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Home Resource Center In the News Home Greenbelt Alliance in the News |
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Greenbelt Alliance In the News
October 1, 2003 Solano Roll
Tighten your Greenbelt BY ANNIKA DUKESImagine a world without regional parks, rangers, or trails -- without the variety of Tilden or Joaquin Miller; the beautiful trees of Redwood; the Lakes of Anza, Temescal, and Chabot. Outdoor enthusiasts in Benicia, Vallejo, and Fairfield don't need to imagine: Despite being the fastest-growing county in the Bay Area, Solano has no regional park district. Thank heavens for the Solano Land Trust, a private nonprofit organization that has been buying up open space in Solano County since 1986 and preserving it the best they know how. If one day the Board of Supervisors creates a parks infrastructure, there are a few thousand protected acres ready to go amongst the farmland, ranches, and gentle hills of Solano. A little more than a thousand of those acres belong to Lynch Canyon, an area northwest of Interstate 80 between American Canyon Road and Highway 12. Acquired in 1996, this enclosed watershed features rolling hills and meadows, groves of native trees, and 900-foot ridges that showcase great views of the Bay Area and beyond. A new trail in Lynch Canyon adds another link to the 400-mile Bay Area Ridge Trail and is open by special arrangement only a few times per month to hikers, mountain bikers, and horseback riders. This weekend, local-land-use nonprofit Greenbelt Alliance sponsors an easy three-mile hike in Lynch Canyon as part of their fall Peak Experience series. "Our Greenbelt Outings are designed to get Bay Area residents out into the open space," says outings coordinator Julie Cummins. "[We want] to introduce local residents to parks they might not know were even there." See Greenbelt.org for the full menu of hikes led by knowledgeable volunteers who focus on plants, history, and land conservation issues for the terrain they cover. A discussion topic for Sunday's hike is Fairfield's Measure L, an antisprawl measure on the ballot for November that would give voters -- rather than the city council -- control over city boundary lines. For directions and reservations, call Greenbelt Alliance at 415-255-3233 or check the Web site. ### |
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