, she was at a butcher’s in Crystal Cove to buy steaks for her nephew’s birthday, when her phone was flooded with texts.

She rushed home.

She watched the live feed into the early morning hours. A fellow cabin owner texted her and expressed hope that maybe their hideaways would survive. Crutchfield couldn’t bring herself to reply with what she felt: That the cabins were gone.

A couple of days later, another community member sent out an email with the cabin numbers of those that survived. Hers wasn’t on it.

“My cabin is up a driveway,” she said, “so I tried to hope they just missed it.”

On Sept. 15, Crutchfield went into the canyon to see for herself. She saw ruins upon ruins. She noticed the silence – the lack of birds or bugs.

“It was like everything was in grayscale,” she said. “It was like being on a movie set.”

Halfway to her cabin, she stopped. She couldn’t do it. Crutchfield turned around and left.

But she returned three days later, with friend and fellow cabin owner Holly Permeh.

It was true: Her cabin was gone. And so was Permeh’s.

As Crutchfield toured the remains of her cabin, she saw a stack of out-of-print books she had left on a metal chair in her bedroom. The chair was largely intact. But when she touched the books, they crumbled. They had turned to ash.

All that remained was a footbridge that led to her cabin.

“I’m numb,” Crutchfield said. “I’m still in shock. I go in and out of numbness and devastation.”

And the tears, she said, come without notice, while she’s at the grocery store or on a bike ride.

For nearly five decades, Milligan, the volunteer fire chief, had been the canyon’s patriarch, a gruff-but-respected figure whose legacy, longtime cabin owners say, is rivaled only by the community’s namesake – 19th century beekeeper Jim Smith.

But in recent years, Milligan seemed to know his end was near.

Milligan, a Long Beach native, wrote in journals most of his life. And in his last one, he chronicled the aches and pains he had accumulated. His leg, scarred decades earlier from shrapnel during Vietnam, constantly hurt. His hip was shot. And his shoulder constantly barked, particularly when he tried to read or sleep.

But he endured – because of Holy Jim.

“I often wonder how much more I can take,” he wrote on June 22, 2019. “Were it not for being in this special place, I’m not sure what I would do.”

His next entry was May 25, 2022, his 75th birthday: “I never thought I’d see it.”

That was also his last entry. He died months later, on Aug. 19, 2022.

The community, cabin owners said, felt lost without him.

And his daughter, now 39, felt the burden of keeping his legacy alive.

From the moment I met her, on the patio of her father’s cabin after his death, Saalfeld’s love and admiration for Milligan was palpable.

“Every day, I’ll see something and go, ‘Oh, dad would love that. Oh, dad would love that,” she said Thursday. “I want to make him proud.”

Saalfeld was a child of the forest. She spent every other weekend with her father in Holy Jim, splashing after salamanders in the creek, learning first aid from Milligan and listening to him grouse about neighbors who were inattentive to their responsibilities as cabin owners, such as clearing away brush and cleaning their gutters.

As she grew, becoming an emergency room nurse and a mother, Saalfeld watched as her father worked to protect his beloved canyon from destruction, often to the chagrin of the federal and county fire agencies.

And she witnessed Holy Jim, after decades of attrition because of multiple fires, rejuvenate – thanks to an influx of new, passionate cabin owners.

But then came the Airport fire. And two years after Milligan died, the canyon community he cherished is on the verge of joining him.

“The canyon was finally alive again,” Saalfield said on Thursday, Oct. 4. “And the fire just took it from us overnight.”

Saalfeld is unsure about what to do next.

That seems to be a common theme among the cabin owners.

There are those, like Crutchfield, who are inconsolable.

There are the lucky seven, like Riddell, who have survivor’s guilt. Riddell, whose cabin, steps away from the ruins of Milligan’s former homestead, has survived multiple wildfires, is also worried about what the winter rains will bring, while working on how to keep the community alive.

There are some who want to rebuild. But others, like Permeh, have accepted the community’s fate, understanding the fight to restore the cabins will be fraught and, based on past fires and mudslides, one they are unlikely to win.

“I’m devastated,” the Laguna Niguel resident said. “I started shaking uncontrollably when I saw my cabin.”

Permeh’s 12-year-old son was also heartbroken, crying every night for a week after the fire. And then again when Permeh took him to see the ruins.

He loved the community, Permeh said. He would attend the monthly fire drills with her and Milligan, before he died, became a mentor to her son. Milligan even gave her son a fire jacket and helmet, Permeh said – and told him he was the future of the community.

But Permeh doesn’t want to go through the trouble of trying to rebuild, knowing it likely won’t happen. And even if it did, she said, her cabin could burn again.

“It’s the loss of a community that will never rebuild,” she said.

And then there’s Saalfeld.

She learned the fate of her father’s cabin when a friend hiked into the canyon and texted her around 3 a.m. Sept. 10 that it was gone. Like her fellow cabin owners, she sobbed.

But unlike Crutchfield, Permeh and others, she couldn’t bring herself to return to Holy Jim Canyon.

Until Thursday.

While the Forest Service was slated to reopen the canyon to cabin owners this weekend, Rodriguez got the OK to escort Saalfeld in on Thursday.

As we sat in the middle of her three-row van — with her husband, Regis, driving us through the canyon and Rodriguez, in a Forest Service pickup truck, leading the way – Saalfeld tapped her fingers on the seat and held back tears.

She had already cried at the OCFA fire station in Trabuco Canyon. Rodriguez told her we could turn back anytime she wanted.

But she had to see what remained.

The van went through the Forest Service gate, along the unkept path, and past the fire barn and the devastation the fire had wrought. We stopped about 200 yards from the cabin. A hot spot had begun smoking and Rodriguez went to check it out.

As we waited, the end of the road was visible. The trailhead, adjacent to Milligan’s cabin, was just up ahead. There was a sign that read, “Report emergencies here.” A massive bell had sat upon it, until Permeh and Crutchfield got firefighters to take it down, so they could deliver it to Saalfeld.

Rodriguez eventually told us to go ahead without him; he would monitor the hot spot until a fire engine arrived. The van inched forward and stopped again. Saalfeld stepped out and walked toward the ruins.

She stopped short of where the entrance once stood – and broke down. Her husband wrapped his arms around her.

As she explored the ruins of the cabin Milligan willed to her, on Thursday, Saalfeld mourned for the community – and grieved her father a second time.

“Before, I could trick my mind into thinking he was still here in his cabin,” Saafled said. “It’s like the Band-Aid has been fully torn off and the wound is open.”

Saalfeld wandered over to the stone wall that marked the edge of her father’s back patio. She sat down and turned her back from the ruins, looking out at the creek she had played in as a child.

“He would have fought to rebuild,” she said of her father. “I’m not going to. I don’t have the power he did.

“But I still want to make him proud,” she added, “and let him know that I love this place.”

Saalfeld stood up. She walked over to the cinder-block stairs Milligan installed to climb the adjacent hill. The stairs give way to a path. As we climbed, we stepped over solar panels that had tumbled down the hillside and trod on broken glass.

Once atop the hill, Saalfeld looked out at the forest. Here is where she will eventually scatter her father’s ashes.

The landscape was scarred and blackened. But pockets of green remained – a reminder of the forest’s resiliency. Holy Jim Canyon will heal.

But this latest fire may be too much for the community to overcome. Milligan is gone.

So too is his cabin. Dozens of others are ash as well. Like Saalfeld’s salamander-chasing childhood, they are memories now.

Seven cabins the Airport fire spared are all that remain.

If they fall, Holy Jim will join them as nothing more than a memory.