Seeking Nature and Scenic Vistas Often Means Trespassing in Ranch-Covered SLO County

BY STEVEN T. JONES

If good fences make good neighbors, then good trails make good conflicts. For good trails–accessing majestic mountains and other natural wonders–can prompt some people to scale the best of fences.

Just about every day in San Luis Obispo County, hikers, bikers, and other trail users cross fences onto private property, violating someone else's rights for the sake of a view, a challenge, or to enjoy the serenity of nature.

Trespassing is a problem that police and property owners say is only getting worse with our growing population, a problem that they say damages both the environment and agricultural operations. Fences get broken, gates get left open, and freshly cut trails cause erosion.

Working with ranch owners, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff's Department has stepped up enforcement of trespassing laws. Many property owners, such as those around Hollister Peak, have in recent years adopted zero-tolerance policies, patrolling their land and calling in deputies whenever they find trespassers.

For them, this is about private property rights, period. It's their land. They bought it. They pay the taxes on it. They're the ones who fix the fences and pick up the trash. And if they want to shut off public access, even to historic trails, that's their right.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who see sacrilege in fencing off the most soul-stirring spots on God's green Earth. Why should someone be allowed to horde nature's beauty simply because they have money or because they inherited land that was once free for the taking or given away in huge tracts to the ruling class?

Such conflicts are particularly acute in San Luis Obispo County, where most of the wide-open spaces are privately owned ranches, leaving about 158 miles of publicly accessible trails–a small fraction of the actual trails that crisscross our rural county.

And as development gobbles up more land, historically used trails in places like the Nipomo Mesa, rural Arroyo Grande, and the North County are disappearing under pavement or behind reinforced fences. Rather than expanding trail offerings to accommodate more residents, trail advocates say they work hard just to maintain what we have.

"Access is one of those issues where people are far to the left or far to the right. There aren't a lot of people in the middle," says Matt Janssen, the county planner working with the Morros Advisory Committee.

People on both sides of the divide say now is the time to fashion a peace accord that expands access while safeguarding property rights, because the trail will only get more treacherous from here.

Supreme Property Rights

Whether you think it's fair or right, at this point in history, property owners hold just about all the cards in the battle over access to nature's beautiful places, now more than ever (see accompanying story on trespassing).

The law allows them to cut off access to their properties and to enforce that property right with fences, weapons, and the full backing of law enforcement agencies like the Sheriff's Department.

The law's sympathies lie with people like Joy Fitzhugh, who owns a 2,000-acre cattle ranch and orchard in the North County. A vocal advocate for agricultural interests as a spokesperson for the Farm Bureau, Fitzhugh has been battling trespassers for years.

"It's been quite a problem. We've called the police any number of times," she said. "We've had people park in our main entrance and we've had to go find them so we could get out."

Over the years, she said, they've caught people trespassing on their land to camp, nude sunbathe, steal wood, collect rocks, hunt, exercise their dogs, hike, and mountain bike.

"If people would respect and understand the property," Fitzhugh said, access and ag might be able to co-exist. "But such a small number of people do.... This isn't open space; this is someone's livelihood."

While many ranchers used to allow hikers to use their land, Fitzhugh said fear of lawsuits, the often rude behavior of hikers, and the sheer number of people who try to use open spaces make allowing access difficult today.

"They don't respect the property anymore," she said. "We have had people tell us this is God's country and you can't keep us off. I see people more and more believing they have a right to use the land."

As the Sheriff's Department's rural crime specialist, Terri Woods spends most of her time working with large landholders like Fitzhugh to prevent trespassing and related crimes.

The Ranch Watch program allows landowners to let Woods know that they want trespassing laws enforced on their properties, allowing deputies to stop interlopers.

Ranchers are also given notices to place on the cars located near forbidden trailheads, letting visitors know their license plates were turned over to police. Fitzhugh said she has filled five notebook pages with vehicle license numbers.

"Then I can run the license plates [through police computers to find out the owner and check for outstanding arrest warrants], and in most cases I'll make contact with the registered owner of the vehicle," Woods said.

The usual reaction she gets is that people don't realize that property owners objected to their use of the trails. Rarely has she had to contact repeat offenders.

"I do realize there are people in this county who say they are good trespassers, that they pick up after themselves and don't cause any damage," Woods said.

But both she and ranchers say even the most conscientious trespassers can create unintended problems on working agricultural lands: "People often don't realize the impacts they have."

