California City was to be the city of the future. A big future.

Inspired 30 years ago by the explosive development of the San Fernando Valley, the city was designed to catch the human overflow as it crept northward into the Mojave Desert. It was the dream project of a man who could not be accused of dreaming small. When California City incorporated in 1965 it became--and still is--the third largest city in area in the state. It is the 11th largest in the United States.

To appreciate its size, you have to get into an airplane.

Below, near the center of the city, lies a massive grid of highways, streets, cul-de-sacs and driveways in mile after mile of ordered rows. Everything in the 30-year-old grid is laid out in right angles: The cul-de-sacs connect to streets which, in turn, feed into highways at regular intervals.

But the grid is a skeleton.

Out here there are no houses, no cars, no fenced-in yards, no barbecues.

The future never came to California City.

What did come were lawsuits, disappointments and government intervention, all on a scale befitting the size of one of the most ambitious real estate schemes in the history of the country.

Some people did come to settle: There are about 6,500 residents now, mostly on the western edge of the 186.5-square-mile city. But the vast majority of California City, including the ghostly residential grid in its center, is still unpopulated, brush-covered desert land.

The great industries, universities, shopping centers, skyscrapers and financial institutions that were also part of that plan never arrived. The schematic of a great city was in place, but hopes were dashed that it would ever be fulfilled.

Until now.

Roland Toler was there almost at the beginning.

"Back in the '50s, every newspaper you picked up was talking about population explosion," said the white-haired Toler, 78, as he leaned against his car at one of California City's two gas stations.

"There had to be new cities. The country needed new housing, colleges, hospitals, freeways, jobs, businesses. Nat Mendelsohn knew this. He had a vision of the future."

Nathan K. Mendelsohn was the father of California City. A Czechoslovakian-born sociologist who taught at Columbia University in the early 1940s, he came West after World War II to try out his community development theories.