Ring of Trails Weds City to Rural Past

THOUSAND OAKS — On a hill above a blue reservoir, the trail dissolves into a field of grass and wild mustard. A line of bent yellow stalks show where bikers have forged ahead, then given up.

Two miles away, beyond streets and homes and subdivisions, the trail starts again in a condo’s backyard. Climbing a rutted fire road, it leaves behind the scraped and flattened earth that soon will become a new neighborhood.

For nearly three decades, city planners have worked on this trail, piecing it together link by link. They have negotiated for the rights to old utility roads, wheedled gifts of land from movie stars and squeezed developers for property they can add to the system. Their handiwork, when complete, will circle Thousand Oaks in a nearly unbroken chain.

More than that, the Conejo Valley Ring Trail will enshrine in dirt and gravel one of this community’s most cherished notions: the idea that a ring of undeveloped open space should always surround this growing city.

The planners and local volunteers building and maintaining this trail did not set out to create a Central Park, a green heart to a concrete city. Instead, they surrounded themselves with green, gathered it around the town’s outskirts like a moat, a way to keep the San Fernando Valley’s grinding urbanization at bay.

The ring is about 85% complete, a dusty line linking oak groves to grasslands to crumbling cliffs. Another segment, threading through a proposed housing development, will be designed soon, as the developer fights for city approval of his plans.

The trail is a lesson in Thousand Oaks history and the slow process of building what amounts to a unique, 45-mile park--a park that will last, planners hope, as long as the city.

Decades ago, the city’s original General Plan called for homes to spread across this grassy plateau. The land, privately owned at the time, was flat and broad and seemed a logical place to build.

But city residents had grown attached to the plateau, known as Wildwood Mesa. When Orange Builders proposed putting about 170 houses on the land, the project touched off one of the battles over development that have shaped Thousand Oaks politics.

This battle climaxed in an unusual land swap brokered by the city, four private firms and three public agencies in 1986. In the end, Orange built about 50 homes on the mesa, and the rest of the land--228 acres--became part of Wildwood Park.

“We were clicking our heels, it was so ingenious,” said Rorie Skei, chairwoman of the city’s Conejo Open Space Conservation Agency and a Thousand Oaks resident since 1972.

Although the Wildwood land swap was unusually complex, it followed the pattern that has characterized the building of most of this city’s park and open space: The city pushes for donations of open space from developers, who then tout those donations when trying to win public support.

Although the process yields results, it still troubles some within the city’s slow-growth contingent.

“I think of it as a bribe in a sense,” said City Councilwoman Linda Parks, an ardent hiker, environmentalist and opponent of many recent development projects. “If a developer offered you a million or half a million for building in open space, you’d say no. But if they offer land that’s worth a million, we say yes.”

However residents view it, the tug of war between city officials and developers is once again in full swing several miles east of Wildwood.

Plans call for 273 homes on about 90 acres of former range land, straddling the trail’s proposed path. Alternating between the photos and maps, developer Michael Rosenfeld shows where the new streets and blocks will be if the Woodbridge project wins the City Council’s approval.

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The proposal is already drawing fire, with critics complaining that its location would bridge the moat of open space around Thousand Oaks and link the city with Simi Valley’s Wood Ranch neighborhood, which lies just over a hill.

Rosenfeld, a principal in Woodridge Associates L.L.C., has heard those complaints. He insists, however, that the project will do just the opposite. If approved, Woodridge will donate 625 acres to the city, adding another link to the ring of open space.

“It’s a real critical piece of the whole mosaic, he said. “We’re damn proud of it. We’re giving away a lot of land.”

He has no illusions about whether the land gift and trail access will win over all opponents.

“There are some elements in the community who wouldn’t be satisfied unless we dedicated 100% of our land,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll satisfy that element.”

How do you build a trail? More often than not, you don’t. You look for an old ranch road or fire road going in the general direction you want, then negotiate for access rights to it.

Some of the open spaces along the ring trail, including the slopes below Simi Peak, are a maze of rutted dirt paths. Utility roads shadow electrical lines. An old dirt drive runs past a toppled, rusted windmill--the remains of an abandoned ranch.

For places where no ready-made trail exists, Mark Towne and the conservation agency’s members must design one.

