Equestrian center in for a ride

Ruth Gerson Equestrians will be able to camp out with their horses if the Ronald Reagan Equestrian Campground is completed as planned on a 7-acre parcel of land at Mulholland Highway and Cornell Road in Malibu Creek State Park.

A fundraising event for the future campground was held at the Mill Creek Equestrian Center in the Santa Monica Mountains on Sept. 26. The land was previously owned by former President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy.

Equestrian Trails Inc. Corral 63 partnered with the California Department of Parks and Recreation and aims to raise about $3 million for the facility’s construction.   [Note the change from article that went out in paper form above]

Although plans for the center are still in flux, the show of enthusiasm at the fundraiser demonstrated to officials that there is widespread support for the center, at least among horse owners in the area. But opponents says the campground is too big and will lead to further pollution of Malibu Creek.

Equestrian spokesperson Ruth Gerson said she was pleased that some 150 horse enthusiasts came to the fundraiser and offered donations. The affair also included a dressage exhibition and barbecue.

Gerson and park officials also believe several grant opportunities will be available through various state and federal agencies, including the National Park Service and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy.

Gerson said the timing of the project couldn’t be better. In 2007 Congress passed a resolution commemorating Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday in April 2011.

“It’s a great project for (Congress) to get behind,” Gerson said.

Horse tales

Corey Walkey, owner of the Mill Creek center, shared stories at the fundraiser about her friendship with Reagan.

“I was very fortunate to have spent an enormous amount of time on the Reagan ranch,” Walkey told guests. “I love that piece of land as much as I love my place.”

Walkey says she struck up a friendship with Reagan when she was a teen in the 1960s. She said one day while driving with her mother, they came upon a large pasture filled with jumps.

“We had no idea who owned it, so we just drove in,” Walkey said.

The pasture was Reagan’s.

“He was nice and so pleased that somebody wanted to come and enjoy his place,” Walkey said. He invited Walkey to ride her horse at his ranch any time.

Walkey and Reagan forged a friendship, and Reagan would sometimes join her on rides. Walkey said she and Reagan returned from one ride and cooled off by lying down on the cinderblock and concrete tack room floor with their feet on the wall, where they just “chatted.”

“It was a wonderful time,” Walkey said. “I would love to see that ranch become something again.”

Gerson said she has been trying to bring an equestrian campground to the area for 32 years.

“We had the foresight, but what we really needed was perseverance,” Gerson said. “Equestrians are the most underserved visitors in the parkland.”

Visitors from across California and other states will be able to spend the night at the campsite and ride the 500-mile network of trails in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

According a brochure, the area offers “unmatched horseback riding opportunities” for residents, who together own about 8,000 horses. The area will also be a used as an evacuation site for horses during wildfires.

According to Ron Schafer, superintendent of the California State Parks Angeles District, it will be the first California park system campground to be built in the last 20 years.

Mounting opposition

Colleen Holmes, president of Cornell Preservation Organization, said that while she supports the campground, she hopes it will be scaled back. She believes 75 campsites are too many and hopes the plan for individual fire pits is nixed in favor of one large one.

Holmes fears the campground might lead to more wildfires.

“God knows, we’re dry,” Holmes said.

And after the campground is built, opponents fear the increased animal waste will find its way into Malibu Creek

An Internet blog, www.savethemeadow.blogspot.com, features letters from people who are against the campground.

“This facility will mar the view for miles along a designated scenic highway,” one person wrote. “The fire pits of this facility are also a threat to public safety and will likely be the place the next Corral Canyon fire begins, wiping out hundreds of homes. The concentration of animal waste at this site will pollute an already polluted Malibu Creek watershed.”

Schafer, the state park superintendent, carries a different opinion.

“We will keep bad things from running into the creek,” he said.

The impact of horse waste will be minimized by installing landscape elements on the grounds designed to remove silt and pollutants from water runoff.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said horses are part of the culture of the Santa Monica Mountains and that the project is compatible with the environment.

“I am confident that it will be done right,” said Yaroslavsky, who pledged to try to make the campground “happen sooner rather than later.”

The orginal Malibu Times Article that made us aware of Project

Local Equestrians seek funds to build horse campground

President Ronald Reagan horseback riding at his Malibu ranch that he owned from 1957 to 1967, prior to being elected governor of California. The property, located at the junction of Mulholland Highway and Cornell Road, is the site of the proposed Ronald Reagan Equestrian Campground that will feature 500 miles of public trails. A fundraiser is taking place Sept. 26 at the Mill Creek Equestrian Center in Topanga to help realize the goal of building it. Photo provided by National Park Service, courtesy of the Reagan Family

Published:

Wednesday, September 16, 2009 11:29 AM PDT

Local equestrians and the state parks department have agreed upon the perfect spot for a public equestrian campground-the site of President Ronald Reagan's Malibu ranch at Malibu Creek State Park.

