Picture OF A Park : Mountainside Added to State System’s Wilderness Wish List

Before the caravan began its trek up a winding road to the lush side of the Santa Susana Mountains, Allen Ulm, a state park official, seemed skeptical.

Once or twice a year, Ulm, a deputy regional director of the state Department of Parks and Recreation, investigates someone’s claim that a picturesque piece of property would make a great state park.

“Most of them never amount to much,” observed Ulm, who was about to check out the latest great find, the northern side of the Santa Susana Mountains, stretching just southwest of the Antelope and Golden State freeways to Chatsworth.

“I’m making no commitments,” he said, before climbing into a four-wheel-drive camper to tour the 6,000-acre spread, which its supporters already optimistically have named the Santa Clarita Woodlands State Park.

Point Proved

Hours later, however, when the tour ended on top of Oat Mountain, the western edge of the proposed park, the park official’s skepticism had disappeared. Where Ulm stood, when the smog disperses, a visitor can see the sprawl of the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys, the downtown skyscrapers and--to the west--the Santa Catalina and Channel islands.

Below, groves of black walnut, myrtle wood and ash trees, and clusters of yellow violets, golden poppies and purple lupine spilled across grassy hillsides that looked as soft as green velvet. Red-tailed hawks circled above huge big-cone spruce, a curiosity at such low elevations. Scratchy chaparral, the bane of picnickers, was hardly to be found.

The northern face, which receives almost twice as much annual rainfall as downtown Los Angeles, was a dead ringer for a Northern California landscape.

Ulm pronounced the property “magnificent.” Becoming a state park, he suggested, could “put it on par with the redwood forests in Humboldt County, Big Sur and Point Lobos.”

But, he added emphatically: “Just because you’ve persuaded me, that doesn’t do a damn thing.”

Ulm’s host and the project’s chief cheerleader, Don Mullally, manager of the city of Los Angeles’ O’Melveny Park, nodded glumly. It could take years before the land becomes a park. And then again, it might never happen.

The proposed park’s backers could face strong opposition from major landholders, including one family that does not want to part with its scenic holdings.

What the park site needs is friends, Ulm advised. Lots of them. In a state where rigorous screening still leaves plenty of contenders for parkland, it takes a lot of political savvy and the enthusiastic backing of state and local officials, residents and environmentalists for one site to rise above the rest.

Eager Core Group

So far, the proposed park has just a core of eager supporters. Hikers who dare to trespass have admired the beauty of the canyons for years. But it was only last year that the North Valley Coalition, a homeowner group fighting the proposed expansion of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill, decided that the Santa Susana’s northern slope deserves a special honor.

A small part of the proposed park is in the upper Sunshine Canyon, where Browning Ferris Industries hopes to extend its dump. But supporters of the park proposal said its purpose is not to scuttle the landfill expansion. They contend that the dump issue will be resolved long before the park is more than an idea.

“These special areas are very important,” said Mary Edwards, secretary of the North Valley Coalition. “It’s a peaceful wilderness you’d have to drive miles to find.”

But generating grass-roots enthusiasm is tricky because the property is so well-hidden. When San Fernando Valley residents look at the mountains, all they can see is the sun-baked southern face, pockmarked with scrub brush and chaparral. Santa Clarita Valley residents driving south on the Golden State Freeway can only catch a glimpse of the woodlands, which provide refuge to deer, coyotes, bobcats and chattering acorn woodpeckers.

Locked gates, private roads and No Trespassing signs keep most of the curious away. Even arranging a tour for the park officials and aides to state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia) and Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley), who have been asked to support the project, required many phone calls for permission.

Mullally, who has been showing slides of the area to entice groups across the city to join in the cause, complains that the canyons might as well as be in Borneo.

“You can’t see it. You can’t get to it. You don’t have curiosity for someplace you can’t get 5 miles from,” he lamented. “You can’t see the wildflowers. You can’t see the valley oaks.”

For now, the land remains the preserve of ranchers, cattle herds, oil-and-gas workers and communication towers. No one is certain just how many people own the land.

Some of it belongs to a longtime Southern California family. Its patriarch was the late William W. Orcutt, known as the dean of petroleum geologists. He is credited with finding a major part of California’s vast oil fields and discovering that there were fossils in the La Brea Tar Pits. The city of Los Angeles bought and preserved Orcutt’s estate in Canoga Park more than 20 years ago.

William Orcutt of Santa Paula, a descendant who helps manage the family’s California interests, said the family is not interested in selling the land, now used for ranching and as a backdrop for movies.

“It’s our private property,” said Orcutt, before cutting off questioning. “Would you like to give your house to the state?”

Discussing property rights is premature, Ulm cautioned. He said his first step will be to write a report for the department listing the property’s assets. Public hearings could follow, and the Legislature would have to give its approval if the proposal became a priority. Even without hitches, it would take at least three years to acquire any land, Ulm said. And money might not be available. State park funds are scarce, and much of the park-development money in the $776-million statewide bond issue on the June ballot is already reserved.

In fact, $10 million from the bond issue is earmarked for the nearby Santa Susana Mountain Park. That fledgling park, which encompasses part of the Santa Susana’s southern face from Chatsworth to the Simi Hills, is a textbook case on how exasperating it can be to create a state park.

In 1970, homeowners and environmentalists formed a group to protect an 80-square-mile stretch of the mountain range. Reality, though, has scaled back their dream. Eighteen years later, the group has acquired 428 acres but still needs another 1,000 to 1,500 acres before the tract is big enough to be classified a state park.

Glenn Bailey, president of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Santa Susana Mountains, applauded the new push to save the other side of the mountains: “The more land that can be acquired within the area we’re concerned about, the better.”