For example, gates not properly secured can cause cattle to mix or get free. Sometimes the impacts are even more subtle. Fitzhugh recalls once allowing a family to picnic on her property, only to regret it once the rain came and her road flooded because the children had built a small dam in the stream.

"The people I want impacted by this article are the ones who are defiant and believe the land was given to them by God," Woods said. "There have even been publications where they advise people where to mountain bike and urging blatant trespassing."

Behind divisions over the issue of access lie generational and class differences. Many of the most staunch property rights advocates are older, richer, and more conservative, while opponents are often young and disenfranchised.

Alex Madonna, who owns Cerro San Luis Obispo, said the attitude of entitlement to access is a hallmark of the younger generation, which he said has had it easy compared to previous generations.

"They've never had to earn a dollar and don't appreciate the importance of property rights," Madonna said.

Ranger Brandi Diffenderfer patrols Cerro San Luis and sees the defiance in some trail users who tear down "No trespassing" signs and knock down barriers to closed trails.

"You keep replacing the signs and people keep stealing them," Diffenderfer said. "People know they're trespassing, but they just don't care."

"There is an ethic among some that you can't own a mountain, even if the law says you can," said county parks director Pete Jenny.

Yet Jenny said that attitude fosters divisions between trail users and property owners, divisions that can cause owners to cut off access: "It hurts everyone's ability to be able to enjoy those views."

Still, by many accounts, the ranks of those hostile to property rights are growing, the sense of entitlement to use trails across private land expanding with the population, while exercises of property rights can only make the trespassers more brazen.

Backlash

No matter how much power the law gives the owners of prized properties, trespassers will still defy that authority. In some cases, that defiance can be quite aggressive, even violent.

Nipomo resident Sehon Powers confronted two teen-aged trespassers on his 20-acre property one year ago. By his own account, Powers treated them sternly, shoving one boy, ordering them off the property, and telling them, "I'd just as soon throw your ass in the creek."

The boys left, but returned with one's older brother, 19-year-old Kristopher Dickinson, to confront Powers. A scuffle ensued–accounts differ about how it started–and Powers sustained a severe beating that left him unconscious, then hospitalized with 25 screws in his head to mend a broken jaw and other bones. Dickinson is currently serving a one-year jail sentence for the attack.

Few trespassers will react so aggressively to unwelcoming property owners, but many trespassers are growing increasingly frustrated at landowners’ unwillingness to share the vast tracts of the San Luis Obispo County countryside they control.

Mike is the president of a local mountain biking company who would only talk to New Times on condition of anonymity, saying the strident property rights climate in the county makes it difficult for him to speak publicly.

But he said that in a county like this, as covered as it is by private ranch land, trespassing is a common and accepted practice among most trail users.

"I have no hesitation in riding on private property, depending on what the property is," Mike said. "I would say jumping fences is commonplace. Part of learning to mountain bike is learning how to get over a barbed wire fence."

He said those who own vast tracts of beautiful landscape have a moral obligation not to keep it to themselves, but to share some of it with the community.

"If you own a large chunk of our area, it's a crime not to share your land," Mike said.

Eli Coplen, a lifelong San Luis Obispo resident and avid mountain biker, agrees: "The way I look at it is they can't use it all, and if we aren't hurting the land, why shouldn't we be able to use it?"

Coplen sees the division as a class issue, a battle between the rich who have large landholdings and the poor who don't.

"It's polarized between the people who have and the people who don't have," Coplen said. "It's like the serfs and the landowners."

Many of the largest ranches in the county are remnants of the vast ranchos granted to prominent Mexican families in the 1800s, shortly before the creation of California. Some trail users see trespassing as a way of redistributing that concentration of property resources.

"If there is a historic trail, one that has been open for years, it should stay open to riders," Mike said. "With the uniqueness of this area, it's almost a crime not to go out and explore it. What makes us Americans is the desire to explore, to see what's out there."

That seems to be the motivation for most trespassers. More than class conflict, civil disobedience, or a sense of entitlement, many hikers and bikers simply love the land and want to see as much of it as possible, regardless of property lines.

"If it wasn't for breaking the rules, we wouldn't get to see 90 percent of the land around us," Mike said. "It is such a cleansing act to get away from people and get back to nature."

Both Mike and Coplen say they understand the concerns of farmers and acknowledge that some trail users are irresponsible: breaking fences, leaving gates open, and straying off established trails.

