A border town recalls its own history with fences

JACUMBA HOT SPRINGS, Calif. - In the late 1980s, Bill Pape was drawn here by the isolated beauty of the mountains and an intimacy that reminded him of a desert version of a small Midwestern town.

The international line was a barbed-wire fence that cattle occasionally trampled.

Pape, a 62-year-old retired aircraft mechanic, would ride his mountain bike along the border with Mexico. Sometimes he would come across a few people pulling up the wire before melting into the United States.

Then the federal government started its aggressive, multi-pronged crackdown against illegal immigration known as "Operation Gatekeeper." In San Diego, 14 miles of a border barrier was fortified in the mid-1990s with two tiers of additional fencing, stretching from the Pacific to the San Ysidro port of entry.

Immigrants and smugglers, of both humans and drugs, did the same. To stem the tide, a border barrier soon rose up from the desert chaparral along Jacumba Hot Springs. Part of it was crafted from steel airstrip landing mats left over