Palomar real estate: A caboose in the woods

At one of the highest peaks in San Diego County, a relic of the American railroad is hidden in the trees.

A red, 1949 caboose that once tugged behind freight cars as part of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway has been turned into a guest house that’s nicer than most city apartments.

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A red, 1949 caboose that once tugged behind freight cars as part of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway has been turned into a guest house that’s nicer than most city apartments.

The railcar is part of a 21-acre property up for sale that includes a 540-square-foot cabin, a seven-car garage and 150 apple trees planted in 1904. The listing price is $949,000.

Likely to make tiny home buffs swoon, the caboose has its own bathroom with shower, sofa bed, refrigerator, kitchenette, microwave and heater.

The roughly 60,000-pound caboose was pulled up to the Palomar Mountain property 18 years ago on the back of tractor-trailer and lifted by a crane to its current location surrounded by oak and Douglas fir trees.

Isolation on the mountain has led to other unusual dwellings. There are round homes, colorful places that look like they are out of a fairy tale and cabins that look like tree houses.

Most properties are used as vacation homes. Around 225 people live on the mountain year-round and its population swells to 600 on three-day weekends. The view from many properties is expansive, going all the way to the Pacific. Downtown is visible, but it helps to have a local to point it out.

Six homes were sold on the mountain in 2014 and 10 in 2015, CoreLogic data shows. The median home price was $208,750 last year, but the size and type of properties is all over the map.

Bonnie Phelps, the real estate agent selling the caboose property, sold a 492-square-foot cabin for $55,000 that happened to be the second cheapest home sold in the county last year. But, she also sold the 362-acre Hidden Oaks Ranch for $11.6 million in 2006.

“Palomar is a well-kept secret,” said Phelps.

As with all homes on Palomar Mountain, the problem is getting there. It takes about two hours from downtown San Diego and 20 minutes of that are through winding mountain roads. At 5,000 feet elevation, the area gets snow and it’s probably a good idea to have a four-wheel drive vehicle if you go off a main road.

Efforts to reach the former owner who dragged the caboose up to Palomar in 1998, Tom Cunningham, were unsuccessful.

Current owner Dale Huntley said Cunningham wanted to build a guest house but instead got the idea to refurbish a caboose instead, even getting actual rail tracks to put it on.

Huntley said his family used the railcar as a guest house and considered wiring it for TV but never got around to it.

Surprisingly, Phelps said Cunningham wasn’t a huge railroad buff or he was a transportation aficionado.

“He was a fun guy,” she said. “He liked fun things.”

phillip.molnar@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1891 Twitter: @phillipmolnar