Del Mar’s Fence Infuriates City’s Neighbors

The Del Mar Wall goes up only one day a year. But the annoyance caused to neighboring Solana Beach lasts a lot longer.

Every Fourth of July the city of Del Mar blocks off a portion of the county’s coastal highway to all but local residents.

San Diego County’s tiniest (population 5,300) and most affluent city insists it needs the barricades to prevent carloads of outsiders from causing havoc as they flock to the city’s wide and sandy beach, one of the most popular Fourth of July celebrating spots in Southern California.

Solana Beach says the barricades along the road may work fine for Del Mar but are lousy for Solana Beach as traffic backs up and congeals. After putting up with the Del Mar barricades every Fourth of July since 1985, Solana Beach has finally had enough.

As always with disputes involving Del Mar, there are allegations that the city is displaying an ingrained civic haughtiness and superiority stemming from its origins as a resort town and getaway for the 1930s Hollywood set.

Solana Beach Councilwoman Marcia Smerican wants Del Mar to look at Fourth of July traffic as a regional problem, not something for one city to dump on another.

Del Mar’s locals-only approach, Smerican said, makes Solana Beach “feel like steerage on the Titanic. The ship is sinking and they lock the gates.”

So far, Del Mar officials have refused to budge. Barring intervention by the California Coastal Commission, to which Solana Beach has turned for help, the barricades will be in place at the north and south ends of the two-lane road by 10 a.m. and will be manned by fully armed sheriff’s deputies.

The two cities cannot even agree what to call the road. Del Mar calls it Camino del Mar; Solana Beach prefers the historic name, Highway 101.

Del Mar residents still shudder at what happened two years ago when the barricades did not get put up quickly enough. Sun, surf and suds took their toll on a youngish beach crowd estimated at 40,000.

“When the alcohol kicked in, it became an uncontrollable scenario,” said Pat Vergne, Del Mar’s chief lifeguard.

“It wasn’t crowd control, it was mob control,” said Councilman Mark Whitehead.

“It was hell,” said resident Katie Nelson.

Last year the Del Mar City Council made sure the barricades were up promptly. Drivers without official Del Mar residents’ passes were turned away.

“People should know they cannot drive to the beach in Del Mar [on the 4th],” said Whitehead. “Maybe they’ll stay away or go somewhere else.”

The Del Mar Fair is involved because the fairgrounds are just east of the highway at the boundary between Del Mar and Solana Beach. When traffic backs up into Solana Beach, fair patrons cannot reach the gates on what is traditionally the fair’s final day, capped by fireworks.

Last year the one-mile bus trip between the Solana Beach train station and the fair took an hour.

Solana Beach and Del Mar Fair officialdom have begged the Del Mar City Council to soften its barricade policy to let the sheriff’s deputies directing traffic decide when traffic has gotten so bad that the highway needs to be shut.

“I urge you to think of your neighbors,” said Solana Beach Councilwoman Marion Dodson.

But in Del Mar, the talk is not of neighbors but of outsiders. Nearly every beach resident has a tale to tell about the Fourth of July.

The party-hardy young, many residents complain, like to bury their beer kegs in the sand on the night of the 3rd. Even before sunup, many of the prime spots are taken; by noon, it’s Coney Island.

Cynthia R. Bolker, a Del Mar resident for 14 years, recalls the night before one Fourth of July as the crowd started arriving like competitors on the eve of a land rush.

“These were not my neighbors; these were outsiders, not local Del Martians,” she said. “These were people who had come in so they could claim their spot on the beach at Del Mar. . . . I should not have to get up at 5 a.m. to put down my beach chair at the beach, where I live, because people have come in at 4 a.m. or 11 at night.”

While Del Mar residents may feud interminably among themselves over matters of land use and city spending, the city tends to present a united and disputatious face to the outside world.

Homeowners sued the Coastal Commission to keep their sea walls. Del Mar fought San Diego in the courts for years to block construction of nearby subdivisions.

The feuds are many and complex between Del Mar and the state-run Del Mar Fair over noise, parking, traffic and land use. The city fought Amtrak over its plan to expand its Del Mar station; vexed, Amtrak closed the station and moved to Solana Beach.

Decades ago there was even an attempt to keep nonlocals away from the Del Mar beach with signs that read “Beaches for Locals Only.” The signs are gone but the reputation endures.

“We in Del Mar suffer a reputation we really don’t deserve: that we’re snobby and consider ourselves too classy for the ordinary guy,” Nelson said.

While nothing prevents outsiders from hiking in from Solana Beach or elsewhere to get to the beach at Del Mar, the traffic barricades thin the crowd considerably. Only a fraction of beach-goers are willing to lug their umbrellas, picnic baskets and other gear.

Solana Beach hopes the Coastal Commission staff will decide that closing the road, even for a day, requires a permit, which would mean a hearing by a neutral arbiter.

“Del Mar has a lot of influence with the Coastal Commission, so they could probably get a permit--but we’d get a hearing,” said Solana Beach City Manager Robert Semple. “Usually when neighbors talk about problems, you figure on a compromise. But Del Mar does not compromise.”