By Lisa Sweetingham / Special to The Malibu Times

It's an equestrian's conundrum: There are nearly 10,000 horses residing around the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area, which provides 359 miles of horse-riding trails on about 153,000 acres of public park land, but there's no easy place to camp with one's horse after a long and dusty day's ride.

“In Point Mugu, you can pay a ranger to escort a group down to a campground, [where] there's a couple of corrals,” Agoura resident and avid equestrian Ruth Gerson said. “But everyone has to be escorted at the same time, you have to pay additional camping fees. I don't call that public access.”

Gerson and her colleagues in Equestrian Trails Inc. Corral 63 (ETI) have been nagging the California State Parks department for years to create an easily accessible site where campers and their horses can sleep under the stars and dream about the morning's trail ride.

“I've been actively working on this for 30 years,” Gerson said. “It was always put at the bottom of the list, or there would be problems with the location and it was knocked down by the state parks.”

After a spate of false starts, the riders and the rangers have finally agreed on the perfect spot for a first-rate equestrian campground: the site of the old Ronald Reagan ranch in Malibu Creek State Park.

Set on seven acres in a flat, grassland meadow at the junction of Mulholland Highway and Cornell Road, the proposed Ronald Reagan Equestrian Campground (RREC) will feature 30 campsites, with two corrals at each site and access to 500 miles of public trails.

The design plan calls for native trees to be planted to shade the grounds, as well as provisions for truck and horse trailer parking, manure disposal areas, toilets and showers with adjacent hitching rails, a group gathering area with a fire ring, and other facilities to accommodate the park's much-underserved equestrian visitors. The grounds will also serve as a fire-safe zone for horses in the event of a major wildfire.

But now, the only problem is: where to get the $1.5 million needed to build it?

The parks department, already in danger of shut-downs due to the state's woeful economic health, won't be ponying up any money needed to shepherd the project through planning, environmental review, construction and operation.

“We might in the future. But right now there's just no funding for it,” Ron Schafer, Superintendent of the State Parks, Angeles District, said.

For now, the parks department has partnered with ETI in its fundraising efforts, starting with next week's kick-off fundraiser.

Plans for the proposed campgrounds will be presented Sept. 26 at the Mill Creek Equestrian Center in Topanga and Schafer is among the guest speakers, who also include Woody Smeck, Superintendent of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area; Joe Edmiston, Executive Director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy; and Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

The event will begin with a reception at 5:30 p.m., followed by a dressage demonstration at 6:30 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m. A donation of $60 per person is requested.

Cory Walkey, owner of Mill Creek Equestrian Center, was a regular rider with the Reagans and recalls the pleasure President Reagan found in horses and riding. “He was an accomplished horseman and often reiterated Winston Churchill's comment that the outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man,” Walkey said.

Reagan, who was known to share jellybeans with his beloved horses straight from his hand, owned the land from 1957 to 1967, prior to being elected governor of California. It was his first ranch property and it still retains the original barn, stables and some of the steeple jumps.

Gerson, described by some as the tireless chair of the RREC committee, said she is counting on private donors and federal grants to make the equestrian campground a reality. She estimates it will take two to four years before the campground is ready for visitors.

“I need a couple years just to raise the money,” Gerson said. “Unless I find a sugar daddy!”

Equestrian campground faces emotional opposition

This picture was taken at approximately the same location as the historic Reagan photo used to promote the Reagan Equestrian Campground and RV Park. Photo by Ted Fulton

Published:

Wednesday, October 7, 2009 12:15 PM PDT

Opponents of the proposed equestrian campground claim it's a major fire hazard and just plain ugly. Supporters say all concerns are being addressed.

By Lisa Sweetingham / Special to The Malibu Times

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then some Malibu residents think the proposed Ronald Reagan Equestrian Campground (RREC) is a real dog.

Since unveiling its plans last month for a horse-and-rider camping complex in Malibu Creek State Park, the RREC Committee has faced a nascent but vociferous opposition to the development on the grounds that it will create fire hazards, increase water pollution and is just plain ugly.

