Land Use

Millions of privately owned acres in National Park Service boundaries could be developed into luxury homes or commercial enterprises because the federal government has not allocated funds to buy out these lands, according to two reports issued this week. About 4.3 million acres of privately owned land lie within the 391 National Park Service properties nationwide, according to a National Parks Conservation Assn. report released Tuesday. Of these acres, 1.

When Richard Nixon made San Clemente his western White House, the late satirist Art Hoppe described the population as "15,000 conservative Republicans, 2,000 surfers, five poor people [and] roughly the same number of liberal Democrats." That was in 1972; today the population is 65,000 or so and it's possible they've chased off the last of the poor people and the liberals. As a matter of politics and philosophy, San Clemente has long been friendly to business, to growth, to builders.

The federal government on Thursday took the first step toward a massive expansion of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area as President Bush signed legislation ordering the Interior Department to consider making additions to the protected area.

The southern half of this swath of grasslands and chiseled pink spires looks untouched from a distance. Closer up, the scars of history are easy to see. Unexploded bombs lie in ravines, a reminder of when the military confiscated the land from the Oglala Sioux tribe during World War II and turned it into an artillery range. Poachers who have stolen thousands of fossils over the years have left gouges in the landscape.

In downtown Los Angeles on Saturday there were sights and smells and sounds of a milestone event the concrete urban core had not hosted in more than a century. Fresh bark. Tinkling water cascading down a rocky slope. California sycamores and coast live oaks, an expansive meadow of velvety green grass and squealing children everywhere -- in soccer fields and on slides, clambering atop playground snakes and turtles.

All that's left of the 295 seaside trailers just north of Laguna Beach, once festooned with flowerpots and tidy patios, are some crumbling concrete slabs. And memories. Dump trucks and earthmovers are scraping across 35 acres of canyon and beach, transforming the funky little enclave that was El Morro Village into Southern California's first coastal campground in two decades.

When the bulldozers come to Ft. MacArthur next spring, Joe Janesic will take it personally. For more than two decades, the 40-year-old has been a mainstay of the historic military site in San Pedro that was built in 1914 and served as an Army post until 1974. He organizes events, conducts tours, handles media and even restores vintage phones -- all as a volunteer. A founding member of the Ft. MacArthur Museum, he has dedicated his life to preserving every relic on the grounds.

Boulder County, Colo., officials acted illegally when they turned down a local church's request to double its size, but their decision was not motivated by religious bias, a federal jury decided this week. Rocky Mountain Christian Church sued the county in 2006 after being denied a permit to expand. Church officials said that county commissioners had violated a federal law protecting religious institutions from discrimination by local governments.

On one side of sea grass-tufted dunes at Lawson's Landing, the mouth of Tomales Bay opens toward sparkling waves, rocky outcroppings and, in the distance, the brown bluffs of Bodega Head. On the other lies a hodgepodge of more than 200 weather-beaten trailer homes along with a boathouse, a snack bar and sheds. Nearby sprawls a 1,000-vehicle campground dotted with picnic tables, fire rings and portable toilets -- all amid coastal wetlands at the base of towering dune formations.

A graveyard vineyard in this East Bay city could yield some wholly delightful results for Catholic cemetery officials who are growing vines on surplus land in hopes of making sacramental wine. Zinfandel and cemeteries might seem an unlikely pairing, but there's an ancient link between wine and the church -- for example, the water-into-wine miracle of the wedding at Cana and the Last Supper, says Robert Seelig, director of funeral and cemetery services for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland.