Illicit parties in Santa Rosa open space pose concern for neighbors, park rangers

A few spent glow sticks littered a rocky trail near Trione-Annadel State Park on Thursday, remnants of an illegal party and bonfire this week that drew dozens of teenagers to a wooded hilltop hollow.

It’d be easy to miss, but generations of hikers and wanderers have found their way to the narrow path on Santa Rosa’s eastern outskirts. It leads to an abandoned quarry cut into the peak generations ago when Sonoma County was a prime producer of paving blocks and building stones.

Those days long gone, the site today is something of a covert amphitheater with high craggy walls shaded by oak trees and poison oak. It is a tranquil retreat for some, a renegade redoubt for others.

Parents have brought their children to the spot for illicit roast marshmallows. Boy Scouts have earned merit badges there. Stargazers have for years ignored the no trespassing signs for nighttime gatherings.

“That was the party spot when I was a kid,” said Michael Edwards, 66, a retired state firefighter who lives in a neighborhood just beyond the property gate. “That was a party spot when my kids were kids.”

But some law enforcement and parks officials say larger gatherings with a heavier impact have come with the rise of social media sites, giving teenagers the ability to spread the word of a party at lightning speed.

“Every six months, we haul out 100 to 200 pounds of trash, liquor bottles, beer bottles after huge parties there,” said Neill Fogarty, a supervising State Parks ranger. Sometimes there is also evidence of drug use, he said. “It’s become a kind of rave site.”

Complaints about Monday’s late night party brought Santa Rosa firefighters, police and county park rangers to Violetti Drive in eastern Santa Rosa, which dead ends at the iron gate. Neighbors and park officials - who patrol surrounding land but not the quarry area - have said they’re concerned if the parties go unchecked they could cause bigger problems.

Just one spark could set fire to the trees in an area primed for wildfire, said Fogarty.

“It hasn’t happened yet, but it doesn’t mean it can’t,” Fogarty said. “It puts all the wildland in jeopardy.”

The piece of land is owned by the Sonoma County Water Agency and is nestled between 5,000-acre Trione-Annadel State Park and the county’s adjacent Spring Lake Regional Park.

For the most part, hikers and other visitors are welcome during daylight hours. The Water Agency has allowed public access since it bought the land in the 1950s because the parcel is a key connector to the surrounding park land, spokesman Brad Sherwood said.

A private security firm patrols Water Agency properties around the county, including the one at the end of Violetti Road. Sherwood said they have increased the patrols on that property since Monday's party, and they have asked the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office to spend more time in the area as well.

“It’s not public park land,” Sherwood said. “But we want to embrace the Sonoma County open space culture and that’s why you don’t see a fence around it.”

Pat Violetti, 84, of Santa Rosa remembers when the land belonged to her family.

“We had so much fun in there, but we had to be careful of rattlesnakes,” Violetti said. “My father taught us very young not to move rocks around.”

Violetti’s grandmother, an Italian immigrant named Angelina Violetti, bought the property as a widow with six children to feed. She grew up in the Piemontese region of Italy and her family ran a quarry.

“She knew she had to raise her children and make some money, and that’s the only thing she knew anything about,” Violetti said. “I always wondered how she knew there was so much rock up there.”

Violetti spent her childhood hiking up the hill from her grandmother’s house, on what’s now Channel Drive, and exploring the hills, playing in the frog pond dug by her father, Richard Violetti.

The family held celebrations and gatherings there. It is also where they have gone to mourn. Many family members’ ashes have been spread on the site.

“The quarry really holds some wonderful stories,” Violetti said.

On Monday, the quarry was transformed into a prime party spot when young people began hoofing up the hill, hauling tables and alcohol. They marked the route with glow sticks.

Edwards, the retired firefighter, said he may have been the first person to call police about 11:30 p.m. Monday when he stepped outside onto his deck and saw the cars lining Violetti Road and other surrounding streets in the small neighborhood. The commotion had telltale signs that a teenage party was afoot.

Several teens who had congregated at the end of his driveway on Violetti Road talked about texting friends that the coast was clear.

“My big issue is the amount of alcohol they are consuming,” Edwards said. “Then they’re all getting into vehicles and driving away. Being a firefighter all my life, I’ve seen all the things that can go wrong with that.”

By the time the first fire engine arrived and firefighters started hiking up the hill, word of their arrival had already spread. Dozens and dozens of teens and young adults were streaming past them, making their escape down the hill, Santa Rosa Fire Battalion Chief Ken Sebastiani said.

They had extinguished the small bonfire on their way out, but the ashes were still warm.

Such conspicuous parties aren’t frequent - maybe twice a year - neighbors and park officials said.

Neighbors said they’ve watched people pushing generators up the hill in wheelbarrows for amplified music. People have carried couches, chairs and tables into the site. Law enforcement and park officials said they’ve hauled significant amounts of garbage, mostly beer and alcohol bottles and food trash, off the property.

Another neighbor, Nancy Chapman, 58, said she has come home about 10 p.m. after the swing shift as a supply manager for AT&T, and called police after seeing cars park along the street at the late hour.

Chapman has even called out to people with a request: “I’ve told them, ‘Please don’t toss your matches.’?”

Two years ago, police arrested a group of teens suspected of firing guns in a meadow near the abandoned quarry on a Saturday afternoon.

Cleanup after the biggest gatherings is time consuming and costly. It typically involves a half dozen or so state and county park rangers and park aides, a couple of trucks and “lots of garbage bags,” Fogarty said.

“We get so tired of cleaning up broken bottles, picking up the nitrous canisters they’re huffing. A lot of fun has been had there, and we have to come in and clean it up,” Fogarty said.

Many neighbors say the specter of bonfires in the forested hillside behind their homes is terrifying.

Pete Dellavalle, 55, remembers the chills that overtook him as he watched a firefighting helicopter dip its bucket into Spring Lake and buzz overhead to dump it onto a blaze in the state park several years ago.

“With the speed with which fire moves ...,” he said, trailing off as he looked at the dry grassy hillside. “The distance between here and there is nothing.”

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 707-521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.