“The idea that someone's considering this monstrosity of a facility there, it just sticks in my craw,” said Malibou Lake resident Ted Fulton, who spearheaded the “Save the Meadow” campaign after reading about the campground in The Malibu Times [www.malibutimes.com/articles/2009/09/17/news/news4.txt]. “It's not like I'm anti-horse. My wife's an avid horseman. It's just an abhorrent location.”

The proposed equestrian campground, to be set on seven acres of flat, grassland near Mulholland Highway and Cornell Road at the site of the former Ronald Reagan Ranch, will feature 30 campsites, with two corrals at each site, and access to 500 miles of public trails.

When Fulton, a 48-year-old airline pilot, learned that the design plan called for pipe corrals, RV parking and manure dumpsters, he envisioned “a major eyesore” along the Mulholland scenic corridor.

“Sometimes I'll be driving home from work after an all-nighter from New York,” he said “and there's not a single light on that road. It's a wonderful feeling.”

In a week's time, Fulton put up a Web site and blog [savethemeadow.blogspot.com], and was sending 'round the clock e-mails to environmental agencies, government officials, neighbors and reporters, urgently alerting them to the dangers of horse urine and feces near the watershed and fire pits in the parks.

His gung-ho blog postings haven't always helped his environmental advocacy aims. As of last week, he had accused an Agoura newspaper of conspiring to suppress his free speech, had posted anonymous rumors that a RREC supporter had financial interests in the campground and had drawn ire from a Heal the Bay employee for posting her private e-mail to him as proof of the agency's support.

For the record, Heal the Bay has no official position yet. But many others do, and their biggest concern about the campground is fire.

“This is unimaginable to allow 31 open camp fire pits in this already vulnerable and threatened area,” resident Dayle Dalton wrote in an e-mail to The Malibu Times after Fulton rallied his interest. “We are threatened by fire throughout the year and one spark from one of the campfires would destroy our entire community!”

“Each fire season we anxiously watch the skies and listen for fire sirens,” wrote Nan Kane, a 20-year resident of Malibou Lake. “Those of us in the dry, brush covered hills of the Santa Monica Mountains are always in or near the path of the Santa Ana winds. These campsites would be a year-round fire threat to Malibu, Topanga, Agoura, Westlake and any home or land within the nearby Santa Monica Mountains area.”

Some fear the campground would be intrusive to the natural setting and wildlife corridor.

“As a California plein air painter, I observe whenever I paint out that the landscape that we revere as a source of creative inspiration is constantly being modified by human demands. Vast meadows studded with aged oak trees disappear, never to return,” said Karen Winters, a member of the Allied Artists of the Santa Monica Mountains and Seashore. “I grew up in the San Fernando Valley when it was a refuge of horse ranches and orange groves. I roamed the hills of Porter Ranch before they were subdivided and paved. Perhaps these early experiences led to my passion to preserve the landscape in artistic form.”

Winters said she hasn't had the time to delve into the “politics and issues” of the two sides but hopes that any development be undertaken “slowly and with great caution.”

Which is what the RREC's supporters say they are committed to doing.

“None of these things are a surprise,” said Ron Schafer, Superintendent of the State Parks, Angeles District. “These are all things we plan to address.”

The already-strapped parks department is not paying for the site, but has partnered with Equestrian Trails Inc. in its efforts to raise the estimated $2 million it will take to shepherd the project through planning, environmental review, construction and operation.

Schafer said that those who want to kill the campground based on a mock-up of the proposed design have unfairly jumped the starting gate.

“What's out there now is a conceptual plan. When we go back and start doing specific planning, there will be more public input and environmental review. I don't want people to overreact to a conceptual plan, but I guess they do,” Schafer said, adding that he looks forward to continued discussions with the community. To that end, he has been in contact with Fulton and has agreed to attend a public meeting on Oct. 20 at the Malibou Lake Mountain Club.

“All these things-fire hazards, the view, air noise and water pollution-absolutely they concern me and these are all things we need to address,” Schafer said. “But I want to make sure that camping isn't unfairly vilified. I want camping as a legitimate, safe, recreation use to be treated fairly.”

Lauren Newman, Policy and External Affairs Manager of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, said the site of the equestrian ranch was included in the 2005 Malibu Creek State Park General Management Plan, which already underwent public participation and review. However, the proposed campsite will still need to go through several stages of environmental compliance, which will give further opportunity for public involvement from the community and residents, like Fulton, who are still getting up to speed.

Fulton said he is just trying to make people aware, because he suspects that “only horse people are going to the planning meetings.”

“This isn't just a not-in-my-backyard situation,” Fulton said. “It's honest people having honest concerns.”