California Mountain Towns Are Too Risky for Insurers, but Residents Want to Stay

The snow-blanketed peaks, fishing holes and cool alpine air of the San Bernardino Mountains have beckoned Southern Californians for generations. As far back as the 1880s, travelers braved a 6,000-foot climb in horse-drawn carriages to reach the pine forests that now surround the resort towns of Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear.

High in “the Alps of Southern California,” about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, vacationers would bathe in hot springs, hunt deer, hike to waterfalls and, primarily, escape the troubles of city life. In 1909, The San Bernardino County Sun observed that in the mountains, where the sky is a clear azure and songbirds never quiet, “all is peace and beauty.”

Not so in the 2020s.

The San Bernardino Mountains still draw millions of tourists annually, but the 50,000 full-time residents are increasingly besieged by crises.

This week, locals are returning home after a fast-moving wildfire forced widespread evacuations and scorched 61 square miles of the landscape. Some fleeing residents took refuge in the same hotels where they had stayed last year, when a deadly snowstorm collapsed roofs, blocked exit routes and cut off power for days.

The risk of ever more severe wildfires and blizzards, driven by the effects of climate change, have placed the San Bernardino Mountains at the center of California’s insurance crisis. Underwriters have in recent years abandoned the market, deciding that the disaster risks are simply too great to bear. The region has the highest percentage of homeowners whose only option is the state’s costly insurance plan of last resort, exacerbating what locals say is an affordable housing shortage.