Towne, an agency staffer, keeps tabs on the entire Thousand Oaks trail system. When a development project with the potential to affect the trail starts wending its way through the city’s Planning Department, Towne notifies the trail committee’s members.

If rabbits outnumber people on much of the trail’s eastern swing, humans take over south of the Ventura Freeway. Humans on foot, bikes and horseback.

The trail’s southern stretch, better known as Los Robles Trail, has almost everything a mountain biker could want: Smooth straightaways. Rocky patches. Good hills.

“It’s perfect because there’s a little bit of everything,” said landscape architect Tyler Gold, who rides the trail about twice a week. “You can tailor your ride.”

Farther uphill, Greg Estel of Pomona was taking a nostalgic hike with his sister, Monica Dietrich of Los Feliz. The two grew up in Thousand Oaks and miss having the wilderness at their backdoor.

“If you’re in Los Angeles, you drive up to Baldy or up to Big Bear,” Estel said. “Here, it’s just down the street.”

The mix of hikers and bikers on the trail is, itself, unusual.

Jeff Alexander, the conservation agency’s chairman, notes that many cities and parks limit trail access to certain kinds of users. Hikers, yes. Speed-happy mountain bikers, no.

Years ago, Thousand Oaks grappled with the same choice. When the trails committee was formed in 1989, one of its chief tasks was to make sure the hiking, biking and equestrian communities could live with each other.

“That’s how we started--literally fighting among ourselves about who could and could not use the trails,” Alexander said.

The system they worked out ensures that all three groups are welcome, so long as they respect each other and yield the right of way to each other when necessary. Signs posted at trail heads drive that point home.

There are occasional conflicts. Los Robles Trail is loved by mountain bikers, who swarm the path on weekends and weekday evenings. But for those on foot or horseback, bikers screaming around hairpin turns high above Ventu Park can pose a problem.

Sipping from a water bottle during a brief break, mountain biker Kent Gleason said people quickly learn to watch out for one another, especially on weekends when the trail fills up.

“You’ve got to be careful,” he said. “I have come close to spooking horses. You don’t want to do that. You don’t want a rider to get dumped out here. I mean, think about it--the rider’s head is like 10 feet off the ground.”

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For a few horrible days in October 1993, the hillsides were engulfed in flame, ash and wind-driven sparks. The Green Meadow fire, started by an arsonist near Los Robles Golf Course, marched up the ridge and charred 38,200 acres.

But the land has recovered. Its proper name is the Hope Nature Preserve, a 350-acre gift Bob Hope gave the city in 1976, and on summer evenings the air is alive with birds knifing through the sky.

Harman Rasnow is still recovering from the fire. His ridge-top home next to the nature preserve burned to the ground, and he is still working on a replacement.

Rasnow’s property is one of the trail’s landmarks, and one of its anomalies. The 200-acre plot is packed with antennas, 70 in all, routing cellular phone calls and Fire Department calls throughout the area. And the land, Rasnow’s since 1963, is still private property.

Rather than sell his land, Rasnow agreed to let the city blaze a trail through it. He wonders now if he made the right choice. Hikers and bikers often leave the trail and nose around his property. Or they use his private road, a gated extension of Ventu Park Road, to reach the ring trail.

“You should hear how abusive they get,” Rasnow said.

What’s more, companies leasing space for their antennas want security and don’t want unauthorized people around their equipment. So trespassers, Rasnow said, are a threat to his income.

Towne and the trail committee are well aware of Rasnow’s complaints. Last year, they even finished an access trail west of Ventu Park Road that will give cyclists a legal way to climb the ridge.

Living with his family on the ridge, Rasnow understands the trail’s beauty and worth. He walks a two-mile loop on his property most mornings, and loves being able to see the ocean from so far away. When he let the trail go through, he thought the people using it would also be nature-lovers who wouldn’t pose a problem.

“Every time we have a confrontation with them, I remind them, ‘If you keep this up, you’ll lose the trail,’ ” he said.

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Conejo Valley ring Trail

The Ring Trail is open to hikers, bikers and equestrians. Motorized vehicles are prohibited.

Sources: Conejo Recreation and Park District; Conejo Open Space Conservation Agency; Researched by DAVID R. BAKER / Los Angeles Times