"There are people who are out to ride and really don't care," Coplen said. "But most of the people I ride with are real considerate."

They also believe agriculturists exaggerate the damage done by trespassers–particularly mountain bikers–to justify keeping outsiders off their property.

"There is no comparison between the spongy tires of mountain bikes and the hoofed feet of cattle," Mike said. "The cattle cause far more environmental damage."

Greg Bettencourt of Central Coast Concerned Mountain Bikers said the popularity of mountain biking has increased the number of trail users and made mountain bikers easy targets for those concerned about the impacts of access.

"With mountain bikes there is a lot more traffic, but I don't think mountain bikes cause any more problems than cattle," Bettencourt said. "There have been misconceptions from the beginning about the influence of mountain biking on cattle and erosion."

Yet ranchers often cite erosion as a big reason for excluding mountain bikes. Some regular mountain bikers also don't see the rampant fence-breaking or open gates, leading to the impression they are being unfairly demonized.

"It does bring about a certain resentment on my end," Mike said, "because we haven't really done anything to justify the animosity shown to us."

Trail Activism

While trespassing and defiance are endemic to many trail users, the public face of trail activism is far more gentle, civic-minded, and consensus-based.

Most trail advocates acknowledge that the only way to increase access is to work cooperatively with property owners, discourage trespassing, and be good stewards of the environment.

"If the landowner doesn't want people on his property, you just can't go there," said Gary Felsman, a Sierra Club member and longtime access proponent. "Every trail I've done has been with the permission of the landowner. I'm a firm believer in negotiating to get what you need."

Groups like Central Coast Concerned Mountain Bikers and SLOPOST (San Luis Obispo Parks, Open Space and Trail) regularly do trail maintenance work and education campaigns for trail users.

"It takes more than a line on a map to create a trail," said Kathy Longacre of SLOPOST and the County Trails Committee. "People think trails just happen, but people don't believe how much work a handful of people do to make those trails go in."

Public officials say the efforts of such groups are the main reason the county has the trail system it does.

"We have a very, very limited budget for ongoing maintenance and rely on volunteers," said Jenny.

Unlike some other mountain bikers, Bettencourt takes a dim view of trespassing, saying it simply feeds the division between trail users and property owners, something that hurts trail users most.

"Those with a connection to mountain biking know they need to invest in their future," Bettencourt said. "It's not necessary to have that antagonism between mountain bikers and property owners, but the owners often really just don't want to allow access."

Although they now live in Nevada City, Paul Keating and Tristan Berlund were longtime trail activists in San Luis Obispo County and authors of perhaps of the most definitive guides for local trail users: the book "Mountain Biking the Central Coast" and two mountain biking maps released in 1997 by SLO Adventures.

Berlund said the conflicts here between trails users and private property owners are more strident then she's seen anywhere else, simply because so much of the open spaces are privately owned ranch land.

"As the population pressure increases, it becomes an issue that gets pushed to the forefront," she said.

Yet not all mountain bikers can get permission to use the private ranch land of acquaintances, as Bettencourt says he does in Cayucos. Instead, many younger mountain bikers feel resentful of being denied use of scenic trails by longtime owners of large parcels.

"You have a new culture and new ideas clashed with the old school. It is a culture clash," Berlund said, contrasting the new generation to her own.

"We belong to a culture of mountain-biking folks that are really responsible; just crazy, fanatics, about respecting private property rights and protecting the environment," said Berlund, who donates a portion of her map sales proceeds to trail maintenance efforts.

While she opposes trespassing, Berlund said that's to be expected in an area as ill-served by trail offerings as San Luis Obispo County, especially when compared to around her new home in Nevada City, where logging companies allow public access to their vast land holdings. As the population of the Central Coast grows, she predicts, the conflicts will only get worse.

"It's reaching a point where it really needs to be discussed in an open public forum," Berlund said.

Accessing the Morros

The debate over access is well-illustrated in the longstanding discussion over access to the Morros, that scenic string of mountains stretching from San Luis Obispo to Morro Bay, also known as the Seven Sisters.

Striking in their beauty, forming a near-perfect line connecting two prized communities, they seem to beckon hikers and nature lovers with the promise of gorgeous vistas and unspoiled terrain. Public access to the Morros is a mixed bag. Hikers can legally reach the top of Bishop Peak on a public easement trail, while they aren't allowed anywhere on Hollister Peak.

Islay and Black hills and Cerro Cabrillo offer some public access. Camp San Luis Obispo officials sometimes give groups permission to hike Cerro Romualdo. Morro Rock is off limits. Cerro San Luis now has some public lands, and the property owner allows people to hike or bike to the top on his property (see accompanying story).

In the early ’70s a county advisory body developed a draft plan for the Morros that called for increased public access, but it drew a strong backlash from ranchers and other large landholders and was dead on arrival at the County Board of Supervisors.

The need to plan for the future of the Morros was revived in 1993 when the Board of Supervisors and city councils in San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay adopted resolutions identifying the Morros as "an important scenic and ecological resource."

The next year the Morros Advisory Committee was formed, a 16-member board made up of property owners, business organizations, agricultural interests, and an environmental group.

Unlike the earlier effort, the current committee is weighed far more heavily toward private property interests. So it's no surprise that the "Draft Issues Paper for the Morros Planning Area," released by the committee last year, clearly places access subordinate to agricultural activities and resource protection.

"There are mixed feelings on the committee about the issue of access," Janssen said. "Most owners feel like increased access is a bad idea. Access for them now just means trouble."

The plan even opposes buying land or easements for the purpose of creating more trails: "Leapfrog acquisition of lands for the purpose of providing active public recreation should be discouraged."

Yet Janssen said such policies don't enjoy universal agreement: "There are those who think a trail from the city of San Luis Obispo to the city of Morro Bay is an admirable goal."

Such deep-seated divisions are likely to manifest themselves when the plan enters the public hearing phase, which could still be as many as two years away. That's when the issue of access could burst onto the public agenda.

"There are lots of differing attitudes about public access today, and I don't know how this planning process will go," Janssen said.

Until that public debate takes place, however, property owners call the shots, making conflicts with trespassers unavoidable.

Controlling Access

It's hard to plead ignorance to trespassing if you try to climb off-limits Hollister Peak from Turri Road, the easiest access point. Jeff Buckingham has made sure of that.

After buying a large ranch that extends from Turri Road to the summit of Hollister Peak three years ago, Buckingham reinforced the fence and posted signs like: "Zero Tolerance for Trespassing. This Ranch and Hollister Peak are completely on private property and access is not permitted by anyone at any time. This area is patrolled 7 days a week. Anyone crossing this fence will be cited by the Sheriff. There are no exceptions and no warnings."

Since then, he's turned dozens of hikers and bikers over to deputies.

"Anyone who's out there goes right down to the waiting sheriff's deputies and gets cited. It's not a pleasant experience," said Buckingham.

His decision to shut down Hollister is based both on his desire to protect the resources on Hollister and his right to privacy: "I'm not going to have people I don't know wandering around."

Hollister is such a historically beloved spot that its image graces the official county seal. To some, it seems like a public resource. But Buckingham feels the best way to show his love for Hollister is to keep people away from it.

"The peak is home to plants and animals that will be better off without human intervention," Buckingham said. "We just felt the best way to protect it was to shut it down."

Buckingham said he has no sympathy for those who feel that people shouldn't be allowed to own majestic mountains or cut off access to some of the county's most scenic vistas.

"There is a very small number of people who generally don't have a lot of life experience who feel they should be able to do what they want and go where they want," Buckingham said.

Many of those whose desire to explore outweighs their respect for property rights have been forced to acknowledge Buckingham's legal authority, people like Fred Hornaday and three friends from San Luis Obispo who got trespassing tickets on Hollister in January.

"To him, we were in his living room in the middle of the night, sneaking up on him. That was his analogy, but I don't really agree with it," Hornaday said.

Public pressure for access has in some cases had an impact on those who control the land

Such was the case in 1989 and 1990, when the managers of Poly Canyon tried to shut down public access to those trails because of concerns about problems that access creates for agricultural operations.

"We tried to shut it down, but the college said we couldn't do that," said Gary Ketcham, the farm supervisor at Cal Poly.

Although owned by Cal Poly, both Poly and adjacent Stenner canyons create an eight-mile trail loop that has been popular and well-traveled since the 1970s, and there was a loud public outcry when closing the canyons was proposed.

When Ketcham arrived at Cal Poly in 1969, he said Poly Canyon was off-limits to trail users: "There was no trespassing. We treated it like a private ranch."

