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SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS

Mismanaging a National Treasure Along Skyline Boulevard
By JOHN MILLER

Twenty-five years ago, then-Rep. Pete McCloskey introduced a bill in Congress to declare scenic Skyline Boulevard, meandering along the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains, a national parkway.
Had McCloskey's bill become law, Skyline Boulevard, the gateway to numerous state and county parks, and thousands of acres of open space preserves, today would be preserved and managed by the National Park Service.
But Congress said no, and Skyline did not achieve the federal protection afforded the Blue Ridge, Natchez Trace and other national parkways. Local government and the state felt they could better preserve Skyline's environmental quality than national parkway designation and the alleged hordes of tourists it was predicted to bring.
Today, Skyline Boulevard clings to its national-class scenic reputation as its aesthetic character has become degraded by mismanagement, and its future as one of America's prime scenic roads is in doubt.
Let us count the ways state and local governments have fumbled the job of protecting the aesthetic ambiance and environmental quality of the Skyline corridor, beginning with Castle Rock State Park, the area's premier natural attraction.
On a recent weekend, after a 10-mile hike through the park's beautiful canyons to the headwaters of the San Lorenzo River, I can testify that the most distinctive feature of Castle Rock Park and adjoining residential neighborhoods is gunfire.
For all but 20 minutes of my four-hour visit to the park, I did not hear the sound of the wind, water or wildlife. Instead, I heard the thunder of gunshots echoing for miles throughout the valley all afternoon long. The source is the Los Altos Rod and Gun Club, where weapons enthusiasts fire at targets on an outdoor shooting range seven days a week, from morning till night.
From the park's trails, hikers can see signs warning them away from the range's private property, but nowhere at Castle Rock are signs warning taxpayers that gunfire has degraded and devalued the serenity of what otherwise would be one of the state's finest parks.
The state parks department needs to understand that noise pollution is just as damaging to the public's investment in Castle Rock as would be the dumping of toxic waste that ends up on park property.
Until the state parks department takes legal action against the gun club, it has failed to preserve peace and quiet, which surely should be the most basic protection afforded an area as aesthetically significant as the Skyline corridor.
Though Skyline Boulevard between Saratoga Gap and Highway 92 is an official "Scenic Highway," the entire road, regardless of designation, is managed for every conceivable purpose but aesthetic preservation.
Within the past half year, perhaps hundreds of reflector poles have been installed without regard to their visual impact upon the road and surrounding views.
In some places along Skyline, these visually obtrusive reflectors have been erected (crookedly at that) literally every 30 feet, creating a virtual wall of reflectors. In Shenandoah and Rocky Mountain National Parks, roads far more dangerous than Skyline have no such reflectors detracting from motorists' aesthetic experience.
Most recently, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has installed along the length of Skyline Boulevard a number of solar-powered motorist call boxes.
They are the very same tall poles with yellow phone boxes and large blue sign whose physical scale is perfectly acceptable on a interstate highway, but which are totally unacceptable aesthetically along the Skyline corridor.
"No parking" signs the size of small billboards clutter entire sections of Skyline Boulevard around the main entrance to Castle Rock. At Christmas time, private tree farms think nothing of erecting commercial signs along the right of way.
In the past few years, ground-level real estate for-sale signs have been replaced by elevated real estate for-sale signs. Advertising messages promoting enterprising window washers and gardeners are proliferating along the boulevard. How long before the first permanent commercial billboard rears its ugly head?
Graffiti on state highway signs and unseemly litter at the Saratoga Gap view site are particularly unacceptable, considering the Caltrans maintenance station is nearby. Though "No Vendor" signs are posted along Skyline, no doubt to discourage littering, both the sheriff and Highway Patrol apparently routinely neglect to issue citations to illegal vendors. So vending continues.
Electric and telephone lines are not being put below ground as they may have been under National Park management. As part of maintenance, PG&E, Pacific Bell, GTE and small private phone contractors routinely "trim" and cut down trees and other vegetation with no apparent regard for the visual impact.
Of course, no single example of aesthetic degradation is in itself necessarily fatal to Skyline's allure. But the cumulative impact of such neglect has, and will continue to have, a negative impact on the aesthetic quality of Skyline Boulevard and the surrounding lands in which the public has invested both its tax dollars and its affection.
None of this need happen if management of the Skyline corridor were not the kind of Balkanized nightmare that only a bureaucrat could love. In the absence of comprehensive National Park Service management, no single local or state agency is responsible for managing the Skyline area as a totality. No single agency is responsible for protecting the overall aesthetic quality of the Skyline corridor.
The most logical and cost-effective way to protect the area is to designate all of Skyline Boulevard a state scenic route. Most importantly, Caltrans, the agency responsible for scenic route management, needs the administrative, and if necessary statutory, authority to adequately enforce aesthetic standards on scenic roads. To make scenic route designation more than a meaningless label, Caltrans must be particularly sensitive to inappropriate activities of well-intentioned but misguided public agencies that make a mockery of scenic route designation.
McCloskey's national parkway proposal recognized what the current fragmented management of the Skyline corridor does not. While acquiring park land and open space is important, the scenic and environmental quality of the Santa Cruz Mountains also depends on protecting Skyline Boulevard itself from thoughtless highway "improvements, the destructive habits of residents and visitors, and creeping commercialism.
John Miller lives on Skyline Boulevard. He wrote this article for Perspective.