A closer look at the $25 million Eel River Canyon preserve set to become California’s newest wildland park

“We are going to fight this tooth and nail,” McGuire said.

The conservancy, which plans to open the preserve to the public in a year or so, is starting to plan the parking lot, restrooms, ranger station and residence, campground and 25 miles of well-marked trails to accommodate hiking, horseback riding, mountain biking, camping and kayaking, all with a permit at no charge.

Several trails will lead to the river, with a campground at a large grove of buckeye trees along the main road. Secondary development will include access for kayaks and rafts at each end of the preserve’s riverfront.

Some visitors, including volunteers and researchers, will be able to stay at the 10-bedroom Witter Lodge, with power, water, an expansive kitchen and dining room and a swimming pool, where several generations of the family relaxed for decades.

A small deck affords a stunning river view, with a marijuana garden and house in plain sight directly across the water.

The remote canyon is cannabis country, a haven for reclusive marijuana growers in an area with no prying eyes and readily available water.

Witter, who died in 1969, cofounded with family members Dean Witter & Co. in 1924 and grew it into the largest investment house on the West Coast. Described by one of his grandchildren as a “mountain of a man,” Witter decorated the lodge with trophies from his big game hunting travels.

McGuire is enthused because the Eel River Canyon Preserve and the adjacent 3,019-acre Emerald Waters Reserve, another conservancy property, will provide a nearly 10-mile stretch of the proposed 320-mile Great Redwood Trail connecting San Francisco and Humboldt bays.

That stretch would be one of the first backcountry segments of the trail, which McGuire described as a “once in a lifetime project.”

The trail would be built through the river canyon on the abandoned Northwestern Pacific Railroad, which crosses the river on the Island Mountain Bridge onto the preserve and proceeds along the east side of the river.

The railroad, completed in 1914, once ran 271 miles from Schellville in Sonoma County to Eureka, and in 1998 became the first railroad shut down for safety reasons. At one spot in the canyon, twisted steel tracks lie on a hillside next to the river, resembling a scene from a Salvador Dali painting.

In all, the new preserve has 15 miles of riverfront along the Eel’s main stem and another three miles along the river’s north fork, which forms the southern boundary of the preserve.

David Myers, the conservancy’s president, first spied the Witter ranch on a helicopter flight over the Eel River in 2005 and determined it had all the qualities of a national park. It wasn’t for sale at the time, but 15 years later Witter’s heirs made it available and Myers declared the nonprofit was “all in.”

In Witter’s day, a railroad station at Kekawaka Creek at the ranch’s northern border provided easy access for folks coming all the way from San Francisco.

Getting there now requires a drive to Covelo in Mendocino County’s Round Valley, 124 miles from Santa Rosa, capped by an hourlong ride at 20 to 30 mph on a mostly dirt road to the preserve gate.

The payoff is sensational.

A recent daylong tour of the preserve with Luke Farmer, the conservancy’s regional director in charge of the Eel River property and Jenner Headlands, resembled a safari.

A four-point black-tailed buck deer, his heavily antlered head bowed low for scent, engaged in mating behavior with two diminutive females not far from the Witter Lodge, which will retain its name in acknowledgment of the family’s decision to see it preserved forever.

A small number of Roosevelt elk, with hulking tan bodies and dark brown heads, necks and feet, appeared at one end of Rice Lake, an extensive wetlands. Two herds averaging up to 40 of the elusive elk range on and off the preserve.

Farmer, who is exploring the preserve’s numerous unmarked roads, called the elk sighting a “momentous experience.” Roosevelt elk are the largest of six subspecies of elk in North America, with bulls weighing up to 1,200 pounds.

The preserve will allow limited deer hunting and welcome hunting of the nonnative feral pigs that uproot acres of grassland.

Located on the slope of Lake Mountain in the Coast Ranges of Mendocino and Trinity counties, the preserve includes grass land, forests, oak woodlands, streams and wetlands, invigorated by October’s rains.

“It is unbelievable how much water the property has,” Farmer said. “It is a blessing to see it like this again.”

In spring, the hills erupt in a palette of wildflowers, with lupin forming swaths of blue and purple across the slopes, accentuating the contours of the landscape, Farmer said.

From a vantage point above Kekawaka Creek, an adjoining ridge was covered with the bare, blackened trees killed by last year’s August Complex fire that touched 7,000 acres of the ranch, with severe damage limited to 500 acres.

The complex, ignited by multiple lightning strikes, scorched 1 million acres in seven counties, the state’s largest-ever wildland blaze.

A working cattle ranch since Witter’s time, the preserve will continue to graze several hundred cattle to manage invasive species like brome grass and yellow star thistle, promoting native plant growth.

The preserve completes the first reach of the conservancy’s Eel River Emerald Necklace that begins with kayaking from Dos Rios — the confluence of the river’s middle fork and main stem on Highway 162 in Mendocino County — 11 miles to the 5,832-acre Spyrock Preserve.

Ten miles downstream from Spyrock will be a landing at the north fork, with another landing 11 miles away at Kekawaka Creek, both on the new preserve, and followed by a 9.5-mile paddle to Alderpoint, a remote Humboldt County hamlet with access to Highway 101.

Ultimately, the necklace will offer 10 preserves, each a day apart for hikers and kayakers, spanning 110 miles from Spyrock Preserve to an existing 1,300-acre Eel River Estuary Preserve near the ocean.

The conservancy’s preserves are all open to the public at no cost.

“We believe if you have to pay to visit nature you have been dispossessed of your birthright,” Myers said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-888-9149 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.