A Dream For Upper Bidwell Park

The Annie Bidwell Trail

by Michael Jones

My three children wade up the South Fork of the Kern River, golden flecks of mica sparkle in the water. They have walked 11 dusty miles today, and have now found the real world equivalent of heaven. California’s native golden trout swim in these waters. The sparkle in children’s eyes tells me that they have connected with the natural world.

I have taken them hiking many times before. We have gotten lost on the signless trails in the Upper Park. We have explored on cross-country treks into Cub Creek Botanical Area off of Deer Creek. We have had fun, we have had tears, but they haven’t connected with God’s world in this way before. I think California has three new advocates for the wild lands.

But what made this event possible? It was a trail. In this case, it was the Pacific Crest Trail. Trails provide the interface by which humans best become aware of their ancestral, evolutionary link to the wild land. Most of us with gray flecks (or more) in our hair can remember a similar special moment along a trail.

The Pacific Crest Trail in this area is new. Someone had the vision and took the political heat to see it implemented. Construction crews entered the South Sierra Wilderness and built the trail. At first some thought it was an intrusion on the wilderness. But now it is a part of the landscape, accepted by people and by the wildlife. Wild animals often walk along the trail, judging from the many footprints we see.

John Muir, the founder of our Sierra’s national parks, understood that the public must have access to the wild lands in order that they be appreciated and saved. Muir’s Sierra Club originated the environmental movement right here in California, and today California boast the greatest percent of our acreage in Parks and wildernesses of any state outside of Alaska, despite the fact that we have the greatest population.

California’s population is concentrated in cities, separated by wildlands; at least more so than any other area of the world with 30 million people. Chico’s General Plan outlines a similar vision on a local level. A dense urban core with wildlands preserved along the creeks and in the hills.

Our visionary General Plan was nearly decimated a couple years ago by a Councilmember from a logging town, Mr. Rick Keene. Many people of this community came to the defense of the heart of the General Plan, the Community Design Element. It was saved.

The Community Design Element has numerous guiding principles of opening up the creekside areas to public use and appreciation. Last year, an Annie Bidwell Trail was proposed as an Implementing Policy for the General Plan as a way to implement the Community Design Element.

The Annie Bidwell Trail general plan amendment passed the City Council on a unanimous vote earlier this year. John Muir would be proud.

Annie and John Bidwell met with John Muir in the late 19th century. Perhaps his great works inspired her to preserve her wildlands along Big Chico Creek as a park, a park for all the people. This is our beloved Bidwell Park.

The wording of the general plan for the Annie Bidwell Trail: "The City shall allow and encourage development of an Annie Bidwell Trail within sight and sound of Big Chico Creek, where practicable, on city lands from Bidwell Mansion to Ten-Mile Road. The trail should be constructed or upgraded to a minimum of (Bidwell Trails Manual) Class B standards as soon as possible, but ideally done in time for the 100-year anniversary of Annie Bidwell’s July 11, 1905 deed of Bidwell Park."

There is a hope that the trail can be extended up Big Chico Creek beyond Ten-Mile Road. It would pass through the newly acquired Big Chico Creek Ecologic Preserve, eventually through miles of Sierra Pacific Industries land, and on to the headwaters where it would connect with the Pacific Crest Trail. Just imagine, our children or grandchildren would be able to walk entirely on trail from Chico’s urban core all the way to the South Fork of the Kern River, some 800 miles away. There they could see the golden trout and golden flecks of mica. And imagine all the adventures they would have along the way!

Remember all those trails you have hiked on. Somebody had to plan for them. Someone had to build them. And like a completed cathedral is more than just the sum of the stone blocks and glass it is built of, so a trail becomes something more, it becomes a place of the heart.

And it becomes the place where our children learn the love of the wild places of our beloved California.

Over the next few months, the Bidwell Park and Playground Commission will be choosing a specific route to meet the guidelines set by the Council. Environmental review will then be done. Our current job is to identify the route that minimizes the environmental impacts, yet is true to the General Plan’s vision of connecting Chicoans with our creekside habitats. It can be done, and we as a people have an overriding public interest in doing so. It is now our generation’s time to build trails.

Note: BEC’s Jon Luvaas was the visionary chairperson of the General Plan task Force which wrote the 1994 General Plan. The General Plan was updated as part of a 5-year review a few months ago. The author wrote the Annie Bidwell Trail Implementing Policy, and Kirk Monfort and Planning Director Kim Siedler revised it at the Planning Commission.

What needs to be done:

Urge the Park Commission to expedite the process of choosing a final route. When the draft management plan for the Big Chico Creek Ecological Preserve comes out in a few months, help to encourage the University Foundation, Paul Maslin, and Suzanne Gibbs to accept an Annie Bidwell trail with un-restricted public access. Publicize the clear-cutting by Sierra Pacific in the upper watershed, and as part of the compromise, support funding to buy a 1-mile wide conservation easement to protect the creek habitat and as a corridor for the trail.

From the Winter 2001 issue of the Environmental News.