Residents Win Skirmish on Off-Highway Trail

To dirt-bike riders and four-wheel-drive enthusiasts, the planned path through the gently rolling hills north of the Angeles National Forest was to be a step toward the realization of a long-cherished dream.

But many environmentalists and landowners whose property lies near the forest’s northern boundary saw the dream as a nightmare.

The vision was a planned link in a state-sponsored trail system for off-highway vehicles spanning the length of California.

Long Fight Expected

After a pitched campaign that spanned the summer and fall, homeowners prevented Los Angeles County from taking the first step toward routing the trail through their community.

But the fight in the Antelope Valley almost certainly will be repeated elsewhere in California well into the 21st Century, according to public officials, environmentalists and advocates of off-highway recreation.

Proponents believe that the planned statewide trail system would provide a long-overdue occasion for those who are thrilled by the off-highway experience to take long motor trips along primitive routes through some of the state’s most scenic landscapes.

“What we’re trying to do is encourage what I would call motorized hiking,” said Lowell Landowski, a land-use analyst for the state Department of Parks and Recreation.

“People want to get away from the city life, and more and more people are going to the back country, either hiking or horseback riding. But more people own four-wheel drives than horses any day,” Landowski said.

Much of the system is already built, Landowski said, in the form of existing off-highway vehicle trails that crisscross the federal government’s vast California land holdings. What remains is to link the segments separated by private property, and to formally designate an official route.

Pushing the trail system are private groups representing thousands of off-highway vehicle enthusiasts and the state Off-Highway Vehicle Recreation Commission. Affiliated with the state Parks Department, the commission this year will hand out more than $8 million in grants to promote planning, construction and maintenance of dirt-bike and four-wheel-drive parks and trails. Most of the money comes from state gasoline tax revenues.

‘Didn’t Want the Noise’

Not everyone is pleased by the commission’s work. Many environmentalists and private property owners see the proposed statewide trail system as yet another assault by careless gasoline-engine cowboys on a fragile and deteriorating wilderness.

“We didn’t want the noise and the mess that goes with it,” said Bill Hadden, president of the Juniper Hills Community Assn., which led the fight against a Los Angeles County study of a trail connection through private property in that Antelope Valley community.

Environmental concerns aside, even proponents of the project concede the astronomical cost of acquiring the rights of way across private land required to link existing trails in national forests and on property controlled by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

“If anything is going to hold it up, it’ll be the private land acquisition,” said Cam Lockwood, the off-highway vehicle coordinator for the Angeles National Forest. “You’re into megabucks.”

Plans for what is formally known as the California Statewide Motorized Trail System date at least from the beginning of the decade.

A consulting firm hired by the state Parks Department released a draft plan in 1983 that called for a network of trails to run across largely public lands from Oregon to Mexico. The firm proposed a main system with two legs stretching along both sides of the Sierra Nevada and a connecting system linking the Los Padres National Forest in San Luis Obispo County with the Mojave Desert and, to the south, the Imperial Valley.

The draft plan cost about $200,000, but a final version was never adopted, largely, one parks official said, because the department had “other priorities.”

But the momentum picked up earlier this year when the Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Commission formally adopted new proposed trail corridors drafted largely by a group of off-highway users called Friends of the Trail.

The commission, whose seven members are appointed by the governor, the Speaker of the state Assembly and the state Senate Rules Committee, also adopted preliminary procedures for incorporating trail segments into the statewide system in the future, a process that has not yet begun.

As the overall planning started anew, the commission continued to finance individual projects that are someday likely to be incorporated into a statewide trail network.

Earlier this year, for example, the commission awarded Los Angeles County $299,000 for off-highway recreation planning. Much of the money will pay to study acquisition of 600 acres of private property in the Whitney Canyon area, west of the southern segment of the Angeles National Forest, for an off-highway vehicle park.

Although most of the property would be trails, the plans also include two larger “activity areas,” said Ronald L. Gagnon, a county park planner. Another official said the activity areas might be used for competitive events, such as dirt-bike racing.

Connection Envisioned

Eventually, the Whitney Canyon area could be linked to the statewide off-highway trail system. However, the only trails now within the Angeles National Forest that are adjacent to the proposed county park are reserved for horseback riding.

“We need to resolve those conflicts between different types of users,” said Larry D. Marlow of the U.S. Forest Service.

The state money is also earmarked for studies of two possible links between existing off-highway trails within the forest. One would connect trails ending at Rowher Flat, an off-highway vehicle park in the northern section of the forest, with Indian Canyon in the lower forest. The two sections of national forest are separated by private and county-owned land.

The second potential connection was the focus of the dispute between the Juniper Hills residents and the Forest Service and county Parks Department.

Using Existing Trails

In the early 1980s, when the Forest Service began developing a land and resources management plan for the Angeles National Forest, officials wanted to find a way to connect existing off-highway vehicle trails along Alimony Ridge, south of Juniper Grove, with other trails that began at Sycamore Flat.

“What we’re doing is to try to accommodate the desire of the state for that cross-state trail system,” Marlow said.

Several environmentalists have suggested that in an era of tight federal money, the funds available from the state Off-Highway Recreation Commission are no small incentive to make that accommodation. In the last six years, the Angeles National Forest alone has received from the state agency about $3.5 million for off-highway vehicle projects

Despite their desire to help the state complete its trail system, federal officials found that territory within the Angeles Forest between the existing off-highway trails was too rugged and steep for trails.

State Money Sought

Los Angeles County parks officials then agreed to use state commission money to try to find a way to connect the forest trails via private land north of the forest boundary.

Local residents got wind of the plan last spring, and the reaction in Juniper Hills was furious. Aside from concerns over noise, alcohol and drug use, vandalism and littering, residents were particularly worried about the potential fire hazard such a trial might bring, said Hadden, president of the community association.

Off-Highway Vehicle Areas

Three proposals are under study by Los Angeles County:

l. A 600-acre site in Whitney Canyon, adjacent to Angeles National Forest, for off-highway vehicle park.

2. A corridor that would connect trails in the upper and lower sections of the forest.

3. The county had planned to examine a corridor through private land near Juniper Hills. However, neighborhood protests prompted officials to reconsider and look at a route within the forest.