New Site Sought for Off-Road Race Track

Racing off-road vehicles--such as motorcycles, dune buggies and Jeeps--has become such a family-oriented activity that it has almost replaced the Sunday drive as the most popular weekend family outing, Los Angeles County officials say.

But since Indian Dunes Park, a county-operated off-road vehicle center in Valencia, closed in February, 1985, because the landowner wanted the property for other purposes, local enthusiasts have had few places to race legally.

County officials say there is a crucial need to open a new park.

Off-road motorcyclists racing illegally are destroying scenic hillsides and have prompted many noise complaints from homeowners, said Jo Anne Darcy, an aide to County Supervisor Mike Antonovich. She said they also are endangering their lives by racing without supervision, are creating fire hazards and posing problems for law enforcement officers, who issue dozens of citations every weekend.

The county’s Off-Highway Vehicle Committee, which has spent the past year looking for locations for off-road vehicle racing parks, has found 48 potential sites.

Committee head Dorothea Hoffman of the county Parks and Recreation Department said the committee has at least temporarily narrowed that list to two: A 650-acre site on Briggs Road near the Antelope Valley Freeway and Agua Dulce Canyon, and a 300-acre site in Bee Canyon, which runs parallel to the freeway.

Eventually, “We’d like to open more than one,” she said. “We’re preparing a master plan for the future that includes all 48 sites and we’re collecting data on this type of recreation.

“We conducted a survey. We don’t have all the results tabulated yet, but we found that it’s not unusual for a family to spend a whole weekend day racing.”

Hoffman said the soonest the county can open an off-road racing park is in late 1987.

The closest county-operated racing park is in Hungry Valley, near Gorman--too far for most Santa Clarita and San Fernando Valley area families to travel for a one-day outing, she said.

The U. S. Forest Service operates an off-road vehicle riding trail, Rowher Flats, in Texas Canyon near Acton, she said, but no racing is allowed there.

The sites selected by the committee adjoin the rural Agua Dulce and Soledad areas of the Santa Clarita Valley. But nearby homeowners are reluctant to accept a race track as a neighbor.

Residents of his community, near the Briggs Road site, “moved out to this area to get away from this type of activity,” said Boyd Chapman, president of Soledad Homeowners Assn.

Chapman and Henry Rodiger, president of Agua Dulce Civic Assn., said homeowners are adopting a wait-and-see attitude.

The county committee will hold a public hearing on the subject at 7 p.m. Aug. 26 at the Valencia Library.

“We’re not going to do anything until we hear from the community,” Darcy said, adding that one side or the other, enthusiasts or homeowners, might “have to give a little.”

Bobbie Welty of Canyon Country, who went regularly to Indian Dunes with her motorcyclist husband, sons and a granddaughter, said she is handing out flyers to inform fellow off-road enthusiasts of the meeting.

“I think either one of the sites would be excellent,” she said.

Welty said she collected more than 2,000 signatures in less than 24 hours on petitions asking that Indian Dunes be reopened.

“Some of the finest years of my life were spent at Indian Dunes,” she said. “The people who race are fine people, and the most important thing in the whole world to them is their families.”

Welty said teen-agers, including one of her sons, are racing illegally “anywhere they can get away with it.”

FO