Laguna Niguel Path to the Sea Is Welcome : Factories and Jobs Are Needed but Parks and Woods Are Important to County as Well

Last weekend’s opening of a two-mile nature trail from Laguna Niguel to the sea was a welcome addition to the list of locales where Orange County residents can escape from civilization for a while and enjoy grass and shrubs, trees and birds.

The path begins at Chapparosa Park in Laguna Niguel and runs down to a bike trail in Dana Point. But the welcome wrinkle in this newly opened path is the welter of signs along the way.

Anyone who has marveled at beautiful flowers but wondered just what they were will welcome what is formally called the Laguna Niguel Hike-Bike Nature Trail. The 21 posts will note the flora and fauna usually found in the area, so hikers can tell the elderberry from the lemonade berry. The Orange County Natural History Museum also will provide pamphlets that will change periodically, depending on the season, to point out what is blooming when.

Biologist Jim Ortiz, a Laguna Niguel resident, helped make the trail reality. He rightly said that keeping the trial through Salt Creek Canyon as open space will also help protect wildlife, since it preserves the habitat they need. Laguna Niguel became a city only in 1989, after years of heavy development. To their credit, city officials decided to keep Salt Creek Canyon open space rather than accept a proposal to put a golf course and baseball fields there.

After years of pell-mell development, residents have realized that open space is one of the lures of Orange County. Factories and offices are needed for jobs, and houses for living, but parks and woods are an important part of the county’s make-up. The past few months have brought a number of welcome openings of new parks or improved accessibility to them.

In December, a three-mile stretch of Oso Parkway enabled traffic to reach what had been Wagon Wheel Canyon Park and was renamed Thomas F. Riley Wilderness Park. The “wilderness” designation meant that while hikers, bikers and horseback riders were welcome, there were no areas for recreational vehicles to hookup, or playgrounds. Those sorts of facilities are available in other Orange County parks, and it makes sense to have as wide a variety of parks as possible, from the very developed to the most primitive.