Hidden no more: Crews push to debut Santa Cruz County’s first national monument trail network this summer

Heading north along Highway 1 from Santa Cruz, the county’s coastal beauty presents a more rugged, mysterious dimension. The two-lane highway divides a panorama that begins with the Pacific Ocean to the west and green, coastal terraces to the east that rise toward the Santa Cruz Mountains. Despite the intermittent sprawl of agricultural fields and a 600-foot stretch of restaurants and shops, much of the area feels untouched and, on a human scale, unchanged. 

The visuals stun plenty of drivers who pull over to enjoy the view. Yet, to physically engage with the landscape requires a little more local know-how. Out of view, just beyond the edges of the western cliffs, sit what many would argue are the county’s finest beaches: Shark Fin Cove, Davenport Landing, Four-Mile Beach. Despite some requiring a mild hike-in, summer weekends bring a flurry of parties and surfers.

The best kept secret of the so-called North Coast, however, lies to the east, and this summer, that secret will be out.

“It’s going to be very popular,” Matt De Young, executive director of the nonprofit Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship (SCMTS), said. “We think it rivals Big Sur.” 

Tucked beyond those eastward hills, behind Swanton Berry Farm just north of the Davenport community, De Young’s team and the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have been manually carving out a trail network that will, at last, allow the broader public to access Cotoni-Coast Dairies, Santa Cruz County’s own national monument. Federal estimates say the monument could attract as many as 300,000 visitors per year. 

Hardly visible from the highway, the network will open with 9 miles of trails – and eventually will have more than double that amount – carrying hikers and mountain bikers through a layered landscape of oak meadows, coastal prairies and redwood and eucalyptus groves, all while rarely losing view of the ocean. A microcosm of Santa Cruz’s natural majesty. 

Beyond the at-times tense resistance from neighbors to welcome the influx of people promised by a national monument, and the drawn-out court complaints and appeals over the past eight years, the effort to design and construct this trail networks to life has been unparalleled in the recent history of national monuments, according to the BLM. 

“A lot of the places that go through designation and that we inherit into the national monument system come with trails and infrastructure,” BLM Field Manager Zach Ormsby said. “Here, there were no trails. This monument is unique in the system in that it really is a start-from-scratch project.” 

The opportunity before the community, Ormsby and the federal government, and De Young and his trail builders has been as rare as the responsibility is weighty: determining how generations of people will experience the national monument, all starting from a blank, overgrown canvas. 

On the trail

As a crew examines a trail map and prepares to head into the monument’s hidden redwood groves during a mid-January afternoon, Ormsby, a self-proclaimed “bird nerd,” points excitedly at a pair of red-tailed hawks performing their mating song-and-dance around a nearby oak tree, the Pacific Ocean stretching behind as far as the eye could see. 

“People have been able to see some really cool things out here,” he said, referencing the diverse bird population. “You get a different composition of birds based on the ecosystems you’re exposed to on this trail. What you see in the pine forest is going to be different from what you see in the redwoods and from what you see out on the coastal terraces. We’re excited to get the public out here.”  

Ormsby is quick to correct, with an unsubtle sense of pride, that despite both often earning a spot on a road trip itinerary, national monuments are not national parks, nor part of the national parks system. There are several practical differences: parks, overseen by the U.S. National Parks Service, are created by Congress and aimed toward recreation, while monuments, overseen by the BLM, are created by the president and focus on land preservation. 

“Between the two, if the land feels more isolated and desolate, there’s a good chance it’s BLM land,” Ormsby says, grinning. “We’re OK if your cellphone doesn’t work. We’re not going to fix that.” 

“There might not be a shuttle to come get you,” De Young added as he looked up from the map.

An eight-year odyssey

President Barack Obama, in one of his final executive acts in 2017, ordered Cotoni-Coast Dairies included as one of six inland access points for the California Coastal National Monument, a broad federal land preserve extending 12 miles off the full stretch of the Golden State shoreline. 

The 5,800-acre landscape had been protected since 1998 after The Trust for Public Land purchased the property. But despite the name, the land was never made public and sat gated off. 

Obama’s order promised to change that, as public access is inherent in a national monument designation. Environmental reviews and public engagement processes kicked off as the BLM surveyed what the community would want out of a national monument. Hiking, mountain biking and equestrian access stuck, ideas like hang gliding and hunting accommodations didn’t. 

After the 2020 CZU wildfire burned large swaths of nearby Bonny Doon, the idea of allowing dispersed camping — a hallmark on much of BLM land and rare locally — soured among locals and was shut down. 

Once the community solidified its desire for hike and bike access, the federal government tapped De Young and SCMTS, a nonprofit responsible for many of the trails and maintenance throughout Santa Cruz County, to lead Cotoni-Coast’s trail development and maintenance. De Young’s teams have built trails from scratch, but he’s never worked on a national monument. 

“It’s exciting starting from a blank page,” De Young said. “Building a trail this way is pretty unique. Locally, we don’t have many opportunities to start from scratch. We often inherit trail networks and all of their issues. Here, we started with a question: What is the desired user experience? And that dictated the approach.” 

