Hundreds flooding into a once-exclusive park
The pristine Santa Cruz mountains preserve has been over capacity since it opened to public Dec. 17
For decades, an address in one of the Bay Area’s most expensive communities came with exclusive access to a bucolic nature preserve in the Santa Cruz Mountain, a park believed to have been the only one in California to ban non-residents from entering unless escorted.
But the once- quiet 1,400-acre Foothills Park in Palo Alto has been invaded over the past week by tourists from across the Bay Area and beyond after it officially opened to everyone on Dec. 17.
On Monday, Foothills Park bustled as cars trudged up to Vista Hill, hikers descended into winding mountain trails and families walked around taking in the beauty of a place that just two weeks ago would have denied them entry.
“It’s no surprise they’d try to keep it to themselves,” said San Francisco residents Elise and Garrett Schado as they entered a trailhead near the park’s duck pond. “It’s beautiful.”
The park’s transformation from a private refuge for Palo Altans to a busy tourist attraction was triggered by a legal settlement reached between the city and the NAACP and ACLU of Northern California, two groups that sued the city this summer alleging the park’s access policy was unconstitutional.
Lauding the change as a victory for civil rights, those who opposed the 60-year-old restrictive policy celebrated the park’s forced opening and sighed a breath of relief when a lastgasp local movement to gather enough signatures for a referendum to keep the status quo failed.
But the increase in visitors is forcing the city’s park service to increase the number of signs and disclaimers as more and more people enter. Ranger Dave Pringle said Tuesday he and his staff are keeping a careful count of vehicles coming into the park to meet the 750-person limit set by the Palo Alto City Council. That translates to about 267 cars.
He said the park was over capacity Monday and that since Christmas, visitors have had to be turned back during peak park hours.
“We haven’t seen this kind of visitation level since before it was open to the public,” Pringle said. “We’re turning vehicles away until other vehicles have left. Once we’re able to get down to the capacity limit then we’re able to let more vehicles through. We’ve seen a lot of visitors before, but not to this scale.”
Rangers have also been struggling to keep order in the park as new visitors violate previously unspoken rules, such as climbing onto the hillsides, parking on the side of the road and littering. This past weekend a ranger could be heard using a loudspeaker to get a group of children off one of the hills at the entrance of the park as they ran around playfully at its peak.
Mayor Adrian Fine said it’s not real surprising that there are “growing pains” just two weeks after the park opened,
especially with it being the holiday season.
He said the city is considering putting up more signs and giving every visitor a flyer with rules for using the park. The city council is set to receive an update on the impact of opening Foothills Park in February, though it’s unclear just how much it can change based on the settlement agreement with the ACLU and NAACP.
But Fine isn’t worried that the park will be this busy going forward.
“Let’s not jump the gun,” Fine said. “It’s one of the busiest times of the year in that park, it’s brand new and people are starting to hear about it on the news. There are growing pains, but the city is monitoring that and working to quickly fix the issues.”
As people wandered around the park on Monday, there was no denying the elation they felt being inside a once restricted area. Jill Melchionda, Dana Pingatore and Catherine Smith walked along the road up to Vista Hill for a small hike Monday, one of the first times the best friends met this year as the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage and keep people at home.
Melchionda came from from Mill Valley, Pingatore from Diablo in Contra Costa County and Catherine Smith from the other side of San Francisquito Creek in Menlo Park.
On their way up to Foothills Park, the three talked about the circumstances that allowed them to meet there.
“I can understand why the community would want to keep this to themselves,” Melchionda said. “But we share our beautiful mountains and woods in Marin and don’t complain about the traffic or anything. If you have beauty, share it.”