Plotting a 3-mile path between Fort Ross, Stillwater Cove parks

Sonoma County park planners are laying the groundwork for a more than 3-mile stretch of coastal trail that would connect Fort Ross Historic State Park with Stillwater Cove Regional Park through Timber Cove.

The new trail would expand opportunities to tour a remote section of the north Sonoma Coast on foot or bicycle and would account for another leg in the California Coastal Trail, a system of public trails intended eventually to run the entire 1,200-mile length of California, from the border of Mexico to the Oregon state line.

Though it will be some years before the Timber Cove Trail is fully designed, funded and built, the idea is to take advantage of its proximity to existing parks and publicly managed lands, making trail connections that amplify the impact of its addition to the trail inventory, said Mark Cleveland, senior park planner with Sonoma County Regional Parks.

California State Park personnel have made similar plans to fill in gaps along existing bluff-top trails in Fort Ross and Salt Point state parks in hopes of tying it all together one day as part of the California Coastal Trail.

“We’re supportive of it,” said Gary Shannon, a state parks landscape architect who participated in the planning. “A lot of places, the ‘coastal trail’ is the highway, and a lot of it is about getting people off that highway because it’s not always a safe place to be.”

Several Timber Cove residents said they’ve never seen more foot and, especially, bicycle traffic through their community on a very narrow, hilly highway that threatens tragedy at every turn. Alternative routes for walkers and cyclists would make passage both less risky and less frustrating, they said.

“It’s dangerous,” said Richard Hojohn, a 30-plus year resident. “There’s spots (on the road) where you don’t have any room to maneuver.”

As currently envisioned, the county’s Timber Cove Trail would run mostly alongside Highway 1 to take advantage of existing public right-of-ways through a swath of residential development on both sides of the road, Cleveland said.

Whether it’s a single, multi-use trail on one side of the road, adjacent trails for pedestrian and cyclist use, or some other configuration depends in part on public input, some of it expected at a Saturday meeting at Fort Ross School, Cleveland said.

The trail would depart Fort Ross near Windermere Point on the south, heading northward toward Timber Cove and Cormorant Point, where the landmark Timber Cove Inn and Bufano Peace Statue beckon visitors toward a series of bluff-top trails that round the point south of the Timber Cove Subdivision.

Moving north from there, bluff and beach access is blocked for more than a mile because of private ownership.

But at Stillwater Cove Regional Park, the highway-aligned pathway would connect with existing county trails in the 400-acre park leading down to the scenic cove at the mouth of Stockhoff Creek and back up along the creek into ferns and redwoods.

New pedestrian pathways could extend northward along the curving bluff on state-owned land managed by the county, connecting with additional trails to be built with an easement on property that’s part of the Ocean Cove Campground.

“These are possibilities, not proposals,” Cleveland said.

The county park is separated from neighboring Salt Point State Park by a narrow sliver of privately held land a mere 138 feet across, Cleveland said.

County park officials are still hopeful of acquiring an easement or making a purchase of the land at some point, though previous efforts have so far failed to win over the landowner, Cleveland said.

Any future permission for a path across the land would make an overland trail possible through Stillwater Cove park connecting the Timber Cove Trail with Salt Point park, he said.

Cleveland said a unified trail on the west side of Highway 1 is generally preferred, largely because of the relative simplicity and expense, but there are “pinch points” along the trail’s likely route where highly structural solutions are required because of narrow passage or obstacles.

There’s no estimate yet, but it will cost millions of dollars to construct, Cleveland said.

Park planners also have to work with landowners in a variety of locations where private landscaping, mailboxes and other private property “come right up to the road,” encroaching on Caltrans rights-of-way and in the path of potential trails.

The parks department is still in the early part of the planning phase, wrapping up work on a feasibility plan for which the county received a $200,000 California Coastal Conservancy grant in 2009.

The next step will be environmental studies and deliberations by the county Board of Supervisors, Cleveland said.

Though the plans for a Timber Cove path are just being made public, “through word of mouth, we’re hearing a lot of inquiries into it already,” Cleveland said.

“Unfortunately, for the difficult parts, we’re definitely looking a ways down the road before we have anything constructed,” Cleveland said.

Park personnel hope to explain the process and obtain input from neighbors at the Saturday meeting, which begins at 3 p.m. at Fort Ross School, 30600 Seaview Road.

More information is available at http://parks.sonomacounty.ca.gov/About_Us/Project_Details/Timber_Cove_Trail_Feasibility_Study.aspx.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@MaryCallahanB.