Karen Parrott's boots scuffed through the smoldering ash of what remained of her own home as she walked the 30 feet to a window of the adobe cabin that Robert and Ellen Dorland built in the 1930s -- with the help of the local Indians.

Once there, Parrott stood at a window opening -- the glass having been melted by the inferno that roared through the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony on Monday -- and reached, cautiously at first, fearing it might still be hot, for a candleholder that somehow remained upright on the window sill.

"There's got to be more left than this," she said as she gripped the candleholder tight.

There wasn't.

The adobe, filled with treasured antique furniture and books that once belonged to the Dorlands, was the largest of nine buildings destroyed Monday when the Eagle Fire raced up the side of the mountain and claimed the renowned artist retreat located off Highway 79 South, eight miles from Temecula. The fire destroyed the building's wooden roof and caused the cabin's first floor to collapse into the basement

The Eagle fire, which began Sunday afternoon southeast of Temecula, had charred 5,000 acres as of Tuesday evening.

Five visiting artists were at Dorland on Sunday night when orders came to evacuate the colony.

"A couple of the artists were from Southern California and they just went home," said Austin Linsley, president of the nonprofit organization's board of directors. The other artists were booked into a Temecula motel.

The artists took almost everything they'd brought with them to Dorland. Parrott, the organization's executive director, and Robert Willis, the colony's caretaker and artist-in-residence -- who live in cabins at the retreat full-time -- left everything behind.

"When I came back up here Monday morning we saw just a little bit of smoke in the hills over there," Parrott said, pointing west. "I thought for sure the fire was over."

Parrott then returned to Temecula to check on the artists but when she tried to drive back to the mountainside colony about 5 p.m. she was stopped by authorities.

"We looked up and saw that the whole side of the hill was on fire," she said.

70-year-old roots

The blaze leveled an enclave whose roots were planted more than seven decades ago.

In the 1930s Ellen Babcock Dorland, a renowned concert pianist, and Robert Dorland, a scientist, first flautist and manager of the San Diego Philharmonic Orchestra homesteaded 300 acres in the hills southeast of Temecula. There they built an adobe cabin under a sweeping stand of oak trees as a getaway from their Pasadena home.

The couple, who often invited artist friends to their retreat, moved to the cabin permanently in the 1950s.

Robert Dorland died in the mid-1970s.

Ellen Dorland and her longtime friend Barbara Horton, a noted environmentalist, shared a vision of founding an artists colony similar to those they'd visited on the East Coast, a place of solitude surrounded by nature where visiting artists could work unencumbered of the noise and pace of the modern world.

In 1979, they broke ground on a 10-acre site for what would become the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. The retreat was then and remains supported solely by private contributions.

Ellen Dorland continued to live and teach piano at the mountain cabin until the mid-1980s when health concerns necessitated her move to a nursing home, where she later died at age 90.

Over the years, hundreds of artists have come to the retreat --- usually for six weeks at a time --- and many have returned for a second or third visit.

Each of the simple cabins -- many built with redwood from buildings torn down in both Pasadena and Fallbrook, then hauled to Temecula -- was different. Most had small kitchens with propane stoves, propane refrigerators and wood-burning stoves for heat.

The nine buildings included the cabin for Parrott, the colony's executive director for more than a decade who has lived at Dorland for three years, and Willis, who has lived at the colony since 1992.

None of the visiting artists' cabins had electricity or telephones. Electricity-producing solar panels were added in recent years to the cabins where Parrott and Willis lived.

Smoldering ruins

On Monday, the rustic cabins -- spread out over 10 acres -- were leveled when winds whipped the flames up the hillside to the artist residences. A van was also destroyed.

Where cabins were made of concrete blocks and wood, only the blocks remained Tuesday, the charred wood inside still smoldering.

Cabins made of wood alone were turned to soot. Inside were melted appliances, typewriters, bathtubs and wood-burning stoves.

Nothing remained of the colony's three pianos, including a nearly century-old Steinway grand piano that the famous Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff -- a Dorland family friend -- played on his visits to San Diego before his death in 1943.

The buildings were insured, but their contents likely were not, said Linsley.

"There was stuff there that has been destroyed but the good thing is that the vision for Dorland remains," Linsley said. "It will be a process of bringing all the people together who shared that vision to talk about what needs to be done next."

Contact John Hunneman at (909) 676-4315, Ext. 2603, or hunneman@californian.com.