MAMMOTH LAKES — Like so many conflicts in the American West, this one began when newcomers put up a gate.
It was an artsy barrier, much like the posh developments that began to swell Mammoth Lakes even before Dave McCoy sold the famed Mammoth Mountain ski area in 2005. Owners in the new gated communities said they were only trying to keep cars off Ranch Road, where locals had long parked to ski or snowboard the Sherwins, a series of much-loved powder chutes on the edge of town.
The fight that ensued forced many here to ponder whether the area's public lands were doomed to suffer the fate of some Malibu beaches -- public in name, but private in practice.
Ranch Road wasn't the only place changing when the gate went up in 2005. A development boom was on. First came the 230-unit Village at Mammoth condo-retail development, complete with a new gondola, and several accompanying posh residences. There are 12 more large-scale developments in the works and plans to refit the airstrip for commercial flights.
"This got me to thinking," said John Wentworth, a local resident and avid backcountry skier who helped push a referendum that eventually won access around the gate. "How could a community whose entire economy is predicated on recreation find itself in a situation like this?"
In the hurly-burly of the boom, nobody was seeing the big picture quite like Wentworth. A co-producer of director David Lynch's "Mulholland Dr." and "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me," he had bought a house in Mammoth and found it difficult to get around by foot or mountain bike. In big snows, pedestrians must take to the streets as SUVs and buses slide by. How hard could it be to build a trail system that really worked? Pretty difficult, it turns out.
Wentworth founded a nonprofit called Mammoth Lakes Trails and Public Access and took on a new persona as city planner, environmentalist and politician. He dived into an exhaustive, originally self-financed effort to master plan the connections between the town and surrounding wild lands, picking up backers and new recruits along the way.
First, the nonprofit was hired by the town to map almost 200 points of recreational access. Then, the group persuaded the Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, the town government, the U.S. Forest Service, several developers and various interest groups, such as Nordic skiers and snowmobilers, to meet and discuss their views. Just getting all those people in a room was a victory to many.
