A parkway we monitor as a model of what the Parkway could become regarding how it is governed (by a JPA and a nonprofit organization) the San Dieguito River Park was seriously burned in the recent wildfires.
.D. COUNTY WILDFIRES
Long-planned river park is dealt a major setback
By Elizabeth Fitzsimons
STAFF WRITER
November 4, 2007
NORTH COUNTY – In this rolling sea of ash, where everything was gray and nothing seemed alive, there was a gleam of white.
It was a Northern Harrier hawk, perched on a rock. In a flash, it was up, wings outstretched, carving fat circles over the denuded land below.
There still must be something for it to eat.
Hard to believe. Much of the San Dieguito River Park, from Lake Sutherland northeast of Ramona to Rancho Santa Fe, burned in the Witch Creek fire. In some spots, there's nothing left of once-heavy thickets but stubble and light ash where the fire burned white-hot.
The fire consumed 62 percent of the 80,000-acre open-space park, where one day paths will be linked to form the 55-mile Coast-to-Crest Trail from the ocean to Volcan Mountain near Julian.
The park has been in the making since 1989, when a joint powers authority was formed by the county and five cities. Over the years, the agency has acquired land for the park, cobbling it together piece by piece.
The fire was a major setback.
It destroyed the 1880s Sikes Adobe Farmhouse in south Escondido, which had recently been restored. It laid waste to park headquarters, a 1920s house in a finger canyon in the San Pasqual Valley.
The house was one of three in the canyon to burn. Two homes survived, one with a swimming pool where 20 people, unable to flee, huddled together as the fire roared around them.
“It started at the head of the river park and it just came right down through the river park,” said Dick Bobertz, the park's executive director.
Much of the park is closed, and rangers and volunteers are assessing the damage, taking note of burned bridges, dead animals, and places where the trails have been obscured by ashy dirt.
