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BY JONATHAN LERNER
FROM THE AUGUST 2018 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.
From Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner or Coast Starlight trains, unless you’re staring out to sea, you’d catch a view of the property; the tracks run right along its oceanfront bluff. Or you could walk onto the place, at water’s edge from the public beach next door, though you’d have to scramble up the cliff to escape an inrushing tide. In theory, you might work there as a ranch hand—it remains a cattle operation—or on the nature preserve staff. But you can number those opportunities on your fingers and toes. Eventually there will be access for researchers and educational programs. Still, hardly anyone will ever visit this magnificent 24,000-acre spread at Point Conception, some 50 miles west–northwest of Santa Barbara. And that’s a good thing.
“In Southern California, there’s a storied legacy of establishing coastal parks and access points. Typically, your first question would be, ‘How close can we get the parking lots to the beach? How easy can we make it for people to get there?’ The paradigm here is the opposite,” (more…)