Profession meets passion

From the SCMTS office off Swift Street on Santa Cruz’s Westside, Drew Perkins’ tanned face cracks a smile as he ponders how to contextualize his passion for trail building. 

“I would be doing it even if it wasn’t my job,” said Perkins, whose sandy hair matches the scruff of his beard. “If I had a trust fund, I’d probably still be out there building trails.” 

Perkins, director of trail planning for SCMTS, is well known in mountain biking and trail architecture circles as the designer behind the Flow Trail in the Soquel Demonstration State Forest in Mid-County. He also led the development of Pogonip’s Emma McCrary Trail in Santa Cruz, and has worked in the eastern Sierra Nevada and San Luis Obispo County. 

His latest project is Cotoni-Coast Dairies, where his phase-one trail network is winding toward the finish line. The three loops set to open this summer sit in what’s known as a stacked alignment: each loop connects to the next, representing a chain in which the trails grow more challenging as a hiker or cyclists gets farther from the parking lot trailhead. 

Loop 1 offers a wide, largely flat and easy stroll through prairie land. Loop 2 tackles steeper, though cooler, terrain as it dips under tree cover and into redwood canyons. Loop 3, the most challenging, pushes up steep, exposed ridges. Those who endure the strain earn a nice payoff — sweeping, coastal vistas from one of the area’s highest vantage points. 

Trails shared by mountain bikers and hikers require designs that are twice as complex. Bike-oriented paths prioritize a sense of momentum and feel that might go over a pedestrian’s head. In order for wheels and heels to safely share the trail, line-of-sight considerations often dictate the shape of the route.  

“The biggest issue is that you don’t want people surprising each other,” Perkins said. “You need to think about how soon people can see other people coming. But sometimes you just don’t have great options.” 

Where the terrain forces a trail into a blind spot or narrow path, Perkins said he incorporates pinches — sections of tight, slow turns — to regulate a potential mountain biker’s downhill speed. 

Imagining a trail network on a swath of land with no infrastructure required some intimate knowledge of the landscape. Perkins spent extended time with topological maps and on pioneering hikes through brush and bramble, feeling out the essence of a largely untouched terrain.

The idea for a trail, Perkins said, begins with a corridor, a plotted, 200-foot-wide route. Teams identify attractive cliff and sensitive habitats to avoid, analyze slope grades and, always in consultation with BLM’s field team, figure out what features are realistic. Eventually, the trail map evolves from a haphazard finger-painting into something more akin to a Vermeer. 

“We’re trying to bring people to spots where they can get great views, or see cool trees, or just feel special,” Perkins. “We really are always trying to have the trail be integrated into the landscape instead of imposed on it.” 

While trail architects are building toward the user experience, they are also designing against the three elements that can topple a trail: erosion, displacement of soil from heavy use, and compaction. Perkins said Cotoni-Coast Dairies has been particularly challenging because of two conditions inherent to the environment: rainfall, which can quickly erode a path, and cows. 

As part of the land deed, Cotoni-Coast Dairies must continue to allow private cattle ranching. The cows have apparently been part asset, part headache. As grazers, they offer a crucial defense against creeping invasive plants, especially on a land preserve that restricts pesticides. As roving, 2-ton beasts with proportionately narrow hooves, the cows are a nightmare on the trails, particularly in wet conditions where each step performs like an auger.  

“The cows really like the trails,” Ormsby said. “They’re really, really good trails.”  

Right now, the cows have something of a free range, and hikers and cyclists could expect to see them on some of the trails. However, Ormsby and Perkins said the BLM is working on piloting invisible fence collars to help encourage the cattle to stay off the trails and remain where their grazing is a benefit. 

Perkins acknowledged the front-end labor to develop trails but said he expects the Cotoni-Coast Dairies network to be, as he puts it, “more kitten than puppy.”

“Some trails are like a puppy — it’s a lot of work early but even when it grows up it still needs a lot of constant attention,” Perkins said. “[Cotoni-Coast’s] are more in the kitten zone. There’s some work in the beginning, and as it grows, you of course have to feed it, maybe take it to the vet occasionally, but it’s not nearly as demanding. For these trails, we’re putting the extra work in now so that they’re resilient.”  

Much of the work on these trails is already done. The major piece now left is the parking lot — holding up to 65 spots — which will serve as the Loop 1 trailhead access point. That project will break ground on April 15, according to the BLM, and take about two months, after which Perkins said the monument will be essentially ready for the public. 

De Young emphasized this is only phase one. 

“We’re excited to get this opened up because then we have 9 more miles of trail to fundraise for and build to the south, too,” De Young said. The southern trail network is expected to be complete by 2027, and will connect to the ongoing Coastal Rail Trail project via a pedestrian overpass stretching across Highway 1. 

Ormsby expects Cotoni-Coast Dairies to be the gem of Santa Cruz County. The BLM’s work then shifts to protecting it for the future. 

“The goal is to preserve it for future generations,” Ormsby said. “I don’t see any limit to us being able to do that. I can’t say what popularity something like social media is going to bring to this place. I don’t participate in it. But I have an idea.” 

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