Woodland Wonder : Campaign Builds to Preserve Lush 6,000 -Acre Zone in Santa Susana Mountains as Park

With its dense green forest, sparkling waterfalls and abundant wildlife, the 6,000 acres proposed for the new Santa Clarita Woodlands State Park could pass for a Northern California landscape.

Dividing the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys, this privately owned land in the Santa Susana Mountain range, once home to the Chumash Indians, is host to a combination of plants and trees not found in neighboring mountains, a situation attributed to the area’s high elevation, relatively heavy rainfall and geology.

“I’ve been a lot of places,” state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia) said during a recent meeting at the base of Towsley Canyon, near the proposed park’s northwestern boundary. “But right above us is one of the most beautiful properties on the face of the earth. And unless we preserve it, it’s not going to be there.”

While chaparral is the dominant vegetation in the nearby Simi Hills and the Santa Monica, Verdugo and San Gabriel mountains, thick grassland laced with patches of fragrant coastal sage carpets most of the woodlands.

Dubbed “the oak capital of Southern California” by its proponents, the land has more than 500,000 oak trees of five varieties.

Big-leaf maple trees, rare in the Santa Monica Mountains and non-existent in the Simi Hills, abound in the woodlands. And in the highest ranges there is an unusual blend of oaks, California walnut trees, ash, maple, big-cone Douglas fir, myrtlewood and elderberry.

Oat Mountain, which at 3,747 feet is the tallest peak in the Santa Susanas, was the last stronghold of the California condor. Prairie falcons, badgers, acorn woodpeckers and redtail hawks can be found in the area, and mountain lions, deer and black bears still inhabit the range.

The property, held by several landowners, is off limits to the public and protected by locked gates, private roads and no-trespassing signs. Attempts to convert the land to a park date from 1970, when science teacher Don Mullally and his students at Sylmar High School approached the state Department of Parks and Recreation about the possibility.

But it was not until 1986 that the idea caught fire, capturing the attention of the North Valley Coalition, a homeowner group fighting the proposed expansion of the Sunshine Canyon Landfill. Although a small part of the proposed park is in upper Sunshine Canyon, where Browning-Ferris Industries hopes to extend its dump, proponents say their support for the park project is not a ploy to block the landfill.

Meanwhile, Davis has introduced two measures to benefit the area. The first, which calls for a comprehensive study of the property, cleared the Assembly and Senate and is awaiting Gov. George Deukmejian’s signature. The second bill, which makes the proposed park eligible for special state funds, was approved by the Assembly and is on the Senate’s calendar for this week.

An initiative drive sponsored by park supporters is also under way to qualify a measure for the June, 1990, ballot. If passed, the California Wildlife Protection Initiative would provide $10 million for land purchases in the woodlands over the next decade.

The land isn’t under immediate threat of development, but park supporters say the same was true of other properties that later were built on. The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is negotiating to acquire options to buy some of the woodlands.

“It is an extremely unique area for Southern California,” said Capt. Scott Franklin of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. “It’s like an extension of Central California into Southern California.”

Part of what distinguishes the woodlands from other mountain ranges in the region is the composition of the rocks that form them, said Mullally, an ecologist, former science teacher and senior gardener at O’Melveny Park, at the base of Bee Canyon.

Made up of sedimentary materials such as shale and sandstone, the mountains absorb water and are easily penetrated by the roots of trees, Mullally said. Large amounts of clay in the soil also help retain moisture, nourishing plant life and preserving the woodlands’ lush, green appearance eight months of the year.

‘Ideal for Oaks’

“It’s an ideal growing condition for oaks and shrubs,” Franklin said.

The San Gabriel Mountains are mostly granite, a hardened molten rock that is more difficult for roots to pierce. The soil is more acidic, making it hospitable to chaparral, pines and big cone Douglas fir, but not to the venerable valley oaks that abound in the woodlands.

The Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains are geologically younger than the Santa Susanas, Franklin said.

Dry, parched chaparral--blamed for fueling devastating fires in other mountain ranges--is scarce in the woodlands, a condition that helps account for the dense oak forests there.

“The trees are thicker than hair on a dog’s back. . . ,” Mullally said. “They are not killed. They live through fire after fire. If the same trees were in the San Gabriels, they’d go up in smoke.”

While much of Los Angeles broils in the hot summer sun, the woodlands are fanned by ocean breezes from Ventura that keep temperatures at least 10 degrees cooler than on the valley floor. The sky is a deep blue, and smog from the city appears like a blanket of brown haze far below the proposed park.

Islands Visible

On a clear day, Oat Mountain offers views of downtown skyscrapers, the Channel Islands and the peaks of the Santa Barbara Mountains.

Although the Golden State Freeway, which forms the woodlands’ eastern boundary, is visible from some of the summits, the din of freeway traffic cannot be heard. Only the breeze rustling through trees or birds darting into bushes are audible.

“You don’t feel L.A. here,” said Laurene Weste, chairwoman of the Santa Clarita Parks and Recreation Commission and one of the park’s chief proponents.

The area’s annual rainfall is at least 25 inches, compared to 14 inches in the San Fernando Valley, Franklin said. Last winter, a foot of snow blanketed the woodlands above 2,800 feet and fed a 40-foot waterfall in Towsley Canyon.

In spring, California poppies, violets, yellow fiddlenecks and blue lupins add patches of color to the landscape.

“Yet, when you look up here from the Valley floor, you have no comprehension of the beauty,” Weste said.

Most Valley residents see only the southern slope, a largely unspectacular view, particularly in summer when the brush turns dry and brown in the sun. The northern slope, with its rich animal and plant life, is on the other side of the ridge, the exclusive domain of ranchers, cattle herds, oil and gas workers, and communications towers.

“A relic forest” is how Mullally describes it. “When redwoods were here 15,000 years ago, this was the type of forest that probably existed on the perimeter. But the redwoods are gone and all we have is the perimeter forests left behind. It’s kind of like an island in time.”