Unlike other iconic imagery around Palomar’s flagship campus like the steampunk clock tower and The Dome, the Palomar P stands apart.
High atop the hillside behind Palomar College, the Palomar P is easily recognizable as an icon not just for the college, but for all of San Marcos.
But ‘is’ will soon become ‘was’ because the Palomar P is in horrible shape, and it’s disheartening that the college is ignoring its front-and-center deterioration.
Before it completely fades away, current students deserve to know its legacy.
The P was created in 1952 as a source of pride by a small group of graduating students.
The first rendition was rudimentary, just large rocks covered in a white solution of cement and lime — there was barely enough of the solution to finish the border of the P.
Nonetheless, the symbolic letter shone upon the towering hills behind campus for all of Palomar and San Marcos to see.
Future graduates have since volunteered to traverse the steep path, clearing the trailhead of debris and overgrowth to apply chalk to the rocks that make up the massive letter.
Each layer of chalk represents the diligence of those volunteers while also serving as a barrier to preserve the efforts of those that came before; the P is a symbolic connection between generations of Palomar students that made the trek.
But each year that it goes without maintenance, rain and wind gradually erase the P’s exuberance layer by layer.
Comet softball’s Assistant Coach Mark Eldridge can attest to the Palomar P’s symbolism.
After growing up in San Marcos and attending Palomar College, Eldridge returned to campus as a health professor and a multi-sport coach.
He spearheaded the softball program in 1978 and has won more state championships than any coach in school history.
“I grew up right down the street, and even as a child I was aware of the P,” Eldridge said. “I rode my bike over here in the middle to late 50s to watch baseball games … and the P was always there, and it was special. It was so unique and just bright, white and it just popped out of the mountain.”
The hill on which the P resides, appropriately named “P” Mountain, has never been owned by Palomar College. But in 2001, it almost was.
San Marcos landowners, Lester and Geraldine Ryan owned the land encompassing the Palomar P until it was designated for development.
The Ryans offered to donate 30 acres of their property to Palomar, which included “P” Mountain, to perpetuate its legacy.
Due to an estimated $250,000 one-time expense to fence off the area, a $30,000 per-year maintenance cost and the risk of injury lawsuits if anyone were to get hurt on the land, Palomar College officials turned down the donation.
But a conservation agency The Environmental Land Trust (TET) accepted the Ryans’ donation.
The land was designated as open space, allowing for public access, and an easement was struck between TET and Palomar’s board of directors that allowed the college to maintain the P in perpetuity.
“I was afraid we were going to lose access to the P, which is an important Palomar landmark,”
former board member Robert Dougherty Jr. said in a 2001 San Diego Union-Tribune article.
But in 2005, the P’s fate hung in the balance yet again.
TET filed for bankruptcy, resulting in the land being auctioned off by the county assessor, and the easement permitting regular preservation of the P was revoked, according to City of San Marcos Planning Director Joseph Farace.
Palomar could continue maintaining the P but would need to contact the landowner for permission first.
Though the landowner changed throughout the years, Palomar volunteers persisted with “P” Mountain’s upkeep and the annual maintenance became a tradition known as “Project P.”
Most recently, Project P was organized by Palomar’s Student Activities Coordinator, Lindsay Kretchman, along with the Office of Student Affairs.
In a 2014 Telescope article, Kretchman lauded the high number of volunteers who came out to maintain the Palomar P.
However, information regarding further maintenance following her departure in 2016 is undocumented.
It is unclear when the Palomar P and the area around it were last maintained by the college. What is clear is that the P is succumbing to the elements and continues to fade away from the hillside overlooking the campus.
The most recent attempt to maintain the P was in 2023 when a Palomar student club requested support to conduct a
clean-up effort.
The club was instructed to obtain permission from the landowner, but the clean-up never took place, according to Palomar’s office of public affairs.
The current owner of the “P” Mountain property is Dr. Nader Baydoun, a dentist in Dearborn Heights, Mich., and he has never been contacted by anyone seeking to maintain the P since purchasing the land in 2019.
