Parking lots to close at state beaches on Sonoma Coast, posing holiday dilemma for visitors, residents

Parking lots at state beaches on the Sonoma Coast will be closed during the Fourth of July holiday weekend, part of a late-breaking statewide effort to reduce the transmission of the coronavirus as cases rise sharply across California and the nation.

On the Sonoma Coast, where most visitors rely on vehicles to reach the shore, the closure of parking lots at such popular places as Bodega Head, Goat Rock and Salmon Creek beaches, as well as vehicle turnouts along Highway 1, is likely to cause major disruptions, county officials feared, including for nearby neighborhoods, where curbsides were turned into parking lots during the monthslong beach closure this spring.

The closure, announced Wednesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, will start Friday and span the busy holiday weekend. It extends to parking lots in state beaches throughout the Bay Area and in Southern California, where even some of the popular seashore will be off-limits.

It also is likely to complicate work for park rangers and other authorities who struggled in past weeks with the difficult task of warding off thousands of people who descended on the Sonoma Coast even when beaches were completely closed.

This time, the beaches will themselves remain open, with only the state parking lots closed, a mismatch that’s unlikely to deter visitors.

Sonoma County officials said they were blindsided by the move, prompting swift and sharp criticism of Newsom from Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, who represents all 55 miles of the Sonoma Coast.

Hopkins feared the lack of vehicle access to state beaches will drive crowds instead to county sites like Doran Beach, leading to overcrowding that would make social distancing more difficult, she said.

The closure also means more families may choose to park along Highway 1 lining the coast, posing a potentially dangerous situation mixing pedestrians and vehicles on the narrow roadway.

“In an attempt to solve one problem, he has created a new set of problems,” Hopkins said of Newsom. “If they close their parking lots, it puts tremendous pressure on our (county) parks and our facilities.”

Beaches and parking lots overseen by the county will continue to accept visitors over the weekend, though rangers will be forced to turn away drivers once parking lots reach capacity, said Melanie Parker, deputy director for Sonoma County Regional Parks.

County camping areas along the coast that reopened Wednesday were not impacted by the governor’s orders, though reservations for those spots have already been claimed through the weekend, Parker said. State campgrounds on the Sonoma Coast are not set to open until July 9. Elsewhere, reservations over the holiday weekend at affected park sites will be honored, according to State Parks' website.

Signs and rangers will remind visitors that social distancing and mask-wearing requirements will remain in effect.

“I really hope that people do take it to heart, to not bring multiple households together,” Parker said.

California State Parks Superintendent Terry Bertels, who oversees the Sonoma-Mendocino Coast District, said about 100 cement blocks that had been used temporarily to barricade parking entry points can’t be reinstalled in time for their use over the weekend.

As an alternative, portable plastic barricades that can be filled with water will be placed at parking lot entrances to state beaches along the Sonoma Coast, Bertels said. A handful of rangers from other districts will also be brought in over the weekend to help state park rangers stationed at local state beaches.

“We won’t have all the resources we did last time, but we’ll do what we can,” Bertels said. “We’ll have a presence.”

He said longtime park rangers and staff have been reporting crowds “as big as they’ve ever been” since the Sonoma Coast was reopened to visits last month.

After months of sheltering in place, “there’s a large pent-up, latent demand from people to get out on the coast,” Bertels said.

And even though the recession-era, low-cost, “staycation” movement put North Coast beaches in everybody’s travel plans, “this appears to exceed even that,” he said.

State beaches along the Mendocino Coast were not covered by Newsom’s order.

There will be extra Highway Patrol officers on hand to patrol the coast over the weekend, a period of maximum enforcement for the agency, said CHP spokesman Officer David deRutte. Units assigned to the Sonoma Coast will keep an eye out for problem parking areas, including cars that are blocking the roadway or stopped in no-parking zones.

“If we have a ton of cars that are out there illegally parked, we’re going to try to find the drivers and get them on their way,” deRutte said.

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @nashellytweets. You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.