Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

What if You Owned a Beach but Weren’t Allowed to Get to It?

Ms. Sharp is a journalist who kayaks and bodysurfs along California’s beaches.

Credit...Sally Deng

SANTA BARBARA, Calif — From Malibu to Santa Cruz, wealthy people are blocking access to California’s publicly owned beaches. And no group has fought the public longer than the gated community of Hollister Ranch, about 130 miles north of Los Angeles. For more than 36 years, residents there have spent millions of dollars on lawyers and lobbyists to bar the hoi polloi from an 8.5-mile-long beach adorned with several coves.

In May, after more than four years of litigation over public access to the beach, a settlement was announced between the ranch cooperative, on one side, and the California Coastal Commission and California Coastal Conservancy, on the other, to allow the public to get to a small stretch of the beach. But you won’t be able to walk, ride a bike or drive to it. Instead, beachgoers will have to brave a two-mile sea trip by surfboard, kayak or boat.

“Every death or accident that occurs at sea will be due to this agreement,” one California resident, Ted Pessin, recently emailed the coastal commission. He was among hundreds who wrote to the commission blasting the plan as “appalling,” “selfish” and “totally unacceptable.”

The deal was tentatively approved by a Santa Barbara Superior Court judge. But she took the unusual step of giving members of the public until Monday to intervene in the deal.

When you say California, a lot of people probably think beach. The state’s voters created the coastal commission in 1972 to protect California’s magnificent coastline and, in 1976, lawmakers passed the Coastal Act. The law says that all of the state’s beaches below the mean high-tide line belong to the public and that public access should be maximized consistent with “constitutionally protected rights of private property owners.”

This seemingly reasonable caveat set the stage for bitter battles between private- and public-property advocates. Citizens may own California’s beaches, but that doesn’t mean they can get to them, at least easily. The shoreline is often separated, and sometimes walled off, by private property. The coastal commission has fought vigorously for public easements to allow access, sometimes setting off epic battles. Among those who sought to block beach access was the billionaire David Geffen, who eventually settled with the commission in 2005 to allow people on to his Malibu beachfront.

Now the law itself is being challenged by a tech billionaire in an appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has been battling with the state to block access to crescent-shaped Martins Beach at the end of a private road across his land long used by the public. In his petition to the court, which the justices are scheduled to consider in September, he argues that the state’s demand that he keep the road open is an unconstitutional taking of private property. As his petition puts it, “No property right is more fundamental than the right to exclude.”

Which brings us back to Hollister Ranch.

The place takes its name from William Hollister, a sheepherder from Ohio who settled there around 1870. His family grazed cattle on thousands of acres of rolling grasslands until the 1960s, when they sold the ranch. A portion was bought by a developer and subdivided, and by 1972 the Hollister Ranch Owners’ Association was selling 100-acre tracts, advertising the area’s historical tradition and natural advantages.

(Nearly) Exclusive Ocean Views

Hollister Ranch, divided into dozens of parcels for homes, hugs the Pacific Coast and offers little public access.

NEVADA

CALIFORNIA

CALIFORNIA

1

Santa Barbara

Los Angeles

MEXICO

Las Cruces

Parcel lines

Arroyo Hondo

Preserve

gaviota

state park

Hollister Ranch

101

Hollister Ranch

Gatehouse

Pacific Ocean

point

concepTion

5 miles

5 miles

CALIFORNIA

101

1

Las

Cruces

Parcel lines

gaviota

state park

Hollister Ranch

Hollister Ranch Gatehouse

point

concepTion

Pacific Ocean

NEVADA

CALIFORNIA

Hollister

Ranch

Santa Barbara

Los Angeles

Pacific Ocean

MEXICO

100 miles

By The New York Times

Over the years, the gated community has lured plastic surgeons, Hollywood agents, corporate executives and money managers. Among them are Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, the singer-songwriter Jackson Browne and the director James Cameron.

The fight over beach access there has been long and complicated, focused on the legal legitimacy of a 1970s easement along a rugged road.

Some homeowners feared that allowing the public onto the beach would lure hordes who would litter it. Since Santa Barbara County is 46 percent Hispanic and has the highest rate of child poverty in California, at 28.8 percent, one could argue that there’s a whiff of economic and racial discrimination in that fear.

And Hollister Ranch residents have themselves distressed this environment. They’ve hauled in heavy machinery to level hilltops and poured concrete for tennis courts, infinity pools, multicar garages and trophy homes. They’ve introduced nonnative species such as Bosch dishwashers, Wolf stoves and French oak wood floors. Some land their helicopters there. In other words, they create plenty of their own pollution, waste and noise.

Fortunately, there are better ways to balance the interests of both sides in this dispute. The access road could be improved so people could hike — not drive — the two miles to the beach, perhaps under the supervision of Gaviota State Park next door. Hikers could also reserve time spots as visitors do at the adjacent Arroyo Hondo Preserve to prevent overcrowding. But Hollister Ranch residents should accept that for nearly half a century, Californians have worked to make sure that people of all ages, abilities and income brackets can enjoy a sunset or build a sand castle.

Out here, that’s not a luxury. It’s the law.

Kathleen Sharp is a journalist, a film producer and the author of “Mr. and Mrs. Hollywood: Edie and Lew Wasserman and their Entertainment Empire.”

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: It’s Your Beach. Don’t Let Them Hog It.. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT