Trying to figure out what agency is responsible for managing each of the front country trails is more confusing than a crossword puzzle with no clues.

Depending on where you are on one of the front country trails, realistically it could be any of three: Santa Barbara County Parks, Santa Barbara City Parks & Recreation or the Santa Barbara Ranger District of Los Padres Forest.

Whether through actual ownership of the land or on easements along sections of trail leading through private holdings, the three agencies share that responsibility. Yet for the most part they’ve delegated that to others. 

While this may be workable for the short term, increases in popularity and the impacts from climate change, wildfire and unpredictable winter storms will most likely make this untenable over the long term.

In short, it is time for the agencies to start thinking about stepping up and taking responsibility for our front country trails.

Walking the Jesusita Trail

I’m with a good friend of mine from Colorado who has worked for the Jefferson County Open Space agency for many years.

We’re hiking the Jesusita Trail and I’m trying to explain to him how difficult it is to know who is responsible for dealing with what part of it.

The trail begins at Cater Filtration Plant on land owned by the Bureau of Reclamation then traverses onto a section within city boundaries, quickly enters a long stretch of private lands where the county holds an easement, then onto another easement held by Los Padres National Forest. 

That’s all within a mile-long stretch up to the drinking fountain located just above Moreno Ranch. Beyond this the trail crosses county-owned land, forest land and from there on city-owned land down into Mission Canyon.

Ownership of the Other Front County Trails

Then there’s also trying to sort out jurisdictions on the other eight front country trails. Each has similar issues such as overlapping jurisdictions, ownerships and responsibilities.

These include not only who is responsible for maintaining them but how difficult trailhead issues scubas those on the Jesusita, Tunnel and Hot Springs trails where parking is at a premium are dealt with, or with land owners who aren’t exactly enamored of having trails located on or near their properties. 

More importantly, while an examination of these trails reveals that they all lie within multiple jurisdictions, there is no coordinated structure for working together to manage them.

Falling in Love

If you are like me, you love the front country trails for a variety of reasons, and they’ve become an import part of your life, though when I was attending UCSB, I wouldn’t have guessed that would be the case for me.

Baseball was my sport and surfing my passion. That is until a chance offer from a friend to join him for a hike down a trail I’d later find out was the Arroyo Burro.

For me Santa Barbara was the most beautiful of backdrops. Sea and summit, with the sea providing long sand-covered beaches and great winter surfing, and the summit providing the backdrop for it all.

Until then, I’d barely known much about what was on the other side of the mountains. The Cold Spring Bridge had yet to be built and getting to the Santa Ynez Valley was a twisty nightmare going down the back side of San Marcos Pass.

The hike turned out to be overgrown, and before we knew it we were lost. No maps, guidebooks or word of mouth to help us find our way.

A wrong turn found us thrashing our way down Barger Canyon, through a series of avocado groves and eventually down to the newly build La Cumbre Plaza.

What an adventure! One that turned out to be the beginning of a lifelong love affair.

Looking back at the years I’ve spent hiking, backpacking, climbing, exploring trails throughout Santa Barbara County, I’ve often wondered what life might have been like without trails in my life.

The Golden Years

Perhaps I was lucky to have come to Santa Barbara for school at just the right time and even luckier to be hired by the Santa Barbara School District to teach at Dos Pueblos High School. In those days, the U.S. Forest Service was king.

Disastrous floods in 1969 had destroyed many of the trails and Los Padres National Forest was flush with cash to repair them, including almost all of the backcountry trails.

Recreation budgets numbered in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Seasonal wildfire crews were regularly hired during the winter months to maintain the trails.

As a result, both the city and county looked to the Forest Service for maintaining the trails under their responsibility as well. For the city, it was through easements to the forest on portions of the front country trails they owned, including the Tunnel and Rattlesnake Canyon trails.

Trails Funding Sources Dry Up

But in the 1990s those relationships began to change as recreation funding for Los Padres National Forest dried up along with the winter crews that previously were doing much of the work.

Along with reduced trails crews, cuts to almost every part of the agency budget meant biologists or archaeologists serving multiple districts. Fewer forest employees meant trails taking a back seat to other more important concerns, the main one being wildfire protection.

Given the lack of funding, the Santa Barbara Ranger District initiated a plan to identify priority trails with the goal of phasing out maintenance of the others. In the crunch of reduced funding it was clear trail maintenance was no longer a major concern for Los Padres National Forest.

Stiff resistance from local trail users caused the District to hold off on the decision to close any of the trails given that almost every one of the trails was someone’s favorite. But the expectation the Forest would care for the trails was no longer a given.

The expectation turned the tables on upside down. If you want the trails to stay open, the volunteer groups were told more or less, you’d need to take care of them.

Rise of the Nonprofit Trail Organizations

By the late 1990s, it became clear that if any of the county’s trails and specifically those in the front country were to be maintained, community volunteers would be needed to step up.

At the forest level, Los Padres Interpretive Association, which had focused on educational programs in the forest, changed its name to Los Padres Forest Association (LPFA) and shifted its focus to trail maintenance efforts.

The Santa Barbara County Trails Council (SBCTC) in turn shifted from efforts to legitimize trail planning at the county level to trail-focused efforts as well.

Along with SBCTC, the Montecito Trails Foundation (MTF), which had focused more on acquiring trail easements in the Montecito Valley, began to raise funds to hire trail crews to help maintain the trails in that area.

The Santa Barbara Mountain Bike Trail Volunteers (now known as the Sage Trails Alliance) also stepped up to focus more on trail maintenance than community education efforts.

Today these four major organizations form the core that maintain trails throughout the major part of Santa Barbara County. Without them, it is not clear what condition our front country trails would be in.

Come at a Cost? 

But has it come at a cost? Might it have provided the responsible agencies with an easy out for not taking on what should be their responsibility?

Are the trail-related nonprofits now the de facto managers of the front country trails?

Do those in charge of them have the oversight or skill levels to do so?

Perhaps most importantly, what issues are created when the agencies cede responsibility to organizations that have no accountability to the public for the work they do?

Trails Master Plan a Panacea?

It is possible that Santa Barbara County’s recent efforts to develop a Trails Master Plan  could help resolve some of these issues confronting management of trails in the front country, though it is unclear how a federal agency like Los Padres National Forest would fit into that.

The Master Plan also seems more focused on changes to county regulations to provide incentives for private land owners to be more receptive towards the establishment of easements across their lands — especially in the northern parts of the county.

Nor does it answer the question of how any new trail additions will be maintained over time or who will fund the work. Presently none of the agencies has the crews or expertise to do so. 

Currently, the planning part of this is being financed for the most part by cannabis tax revenue money, but it almost certainly is not a long-term source of funding..

Who is Wagging the Dog’s Tail?

Though the four major nonprofits — LPFA, SBCTC, Sage and MTF — continue to provide an incredible service to our community, changing environmental imperatives suggest that relying on them is not the best way to maintain our local trails in the future.

For one, the present level of work being funded by the nonprofits is not nearly what is needed to provide even the basic levels of maintenance today. 

Because these groups can also pick and choose which trails they want to fund, choose who they want to do the work for them and what level of work is to be done, not every trail is being cared for.

The Montecito Valley, for instance, is cared for to a level much higher than other parts of the trail system precisely because MTF can raise large donations while limiting the work done on their behalf to the First Supervisorial District.

In my opinion there needs to be a coordinated effort by the agencies if for no other reason than that we provide for a trails network that is maintained in a much more equitable and even-handed manner.

The New Reality 

Ultimately, it may be increasing environmental realities that force a reevaluation of how our front country trails are managed.

It appears climate change is real. A close look at recent events suggests the potential for more intense and consequential storm seasons, and increasing impacts from wildfire could make trail management more difficult than ever before.

In just the past five years, both wildfire and storm events have created havoc on trails throughout the county, and specifically the front country trails.

It is more than likely the impacts will be uneven and the costs ever increasing.  

It is time for the public agencies to step up and do what they should have many years ago.

These include three basic commitments to ensure our front country trails are cared for in an even-handed manner using sustainable practices by locally trained and skilled trail crew teams.

Step 1: Identify a key person from each of the three agencies – including Santa Barbara County Parks, Santa Barbara City Parks & Recreation and Los Padres National Forest – with the task of developing a collaborative team partnership.

Step 2: Focus the partnership on creating a community-based task force whose prime purpose is to oversee the development of a trails management plan for a community-defined regional front country trails network.

Step 3: Identify potential funding sources such as the creation of a special district, a community-wide, grant-based trails foundation, adjustment to the sales tax structure, or whatever else might be workable to provide long-term sustainable care for the trails.

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Ray Ford has been involved with local Santa Barbara trails for almost 50 years beginning with the publication of Day Hikes of the Santa Barbara Foothills in 1975. As President of the Los Padres Forest Association, Executive Director of the Santa Barbara Trails Council and author of guides to hiking, mountain biking, road rides and backpacking he has been on almost every trail in the County.

As a leader in trail construction, design and sustainable trail practices he has helped build and maintain many of the front country trails, including the Franklin Trail in Carpinteria and the Baron Ranch Ridge Trail on the Gaviota Coast. He served as the trails manager for MTF in the early 2000s.

Most recently he has designed a sustainable trail plan for Parma Park whose first phase was recently completed by the Sage Trails Alliance and the plan for a reroute of the McMenemy Trail that is currently in process.