The County of Tuolumne is the final governing body over minimum building restrictions, permits and codes. The
Tuolumne County Building Department is located in downtown Sonora at 20075 N Cedar Rd, 4th floor.
(by the court house) Their phone number is (209) 533-5711.

There are several development UNITS in the Cedar Ridge subdivision and they all have a different set of CC & Rs.
The CC & Rs for Units 1 though 4 are significantly different than those units 5 thru 12a. This
is because Units 1 thru 4 are located on private roads and provide road maintenance and snow removal as well
the operate the Cedar Ridge Lake (off West Brookside Drive).

The CC&R’s for units 1 thru 4 are overseen by the Cedar Ridge Improvement Association.

The CC&R’s for Unit’s 5 thru 12a have not been overseen for years.

For unit’s 5-12b, most of the roads are public and the county provides snow removal and maintenance.

What happened to the CRRPOA?

Units 5 thru 12 were part of the now de funk Cedar Ridge Ranch Properties Owners Association (CRRPOA) which was disbanded on 7/30/2006 for a lack of interest and membership. This web site, which the CRRPOA once operated, was transferred to Jay Bunten who now operates the site.

Cedar Ridge is serviced by the AT&T Twain Harte telephone switching office which is a little over 5 cable miles from Cedar Ridge.

Being this far from that switching office really limits the available type of phone line connections. Our standard dial-up service is not very reliable even at 28.8kb. Although, some folks have been able to get dial-up connections in the 40-50kb range but, they aren’t very reliable.

The Twain Harte switching office recently installed DSL hardware but, since we’re over 3 cable miles from Twain Harte, we won’t be seeing DSL service until AT&T invents a Long Range DSL.

ISDN service is available in the area, which will give you 128kb in both directions (when using both channels) or 64kb on a single channel and two voice connections on the same pair of phone wires. So you can have 2 voice calls or two data channels at the same time or one of each. The current cost for an unlimited ISDN connection from AT&T  is about unknown. The AT&T-ISDN does not come with an ISP service and since ISDN is a dial-up service you will need an ISP to complete the internet connection. Another cost of ISDN is the modem. ISDN modems are expensive ($300-$500 retail).

Choosing a Dial-up ISP for your connection

There are several ISP’s that still provide local dial-up numbers. Of course you need a landline phone in your residence.

Providers are:

• Sonnet Networking
•  Mother Lode (mlode)
•  AT&T

Cable Modems

Comcast is our cable TV service provider and the last time I checked (1/13/12) Comcast has upgraded us to their Xfinity Service. Xfinity offers Internet from 3 to 105 Mega Bits per second Internet connection, digital TV, and VOIP phones service. Their website is: www.xfinity.com

Satellite Modems

If your property has a clear view of the Southeast sky you might be able to get satellite service from either VIAsat, Starlink or HughsNet.

Wireless (not the cell phone)

Depending on the location you may be able to use the new wireless service. If you can get it, this service will give you the most functionality and speed available in Cedar Ridge. It’s still a little pricey. The ISP’s offering the service are Cal Net, Sierra Nevada Communications andHUB 3 Networks. Contact them to get a free site survey.

What does your webmaster use?

As of 2022 I’ve switched to Xfinity at 1 Gbps which appears to be more than adequate.

Which has open membership, is located at the top of Kewin Mill off Mt Elizabeth Dr., There is an initiation fee along with annual dues. See Dogwood Lake for more information.

The Cedar Ridge Lake (located of W Brookside Dr.) is owned and operated by the Cedar Ridge Improvement Association (CRIA). The CRIA provides HOA services for homes in Units 1-4. These services include operation and control of the Cedar Ridge Lake.

Beside being careful with fire, CDF requires you to maintain a defensible space (100 feet) around the structures on your property.

Our local K-8 school is Belleview, which is located 2 miles down the hill at the corner of Big Hill and Kewin Mill roads. They have school bus service to the area. The high school is Sonora High and is located in downtown Sonora about 14 miles Southwest of Cedar Ridge.

Sonora is our major shopping area, while Twain Harte (6 miles South) has groceries, restaurants, NO GAS, a great drug , a great vet and a nine-hole golf course. If you need a Home Depot or Macy’s it’s a trip to Stockton or Modesto, at least for now.

There are several major stores in Sonora area.

Major Supermarkets are: Safeway, PriceCo and Save Mart.

Major chain restaurants are: Apple bee’s, McDonalds, Taco Bell, Subway, Togo’s, Carl’s Jr., KFC, Jack-in-the-Box, and Wendy’s.

Local Restaurants are plentiful.

Although we all say that we NEVER watch television, we still require decent reception. There are several choices.

The old reliable, and I might add, FREE antenna. Antennas for the most part do not provide adequate signal strength in most areas of the Ridge. Especially for today’s larger sets. I haven’t tried the new HD antenna’s yet.

Xfinity is another option, rates start at about $30.00 per month for the very basic service.  This service provides Internet, Digital TV (HD) and VOIP telephone service. www.xfinity.com

Satellite  is the another option (DIRECTV, DISHTV and the like). While price competitive with service from Xfinity you will need a line-of-site view of the SE sky. Not all homes in the Ridge are able to acquire the satellite signal. You will need a line-of-site from about 135° to 160° (on a compass) at about a 40-45° angle. These numbers vary depending on the satellite provider.

Although, the realtors will tell you that Cedar Ridge has atmosphere snow, the Ridge is at 4000 feet and the snow can be significant. If you are going to be commuting the stuff can become a problem. Kewin Mill Road can ice up to the point of beginning very dangerous. Although large accumulations of snow are rare, they do happen. The county snowplows are quick on weekdays, but sometimes they don’t make it at all on the weekends.

THE POWER can be a real problem. Seldom a year goes by that we don’t lose our power several times. The outages last from a few hours to several days. Although, since PG&E has significant trimmed the trees in recent years, things have been better. You will just need to be prepared.

LIGHTENING has been know to disable many a electronic device, TVs, VCRs, Stereos, Computes and the like, so surge protection is a must. Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) and generators can come in handy.

FIRE – As with all properties in the forest, forest fires are always a threat. The Ridge has its own local volunteer fire company located on Kewin Mill Rd. In recent years we have had several house fires and the fire company responded quickly.  They also provide emergency medical response.

The only major forest fire that threatened the area in recent years was the Creek Fire of ’93, which caused an evacuation for two days. But, there were no structures damaged in Cedar Ridge.

Cedar Ridge has a wide variety of local residents that are not of human origin. We have a large populations of mice, birds, squirrels, raccoons, possums and deer. Mountain lions have been seen occasionally, along with several bear sightings. Not to mention a LARGE selection of insects with ants, mosquitoes and termites being the most prevalent.

Let’s all remember these guys were here first so lets tread lightly on their territory.

Feeding these guys, while it seems innocent enough, is against the law. So let’s all resist the urge.

• Electric Service – PG&E – 533-6034 (For outages 1-800-743-5002)
• Garbage Pickup – Cal Sierra – 532-1413
• Cable Television –
  Xfinity – 532-3604
• Propane Service:
    Amerigas – 223-0706
    Campora – 736-0449
    Ebbetts Pass – 795-1391
    J.S. West  – 532-7475 (Offers a special
  rate for members of the Cedar Ridge Ladies Auxiliary and Volunteer Fire Fighters)
    Kamps – 800-806-4424
    Mother Lode Propane – 736-0070
    ProFlame – 532-7000
    Suburban Propane – 984-5283
• Water Service – Tuolumne Utilities District – 532-5536
• Telephone Service – AT&T
• Cell Phone Service – Golden State Cellular (Verizon), AT&T

The Cedar Ridge Ranch web site is owned and operated by R. Jay Bunten as a community service and is supported by your generous donations.

Technical Details

• The site is hosted on a commercial hosting service.
• The site was designed using Adobe’s Dreamweaver and now uses Microsoft’s Expression for maintenance the following technologies:
  1. HTML/DHTML/CSS – for basic page layouts and templates
  2. PHP  – for dynamic pages layouts
  3. MSSQL – for the database requirements
  4. Javascript – for some of the programmatic features of the web site
  5. All Web Menus – a menu design tool using Javascript to deployment of the menus

Web Cam and Weather Station

The web cameras are comprised of: Camera 1 is a color security camera mounted in a fixed exterior housing with a heater and fan to reduce condensation on the lens and housing glass. As of 6/19/15 The camera is attached to the local network using an IP Video 9100a (converts composite video to TCP/IP). Camera 2 is a Cisco WC210 PTZ network camera, it is wireless attached to my local network. Several past images are retained on web so that the visitor can browse through them.

Camera 1 in mounted on the front of my home and points in an easterly direction at the driveway and street area of Oxbow Ln N, see local maps for the location of Oxbow Ln N. Camera 2 is mounted in a tree next to the street. It points in a South Easterly direction looking at Oxbow Ln N.

In June 2015 The weather station was converted to an Ambient Weather WS-1001-WIFI , it records, external temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, rainfall, wind speed and direction, as well as the internal temperature and humidity. The data are gathered from the weather station is now being sent directly to Weather Underground web site for posting on the web server.

In June 2015 the need for a standalone server was removed. The camera’s are accessed directly when the web pages are loaded. There is also a CRON job running on the web server that assembles the camera history.

The Weather station and camera’s are connected to a gBit Local Area Network (LAN) that is comprised of a Netgear 8 port switch & TrendNet GB switch, Linksys router and a Comcast modem. All of the hardware is connected to UPS devices to provide emergency power and protection. To keep this stuff running 24-7 costs about $50.00 month in PG&E.