| Viejas Reservation Ethnology-Language: Kumeyaay Established: 1939 County: San Diego Acreage: 1,609 Population: 431 Location: Thirty-five miles east of San Diego, north of Interstate 8 and the city of Alpine, 30 miles north of the Mexican border. Viejas is set amongst the oak filled upland plateaus and wide valleys east of San Diego. The unoccupied reservation of Capitan Grande borders Viejas. A beautiful old church and cemetery combined with free grazing cows, open chaparral and mammoth granite rocks give this highly successful gaming reservation a pleasant, rural character - one that many visitors miss if they simply go to the casino or Viejas Outlet Center. After eighteen years of leadership, chairman Anthony Pico - known in Sacramento and Washington D. C. as the consummate advocate for tribal self-determination, stepped down. Pico called Indian gaming "the new buffalo" and decided not to leave office until California tribes had won their long battle to legalize reservation casinos. Library: The Kapsala Library was established in 1985 under the ILSP (Indian Library Services Project) as administered by the San Diego County Library. Open hours are 9:00 to 5:00 Monday through Friday with a collection of approximately 3,500 volumes. The library gets some state funds as it serves the Viejas School, and is currently being funded by a four-year tobacco education grant. Four of the library's computers were purchased under the grant, -- one computer has Internet access. The Viejas library is open to the general public, like most tribal libraries, and serves several nearby Alpine school children. A great deal of preschool and after school tutoring takes place in this busy library where the library manager has been known to sell aluminum cans in order to be able to purchase new books. |
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