To those who love its jagged peaks, Mt. San Jacinto is to Palm Springs what Mt. Fuji is to Tokyo.
At 10,804 feet above sea level, the mountain hovers over the Coachella Valley like a massive wave, visible from seemingly every vantage. A rotating aerial tramway, the valley's main tourist attraction, whisks nearly half a million visitors annually about 8,500 feet up the mountainside.
But the image of the craggy, boulder-strewn mountain could change dramatically with the city's recent go-ahead for a resort, an 18-hole golf course and up to 3,700 homes to be built on the mountain's lower third and adjacent areas.
Opponents fear the construction will ruin the mountain's pristine geography, which includes hot springs and a crossing used by endangered desert bighorn sheep. They also worry that development would wreck the fan-shaped area of water-transported rocks and other materials at the mountain's base, one of the largest remaining alluvial fans in the region.
"To allow more than 3,000 housing units there is an offense against nature," said Jono Hildner, chairman of Save Our Mountains, one of several grass-roots opposition groups that have been battling development plans for years.
Tourists riding the tram on a recent day expressed dismay at the plan -- and fretted that it was misguided.
"How can you have a golf course on the side of a mountain?" asked Nigel Wayward, who was visiting from London. "Trust me, balls run downward."
But property owners say they also love the land and have made substantial investments to develop it.
"They have a lot of chutzpah to make plans for other people's property," said developer Mark Bragg.
"If conservationists want to maintain its pristine character, they have to pay for it," said David Baron, an attorney who represents actor Suzanne Somers, who owns about 450 acres with her husband, Alan Hamel.
The nonprofit Riverside Land Conservancy is considering doing just that, floating such ideas as buying out developers with funds raised from private or government bond issues, encouraging land holders to conserve their properties in return for tax benefits, or organizing land swaps with government-owned parcels nearby.
What might come
About a dozen private landowners, including Somers, have about 1,500 developable acres on or immediately adjacent to the mountain. The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, which once spent summers in its canyons to escape triple-digit summer heat, owns 343 developable acres.