He said things began to change in the canyons during the fitness craze that began in the ’70s, when joggers started to regularly use the canyon, followed in the ’80s by the mountain bikes.

"We used to try to stop them, but at a certain point you just throw your hands up," Ketcham said, adding, "I don't think the trespassing laws have any real teeth."

The trails in Poly and Stenner canyons are probably more heavily used than any in the county, and that creates problems for Ketcham, who said he and his workers are constantly fixing fences and trying to control erosion.

"Any activity back there can interfere with our operations," Ketcham said. "And environmentally, I think they are tearing it up back there, they really are."

To mountain bikers like Bettencourt, those impacts are a testament to the need for more trails: "The more trails you have, the less impact you have to any particular trail."

Holding the Line

Serving on both the County Trails Committee and SLOPOST, Longacre knows the county needs more trails. But most of her efforts have been focused on maintaining existing inventories.

"I don't think expanding access is necessarily the goal of the Trails Committee. I'd say it is maintaining access to existing trails," Longacre said. "We are losing access more than expanding access."

In recent years, she has watched historically used trails on the Nipomo Mesa, along Highway 227, and in other parts of the county being erased by development and intensified agricultural use (such as when grazing lands become vineyards).

"You used to be able to ride from Arroyo Grande to Pismo Beach [on trails], but not anymore," she said. "Fences have gone up in increasing numbers, almost weekly."

Even in active recreation areas like Montaña de Oro State Park, Longacre notes there has been no new trail construction in many years, despite the increasing population and continued popularity of hiking and mountain biking. And in nearby Los Osos historically used trails on both the hillsides and lowlands have been cut off by new development.

"We've lost over the last 20 years, as development has occurred, the private lands that people have had access to," said Mary Caldwell of Nipomo Community Pathways, a trail advocacy group.

So the approach of her group has been to push for trail dedications when new projects get approved and to work with property owners to secure easements connecting Nipomo's parks and other open spaces.

"The developers know they have to give back something to get what they want. They're learning that Nipomo really values its rural character and these pathways," Caldwell said.

But with Nipomo being one of the fastest-growing areas in the county, and with much of that development being individual parcels and lot splits that carry no requirements for trail dedications, the community has lost ground.

"There are less safe, scenic places to ride than there were 10 years ago, and we are trying to address that," Caldwell said. "In the last five years especially we've lost a lot of access."

The most vigilant city in recent years is San Luis Obispo, which has aggressively sought to buy or acquire easements over property with historic trails, formalizing and improving trails on Bishop Peak, Cerro San Luis, South Hills, Islay Hill, and Reservoir Canyon.

"It's a matter of making these trails safe, defined, and legal," said Neil Havlik, the city's natural resources manager. "There were trails that people were using, and what we did is legalize it."

By acknowledging and legalizing public access, the city has also been able to create well-defined trails and prevent trespassers from finding their own way up a mountain, which can be dangerous and create erosion and other problems.

"One of the problems you always have is a place like Bishop's Peak just gets loved to death," Havlik said.

By expanding legal trail offerings around the city, Havlik said, other private property owners should have fewer problems with trespassers.

"Having four or five or six areas does provide some diversity of experience, and our hope is that will take the pressure off the private property, with all the problems that entails," Havlik said.

Havlik said the city is currently processing many offers of trail dedications from private property owners as part of the city's quest to create an open-space greenbelt around the city.

Among the next places that could be added to the city's inventory of open space, Havlik said, are at Reservoir Canyon and in the Irish Hills, where up to six miles of existing trails could be legally opened to the public.

The Land Conservancy of San Luis Obispo County has been working to develop a "city to the sea" trail extending from San Luis Obispo to Avila Beach.

"We don't have any landowners who are opposed at this point. But they all have different issues they're concerned about," said Ray Belknap, executive director of the Land Conservancy. "We've found it's almost impossible to make generalizations about landowners."

Another county priority is completing a trail loop around Santa Margarita Lake. Officials are currently negotiating with the Bureau of Land Management to purchase the final section of property.

Trail advocates feel a sense of urgency to address the issue of access, knowing that now may be the only opportunity. For example, cities like Paso Robles have done little over the years to create trails and, as a result, the fast-growing city now has virtually no public trails.

"There is no access in Paso Robles for people to go hiking or mountain biking," Felsman said. "None." Æ

About the only property Steven T. Jones owns is a mountain bike.