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One day in 1960, Lake County ranch and real-estate trader Phil Pittman ran into a friend, Evelyn Pettus, in Christmas Valley. “Evelyn, you have to get your real-estate license,” Pittman told her excitedly. “I just sold a whole damn desert!” It was a moment that would change the town of Christmas Valley forever — change it even more than Pittman had when he’d joined forces with legendary Fort Rock resident Reub Long to successfully lobby for the area to get electric service back in 1955. Because Pittman had sold that “whole damn desert” — 72,000 acres of sand dunes, sagebrush and jackrabbits, a giant slice of the old ZX and Century ranches, at a price of $10 an acre — to a real-estate developer, a big, bluff Daddy Warbucks type named M. Penn Phillips. And Phillips had some very big plans for Christmas Valley. (Christmas Valley, Lake County; 1961) (For text and pictures, see http://offbeatoregon.com/1808a.developer-penn-phillips-christmas-valley-dream-507.html)