Park to Be 1st Nature Reserve in Santa Ana

Santa Ana is poised to begin an ambitious restoration project that will transform a portion of the park around Santiago Creek into the city’s first nature reserve at a cost of $1.3 million.

“We’re very excited,” said Patrick Mitchell, the city’s park naturalist overseeing the project, which was first envisioned in 1996. That year the city adopted a master plan to refurbish the 33-acre strip of open space between the Santa Ana and Garden Grove freeways. “It’s a unique park, because it’s the city’s only natural one.”

Volunteers have begun planting native grass. Work is expected to begin within a month on a $700,000, 2,500-square-foot interpretive and educational facility -- complete with classrooms -- at the park’s eastern end.The rest of the money will be spent restoring 18 acres of natural habitat by replacing exotic plants with native species, improving trails, replacing parking lot pavement with more environmentally friendly materials and installing signs highlighting the area’s natural and cultural history.

“We have a lot of things there that are fairly rare for an urban open area,” Mitchell said of the park, which has 150-year-old oaks and sycamores as well as opossums, raccoons, coyotes, red foxes and great-horned owls.

“It’s got all the things you would want to find in an urban park -- sports and passive recreation areas -- but it also has this amazing natural area which really gives you the feeling that you’ve left the urban landscape.”

The park has an interesting cultural heritage as well, he said, as it is near the sites of early Native American villages and the campsites of early Spanish explorers.

The creek that runs through it, Mitchell said, also formed an original boundary of Rancho Santiago de Santa Ana, one of the county’s earliest ranchos.

Funds for the restoration have come from many sources, including state grants, private gifts and $300,000 from the Wildlands Conservancy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving natural lands.

The project is expected to be completed in about two years, Mitchell said.