“I was recently out over the summer at my brother’s house in San Marcos, and you can see the “P” Mountain from his house, and I looked and thought it was really pale and not showing like before,” Baydoun said. “I was wondering
why it was not maintained the way it was before.”
Baydoun confirmed that he would have no problem setting up an agreement with Palomar College to arrange regular area maintenance, including the Palomar P; much like Project P accomplished in the past.
So … is it worth it?
Ignoring the current state of the P means ignoring the efforts of past graduates that strove to maintain Palomar College’s icon for over 60 years.
You don’t have to look far to see a group of students and staff that
have put in the work and continue to preserve their own emblem.
Just down the road from Palomar College, a similarly large letter graces another hillside.
A gargantuan E representing Escondido High School (EHS) and the city of Escondido itself rests upon a bluff just east of
Interstate 15.
Since the 1950s, the students and staff at EHS re-chalk the E and have decluttered the area every year to make the letter stand out. The school has an agreement with San Diego Gas & Electric allowing them to do so.
EHS Associated Student Board (ASB) Advisor Heather Weiner organizes the annual maintenance.
“This is a visual representation of Escondido High School’s pride that can be seen throughout the Escondido community,” Weiner said.
The opportunity to participate is offered to senior students. Each year, at least 100 seniors ranging from football players to ASB members jump at the chance to help, but only the first 50 volunteers are chosen for the task, according to Weiner.
With a large number of high school student volunteers, there are faculty members who oversee the maintenance effort.
Paul Baldwin is a physical education teacher at EHS and has supervised the E’s maintenance for the past five years.
Baldwin is also a Palomar College alumnus who recalled hiking up to the Palomar P with his health class and professor, Mark Eldridge.
“I kind of fell in love with the P,” Baldwin said. “When I took health classes, I remember we used to hike up to that P quite often. It’s a bummer to see what it’s become because even when you drove by and looked up there was a sense of pride in that.”
Several weeks before EHS’s graduation ceremony, Baldwin, alongside several other staff members and the student
volunteers, undertakes a two-day effort to keep the E in pristine shape.
The student volunteers donate $10 each to purchase 50 50-pound bags of chalk – for a total of $500. It is the only expense for the project.
On the first day, the staff volunteers use weed whackers and brute force to clear out the overgrowth obstructing the pathway to the E.
On the second day, the students take over.
The stronger EHS students make multiple trips, hauling the bags up the trail while the remaining volunteers place barriers around the stones that create the E.
The chalk is then poured into the outlined area to complete the task for another year.
“She [Heather Weiner] makes a big deal of it, we do videos to get other kids to come out and help,” Baldwin said. “She gets these cool little pins made that they can put on their robes for graduation and they can look up at the E as they walk and say, ‘hey I did that.’”
Palomar’s graduation takes place in the shadow of “P” Mountain. And I can picture Comets marching down the aisle on their final day as students taking a similar amount of pride as those EHS student volunteers receiving their diplomas.
But the day when there is no emblematic backdrop for Palomar graduates is encroaching.
Maybe the Palomar students and staff aren’t aware of “P” Mountain’s legacy and its significance to the college, or maybe they don’t realize the ability to preserve it is just a phone call away.
One call to Dr. Baydoun from Palomar’s Associated Student Government in coordination with a campus department or student club could establish a lasting relationship to revitalize the P and its symbolic nature for Palomar as a whole.
The lifeline is there. The budget would be small. The work would be tough, but worthwhile. So why not try?
EHS’s unwavering annual maintenance shows that students and staff can be motivated to safeguard iconic school imagery — not just for themselves but for future generations, and it doesn’t take a lot of time or cost much to do so.
The Palomar P was created by students in 1952 with a grand sense of pride in the college, and it can be restored by current and future Comets.
Will the P finally fade into obscurity, or will it make a valiant comeback?
Without a motivated group of students and faculty willing to act, the Palomar P will continue to degrade until it’s completely unrecognizable from the rest of the hill. The clock is ticking.
