DESERT UFO IS REALLY UNIQUE NEWBERRY HOUSE 

"You have not partied, till you have partied here", can be attested to by Blowsand as this property was owned by a member of the family for a number of years, and the good times were as unique as the house.

Barstow, Sunday June 29, 1969:  Glimmering against the black night, a dot of light can occasionally be seen hovering near the Cady Mountains northeast of Newberry Springs.  Much to the amazement of many, it isn’t a space ship.  It is a house, or more correctly, a house-in-the-round. 

Vard Wallace’s unique home—overlooking Troy Lake Basin from 200 feet above will be finished in three to four months, says Jim Miles, his meticulous construction superintendent.  When completed, it will be one of the most costly on the high desert and exudes an air of distinction and craftsmanship rarely found.  Wallace and Miles are two essential elements of the home’s character.  Nyberg and Bissner Inc, Architects, of Pasadena, designed the structure to fulfill Wallace’s desire to put a round home on top of his hill. 

It is the blackness of the volcanic-rock cone the house is perched on which gives the viewer an eerie feeling of a space ship suspended in midair.  The indirect lighting featured throughout the house isn’t used too much at night yet upon the house’s completion, the lingering light suspended in the night will become more routine as the house will be a second home to Wallace.  The owner of Vard Inc., makers of drafting machinery, has a home in Newport Beach.  Other “second” homes include one in Hawaii and a yacht. 

It is Mrs. Iwan who gets the ultimate credit for bringing the 16-sided polygon to the inverted cone 10 miles northeast of Newberry Springs.  The Iwans will be Wallace’s nearest neighbor, owning 20 acres of desert land with a small lake southwest of the mountain.  They brought him to the desert for a weekend but at first Wallace wasn’t too interested in the wind-swept expanses.  He had a dream of lining on top of a hill, though, and inquired who owned the cone.  Soon, Wallace owned it.  And what shape of house would be best suited for the cone’s flat, circular top?  Round of course. 

But who would want to build Wallace’s house on the top of his cone in the isolated desert?  Mrs. Iwan discovered not many contractors were interested.  Their cost estimations always included prohibitive contingencies.  Then she discovered Miles.  “Jim can do nothing less than perfect,” Mrs. Iwan says.  “But that’s the way Vard wants it.”  Miles arrived from Las Cruces, N.M. to tackle the mountain without even seeing the architects’ plans.  His first problem was cutting access roads to the base of the cone then getting electricity extended to the area.  The initial work crew consisted of only a couple of men, a few boards and some shovels to dig a foundation ditch on top of the cone.  “I’ve had more labor problems here”, Miles complains.  “I can’t get help and a lot of it isn’t any good.” 

The help he does get is expensive and similar to other custom-built homes in more common locations, the costs have skyrocketed.  “We know it’s costing a lot more than we anticipated,” Miles says.  Mrs. Iwan agrees, and says she couldn’t guess that exact cost.  That hasn’t stopped others from guessing.  Most guessers begin  at $200,000 and some have gone as high as a half million dollars.  Regardless of the exact cost, the house is in the “million-dollar class” of construction.  Only the air conditioning system has been sub-contracted.  Miles and his men have done all the other work.  The finishing touches will take some time but the essence of the house is easily discernable. 

The visitor still has to wind up a 40 percent grade to the top of the cone but this will be reduced to 15 percent when structure is completed.  Each of the house’s 16 sides consists of glass door and panels leaving an indelible impression as the visitor looks out over the miles of desert and small lakes in the Newberry area.  A small moat surrounds the glass and will be lighted from the bottom filled with water and plants.  The core of the structure is a circular cement and rock configuration.  It is both beautiful—with its rocks from the Calico Mountains—and functional. 

In the center are two identical bathrooms and a sauna bath as well as the less glamorous miles of wiring and pipes.  A stairway curves to the roof where Wallace may place a telescope.  The house’s roof, which sweeps to the ground forming a skull cap, already gives it an observatory appearance.  The sunken living room with a fireplace in the rock core dominates the 2,000 square feet of floor space.  Two bedrooms and a U-shaped kitchen complete the circle.  One of the most beautiful parts of he house is the ceiling in the shape of a compound circle.  It was formed from 10 linear miles of Douglas fir, bent at each end then clamped and nailed in place.