“One afternoon in 1936, my parents Ralph and Bea Donovan took a Sunday drive from La Mesa to Suncrest. My dad had just retired from the Navy and they were looking for a place to settle and for an area to hunt rabbits. They decided that Suncrest was the place and quickly rented a small house on Albatross Place across from the ball field (now South Lane Park). In the first year they had many friends and Dad went to work for Suncrest, Inc. as caretaker – grading roads and maintaining the Suncrest swimming pool and pump for the well that supplied the community with water.

 “In 1937 Ralph and Bea Donovan decided to stay permanently and bought a one room cabin on three lots located on Eucalyptus Drive in Crest for $375 – $25 down and $10 a month. This also included four lots on Madera Verde Place. There was no electric or plumbing in the cabin and it was single wall construction with pine floors. We moved in November 1937. We slept on Army cots, used kerosene heaters and lamps. My mom cooked on a gasoline stove. After Dad installed the electricity and plumbing, it was time to cover the inside walls. His retirement pension was very small so they could only afford one sheet of plywood a month at $1.00 a sheet. He also added a kitchen that first year. The next year he built two bedrooms on the south side of the cabin and then built the bedroom furniture as well. Dad went in the Navy at 16 and was a torpedo man on a cruiser, so I could never figure out when or how he learned plumbing, electrics, and carpentry. The little one room cabin eventually became a warm comfortable home. Interestingly enough, this house was moved to Crest Drive in 1955 when the school district needed this property to build the new elementary school. The district asked my mother to pick out a vacant piece of property and then moved her existing house to the new location on Crest Drive. No money exchanged hands!  My mom chose Crest Drive primarily because it was close to her old location and the street was paved. The two pepper trees shown in the photo were planted by my mother and are still located behind the Crest school auditorium.

“I was seven years old when my parents moved to Crest. I made the long trek down the narrow La Cresta grade by school bus daily attending the El Cajon Grammar School on Main Street in El Cajon and eventually Grossmont High School. There was plenty to do on the hill. During the summers we would go swimming in the community pool near South Lane Park, ride bikes, hike up the Suncrest Mountain, perhaps play paper dolls with my friend Ruth, or visit the library.”

Dorothy lived off the hill for one year only. When she and Bob Miller married in 1948, they moved to North Park in San Diego. After living there for an entire year without meeting a neighbor, they decided to move back to Crest where they eventually built a house on Hamlet Drive and raised their three boys, Michael, Mark, and Vernon.

Dorothy felt the Volunteer Fire Department had a great impact in bringing the community together over the years. The town worked together to raise funds to purchase equipment to protect their town. This brought the La Cresta and Suncrest communities together and helped organize the town. The Crest School, built in 1956, also served as a center for the community. When asked what her thoughts were about living on the hill for this duration, Dorothy stated, “It was mixed, sometimes I tired of the dirt and cold and inconveniences of living so far removed from town. But to live here over 70 years, I found more positives than negatives.”