Santa Susanas Park Nears Reality

After 10 years of red tape, 1,080 forested acres in the Santa Susana Mountains is set to become public parkland by late June, offering visitors a shady refuge from heat and smog in summer and the possibility of light snow sports in winter.

The land, on the northern border of Los Angeles, has sweeping native grasslands, oak groves and “views to everywhere on a clear day,” said Jim Park, an assistant director in the county Parks and Recreation Department. “This is glorious property.”

Browning Ferris Industries, operator of Sunshine Canyon Landfill near Granada Hills, is fulfilling a decade-old promise by deeding the property to the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, a regional parks agency.

In the early 1990s, at the urging of county Supervisor Mike Antonovich, the county required BFI to donate the land in East, Bee and Rice canyons as a condition of granting a permit to expand the adjacent Sunshine Canyon Landfill.

BFI already owned about half the future park property but had to buy the rest from numerous private owners. The final parcel was purchased about six months ago, BFI spokesman Jim Aidukas said.

Over the years, transfer of the parkland also was stalled by litigation, environmental review and the sealing and cleanup of two oil wells, officials said. Title documents are now being drawn up and are expected to become final this month or early next month.

“This will be one of the most beautiful parks we have in the Los Angeles Basin,” said Don P. Mullally of Granada Hills, who began drumming up support for it 14 years ago. “It opens up brand-new horizons for the hikers, mountain bicyclists, equestrians and picnickers of Los Angeles County. The nice thing is that it’s within a short drive for many people.”

The unnamed new park has long been sought by open-space advocates as part of an overall plan to create a “rim of the valley” open space linking the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys. The new parkland fills in a missing link between Santa Clarita Woodlands Park on the north and O’Melveny Park on the south. The result is a 6,000-acre wilderness corridor.

The corridor is vital for human recreation in a heavily urbanized area and for the migration of wildlife, which includes deer, bears, mountain lions, gray foxes and many smaller mammals, said Santa Clarita City Councilwoman Laurene Weste.

The neighboring Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains are overgrown with chaparral that is unpleasant for both animals and humans to navigate, said Mullally, a former California state naturalist who has done biological surveys of the Santa Susana Mountains. The new park is a mix of savannas and woodlands, making it attractive for family hikes, bird watching, mountain biking and other activities.

A marked trail system that hooks into a regional trail network is already in place. Aidukas said BFI paid about $50,000 to hire surveyors to create the system.

The new parkland, reaching elevations higher than 3,500 feet, is 6 to 12 degrees cooler in summer than surrounding valleys, and occasional winter snowfalls lend themselves to sledding and other snow fun, Mullally said. Camping and trout fishing are also possibilities.

The unusually cool and moist microclimate, nurturing stands of California black walnuts and other trees rarely found in the region, makes the park special, Mullally said.

Weste, a former Santa Clarita park commissioner, said the donated property is also important because it helps preserve a vanishing landscape. “This is some of the more important planning we will ever do, because this is retaining natural California. There’s nothing joyous about constant concrete.”