POST Acquires 260-Acre Bluebrush Canyon
February 9, 2006
The Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) announced today that it has acquired 260 scenic acres of ranchland along the San Mateo Coast. Located just south of Half Moon Bay, the property, to be called Bluebrush Canyon, is the latest land-protection success story in POST's Saving the Endangered Coast campaign.
POST's acquisition of this property will result in the protection of the pastoral character of the Purisima Creek Valley and help safeguard native plants and animals. It will also create a vital link in a nearly completed trail corridor that will provide hiking access along Lobitos Ridge from Skyline Ridge to the sea.
"This acquisition is a special opportunity to connect the redwood forests of the mid-Coast region with the California Coastal Trail along the Pacific," said POST Executive Vice President Walter Moore. "By protecting this property, we will be preserving land that represents all four aspects of POST's mission: natural resource protection, wildlife habitat, recreation and agriculture."
Bluebrush Canyon is an excellent example of the signature landscapes POST is preserving along the San Mateo Coast. To date, POST has protected 14,519 acres of open space through its 20,000-acre coastal campaign.
POST purchased the property in February for just over $3.2 million from the de Cesare family, which has owned it since 1977. In recent years, the de Cesares have been leasing the land to Half Moon Bay resident Tom Pacheco, who spends several months a year grazing Black Angus cattle on its rich pastures of rye grass, fescue and wild oats.
Had POST not acquired the property, up to two additional private residences could have been built there, spoiling its rural atmosphere and impeding its panoramic ocean views from Montara Mountain to the north to Pigeon Point near Pescadero to the south.
Bluebrush Canyon lies a mile east of Highway 1 along Purisima Creek Road, which curves up a rugged valley through old farmsteads and scrub-covered knolls. Purisima Creek runs along the northwestern portion of the property, while Lobitos Creek defines its southeastern edge, adjacent to POST's Lobitos Ridge and Lower Purisima Creek properties.
A prominent rocky knoll rises 796 feet above the steeply sloped land. This crumbling cliff face, consisting of ocher-hued sandstone exposed as a result of historic landslide activity, serves as a navigational marker for hikers in the area.
The land is prime habitat for the endangered San Francisco garter snake and the threatened California red-legged frog. It is also hunting grounds for birds of prey such as red-tailed hawks and golden eagles, which soar over the canyon's Northern Coastal Scrub terrain of tangled willow, coyote brush and bluebrush, also known as California lilac, in search of their next meal.
The property was originally part of an 8,906-acre Spanish land grant called Rancho Cañada de Verde y Arroyo de la Purisima. The land grant, made in 1838 by then-California governor Juan Bautista Alvarado to military officer Jose Maria Alviso of San Jose, stretched from Purisima to Tunitas creeks.
In the 1950s and '60s, the property was part of a 1,000-plus-acre dairy cattle ranch co-owned by the Beffa, Marsh and McCarthy families. That ranch included lands that are now part of POST's 340-acre Lobitos Ridge property immediately to the south and nearby Elkus Ranch, currently owned by the University of California, Berkeley.
POST hopes eventually to transfer Bluebrush Canyon to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District for permanent protection as part of the adjoining Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve.