Welcome to the archives of The California Trail Connection.

• Partnership Launches California Trail Connection Website
• Secretary of Resources and State Park Head Speak Out!

Partnership Launches California Trail Connection Website

www.caltrails.org

MEDIA CONTACTS:
Josh Hart, Rails to Trails Conservancy, (415) 397-2220
Holly Van Houten, National Park Service (415) 427-1451
Charlie Willard, California State Parks, (916) 653-8803
Anne Seeley, Department of Health Services, (916) 445-0472

"The California Trails Connection site contains a wide range of information, from how to find a trail to how to fund a trail," said Charlie Willard, State Trails Coordinator for the State Department of Parks and Recreation, announcing the launch of a new web site on trails in California.

The National Park Service, California Department of Parks and Recreation, California Department of Health Services, and the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy worked in partnership to set up this new web site to provide comprehensive information on trails in California. The web site can be found at www.caltrails.org.

"The web site's 'Making Trails Happen' page is for every local official looking for funding or for technical information about planning, building, and managing trails," said Willard. Other features showcase long distance trails in California, list a calendar of events, and cover news related to trails and greenways.

The first feature article is on TEA-21, the federal highway transportation bill. "TEA-21 is a huge potential pot of funds just waiting for trail projects," said Neil Sims with the California Field Office of the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. "This online article lets trail advocates in on the secrets of tapping into those funds."

This web page is aimed at filling a niche; a one-stop shopping center for information about trails and greenways. Holly Van Houten with the National Park Service's Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program said, "programs like ours get called on to help community groups who are all looking for the same information. This web site should make it easier to find what they need and help us deliver our services more effectively."

The Department of Health Services joined in the partnership because it hopes to encourage more people to take advantage of exercise. "Research shows that a walk a day keeps the doctor away. We want to make it easier for people to find places to take that walk or bike ride," said Anne Seeley, project director of On the Move, an effort to promote healthy, active lifestyles.

For more information about the web site, send e-mail to . Articles and contributions of other information are welcomed.

Do you have an article to offer?  Please submit it!

Secretary of Resources and State Park Head Speak Out!

Mary Nichols and Rusty Areias
at the California Trails Conference
April 1999

click here to go to Areias speech

I was really pleased to be invited to speak before you this evening. Not only do I identify with your cause, but also having the Conference in this beautiful and historic setting — with trails connecting to the beach — seems like such a perfect setting.

I have spent most of my life working to preserve our magnificent resources, protect our air quality, and keep our water safe to drink. I am sure that you share my interest in these areas since trails are so integrally tied to quality natural resources.

Trails are important for many reasons. They serve as an important educational tool, providing teachers, students, and anyone else interested in learning more about historic and natural resources with an outdoor laboratory where learning comes easy and retention is high.

Trails remind us of our history and how our ancestors came to this great state, whether with Juan Bautista de Anza up from Mexico and through Arizona and California to the San Francisco Bay, or the many overland routes of the California Trail. These routes are now recognized and honored as National Historic Trails.

Trails provide recreational opportunity for Californians and visitors to the state. Trail users gain enjoyment and better health through exercise regardless of their mode of travel. Exercise leads to longer and healthier lives while reducing stress and making life more enjoyable.

All segments of society benefit from trails and the open spaces through which they pass. Trails are not limited to a certain age group or ethnicity. Senior citizens benefit from the opportunity to get out and use the trails and meet new and old friends. Youth need the healthy outlets, both mentally and physically, that trails provide. It is easy for today’s youth to be caught up in a sedentary lifestyle riding around in cars, cruising the Internet, or watching television.

As our communities spread, trails users and wildlife find the areas they have traditionally used disappearing. While not all wildlife habitat is suitable for public use, nor all trails suitable for wildlife habitat, protecting space for each, and both, is becoming increasingly important.

Trail advocates and wildlife supporters need to work closely together to help protect these vital lands. I understand that several sessions at this Conference address these issues.

California is a state of rapid change. As our demographics change, we need to be sure that all of our citizens have an opportunity to use our trails. We need to provide trails where the people are, to provide information on trails to under served populations, and develop means of transportation, which allow all Californians to benefit from our trail systems.

For many people in this automobile-driven state, non-motorized transportation has become increasingly difficult. Trails allow people to get to the store, to get to school, to go to the park, or to work without an automobile. As our highways and freeways have become larger and faster, they present life-threatening barriers to walkers, joggers, in-line skaters, bicyclists, equestrians, and other trail users.

We need to be sure that as our highways grow that they do not impede the ability of the non-motorized travelers to get where they need and want to go. It is said that the health of a community is reflected in the number of its residents who are seen walking.

And the public is very supportive of trails. In surveys conducted by the California Department of Parks and Recreation in 1987, 1992, and 1997, about three-quarters of Californians responding strongly supported the development of additional trails for bicycling, horseback riding, and walking.

Trails provide many values to our communities. They provide an attraction for visitors who bring needed funds to our economy, they provide a public presence that discourages crime, they provide a forum for meeting people and they provide an area for citizens to help with maintenance and cleanup of trails and open-space areas.

Today, there is reason to hope. Volunteerism is an important part of the trail culture of this state. California was the location of the first Trail Days event in the nation in 1969 in the State Parks of the Santa Cruz Mountains. This later grew to be California Trail Days, which celebrates its Fourteenth Annual event next weekend, April 24 and 25.

California Trail Days sparked the idea and it spread across the nation. The Seventh National Trails Day is being celebrated on June 5. I am sure that you will all be out there building, repairing, promoting and using the great trails of this state on State and National Trail Days.

As we move into the next millennium, we face many opportunities and challenges. We find increasing demand for the remaining open space in the state.

We need to carefully plan to protect greenways, trails and wildlife corridors.

We need to be sure that these corridors are adequate to provide the space for well-built trails and for the wildlife living in the area or travelling through it.

We need to make our transportation systems friendly to non-motorized travelers for recreational and transportational purposes.

We need to utilize utility corridors, abandoned railways, canals, and provide safe ways to move about our communities and state.

We need to work with the business community to share knowledge and gain broader acceptance of the economic value of providing trails and open space as we develop and redevelop our communities.

We need to help the tourism industry to prepare better information on how travelers can find and use trails and how distributing that information can help business.

As we build and rebuild our trail systems, we need to do it with a gentle touch on the land. To do this requires adequate space for appropriate alignments and knowledge of how to design and construct trails. I am pleased to see the California State Parks Trail Training Team receive a well-deserved national award for its Trail Training Program.

Training programs such as this are essential to make sure that the cuts we make in the land will provide sustainable trails that minimize erosion and are easily maintained.

We must also find adequate funding. Federal, state, and local governments have suffered difficult times with their budgets over the last decade. We see some hope with the economy once again on solid footing. With the passage of the federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) in 1991, large amounts of transportation money became available for trails and scenic acquisitions.

The Transportation Equity Act for the 21^st Century (TEA 21), passed in 1998, builds upon ISTEA and provides even more funding. We need to take full advantage of these opportunities, and continue to look for additional funds to preserve open space, build and maintain trails, and provide public information.

Trails, like this Conference, provide a great setting for making new friends. Trails bring people together on a human level where they can smile, say hello, and get to know their neighbors. In our communities, much of this human contact can get lost as we travel about in our automobiles. Improved trail systems can allow us to escape to an environment where we can make positive contacts, just like we can while we are at this Conference.

The Internet has given us new ways to connect with each other and to gain information. May trails be our "Internet" to reconnect with nature, to connect our neighborhoods and communities, and to all the residents of our great state.

It has been my pleasure to come and speak with you. I wish you great success in your endeavors.

Rusty Areias:

It’s great to be here tonight, and to be introduced by someone who has done so much for California’s trails. Charlie Willard is one of the greatest acquisitions the Department of Parks and Recreation has ever made.

