Long before developers built multimillion-dollar homes atop the ridges in the Santa Monica Mountains, hikers, horseback riders and bikers beat trails across the privately held land that affords stunning ocean views, effectively using the area as a giant park.
Though the chaparral just west of the 405 Freeway is giving way to exclusive gated communities, many recreational users contend they have the right to keep using the trails, especially because the trails connect to paths in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
Homeowners and developers say they are willing to provide access to well-established trails, but they do not always agree with trail users on which paths are established and what sort of access ought to be granted. The result has been a simmering dispute, punctuated by lawsuits.
Another round began this week, when the Center for Law in the Public Interest and two other groups filed a lawsuit demanding public access to what they are calling the Mount St. Mary's Trail.
According to the lawsuit, the trail runs "north from behind Mount St. Mary's College, along the Mount St. Mary's Fire Road." The suit says the trail is an established footway in use since at least the 1950s. The lawsuit also says that in August, a developer erected a locked metal gate across the trail and topped it with concertina wire, severing a connection to the Canyonback, Westridge and Sullivan Canyon trails and ultimately to the 20,000-acre "Big Wild" network in the Santa Monica Mountains.
The developer tells a different story.
"There is no official trail," said Frans Bigelow, project manager for developer Castle & Cooke. "The trail they are calling the Mount St. Mary's Trail is a fire road." Bigelow said the road was closed in 1978 when the area was used as a landfill, not in August, as the lawsuit alleges. What happened in August, he said, was that the gate, which had been partially ripped out, was repaired. The Fire Department keeps keys for gates on fire roads and for gated communities.
Robert Garcia, a lawyer with the Center for Law in the Public Interest, said that it is "irrelevant" that the trail is a fire road.
"We have declarations from 20 people or more who have been using the trail back to 1950," he said. "We have a declaration from a nun at Mount St. Mary's."
"This is part of an overall trend by which wealthy enclaves think they can simply take over public parks, public beaches, public trails," he added. "We're not going to allow it."