It’s a privilege to have been asked by Governor Davis to become Director of California State Parks.

My personal love for trails goes back to my growing up on a dairy farm in Los Banos, and riding horseback throughout the area.

Even when I served in the Legislature, it was wonderful and refreshing to be able to escape back home, and get lost -- mentally, not physically -- on the trail.

As a new Director, I’m inspired by the staff of the Department of Parks and Recreation, and by those of you in the audience who I am honored to serve as a representative of state government and the Gray Davis Administration. During the worst of times, when California State Parks had endured economic setbacks and political indifference, you were the people who helped keep our parks, our heritage, and our dreams alive.

Let me make a simple pledge to all of you this evening. During my tenure as Director of Parks and Recreation, I will join with you to seek the funding and promote the policies to make this the best of times for California State Parks.

All of us share certain ideas.

We believe in the extraordinary power of nature -- its ecosystems of forests, meadows, and open spaces -- the home of our wildlife, and the home we all share.

And we believe in the extraordinary value of trails -- because it’s the trails that bring us to these special places.

Trails provide us with educational opportunities. They lead us to our living laboratories of nature, allowing us to see how we are a part of, not apart from, nature.

They help us live and learn in the real world -- not the virtual world.

The more people visit our wildlands, the more people will understand their value, and will act to save them.

Trails allow us to be the explorer that’s within us all. They provide us with options, they give us opportunities that would otherwise be left barren.

In simplest terms, think of a world in which children would have an opportunity to explore our trails, instead of drugs and violence.

With an increased population, there are less fields for children to play in, to learn from, or to explore.

Instead, they are locked in their homes, on the computer, or watching TV.

They are relegated to monochromatic yards, or to predictable fields of turf designed for adult-managed sports, not the creative play of a child.

I join with all of you tonight in the belief that every child deserves access to our wildlands, to the randomness of its terrain, and to the surprises beneath a freshly overturned rock.

These are the things that make our wildlands a natural playground, and playmate, for our children.

As Director, I make the commitment to work with you so that every child would have a right to this kind of relationship with nature.

And I also make a commitment to the trails that will take them there.

One of the lessons I have learned early on here at Parks is that recreation is a fundamental part of our mission. And trails are a key element of quality outdoor recreation.

Trails allow us a place to walk, to run, to bike, to ride. A place for solitude and a place to feel free and have fun.

The same trails that help keep kids off the streets can get adults off the couch.

Trails take us to a land wonderfully blind to people’s differences.

But we trail builders cannot be blind. We have to build trail systems that reach out to people of all ages, from all walks of life, with all needs.

And we cannot be blind to the land. Our trail systems need to be green. They need to be designed, constructed, used, and maintained in a way that is compatible with the environment in which they are a part.Trails can be an alternative or complement to our existing transportation systems. And whenever possible, they must be located to act as environmental corridors, connecting our islands of open space to help their ecosystems, and their wildlife, flourish.

Let us commit to work together to continue developing great trail systems throughout our great state of California.

We face common challenges, such as renewing monies from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, finding equitable and easy access to TEA-21 funds, and reclaiming, restoring, and preserving our natural spaces. These challenges must be met to have great trails.

Our common goals of connecting humanity to our natural heritage must exceed our differences of use or method.

Whether we use our feet, a wheelchair, a motorcycle, a horse, or a bicycle to go down a trail, we can all agree we need accessible trails.

So, let’s not be a cacophony of separate voices -- let us sing strong as a chorus of one group united in cause.

While you’re here at Asilomar, learn what you can, and share what you know. Listen. Try to understand. Be open, and stay encouraged. Then take these lessons home with you to share with others.

I too will do the same.

Together, we can turn our best thoughts into action, and in the end we will turn the visions and the dreams of this trail family into a remarkable reality for generations to come.

Thank you.

Do you have an article to offer?  Please submit it!