I spent a good part of yesterday afternoon at Will Rogers State Park.  Named after the famed humorist (he coined the phrase “I don’t belong to any organized party; I’m a Democrat”), the park stretches across the Santa Monica Mountains and offers stunning views of both the Pacific Ocean and the city of Los Angeles.  And it is one of the 48 parks scheduled for closure.

The official reason for the closure is that the park doesn’t make enough money to cover its own overhead costs.  Apparently state parks now need to be money makers instead of gifts to the people of California.  There’s a $7 parking fee but no entry fee; people entering the park on foot pay nothing.  With a small residential community nearby, plenty of people just leave their cars a few blocks away and walk into the park for free.  According to 2006-20007 statistics, 28% of the park’s entrants were walk-ins.  Seems to me that there’s a fairly simple solution here that would relieve residential congestion and keep the park afloat, but what do I know, I just write for the Internets.

What struck me was the large number of people out for the afternoon.  I don’t know if it was because of the notice of impending closure or not, but this is not a portrait of a struggling piece of public land that needs to be shuttered.  There were hundreds of people playing soccer at the polo fields, hiking, and touring the fully restored 31-room ranch house.  There’s another point to be made here.  The grounds of the park include part of the 55-mile Backbone Trail which connects several state parks together along the Santa Monica Mountains.  It’s not entirely clear where one park ends and another begins, and putting up a chain to cordon off the closed portions isn’t really going to stop anyone.  In other words, you’re going to simply have an unsupervised park still used by hikers, decreasing public safety while saving very little, perhaps a half-million dollars in maintenance, which could certainly be less if the parking fee was an entrance fee.

The point is this.  Will Rogers’ widow offered the preserve as a gift to the people of California (the family is still fighting to keep it open).  The park system is part of the California dream, part of what makes the state so unique in its diversity, its landscape, its opportunity for activity.  In California, you can sunbathe in the morning and be on the ski slopes by sundown.  If we can’t “afford” the natural beauty of the state park system, we’ve done something terribly wrong, and every Californian has a stake in opening up the land and keeping it available for recreation.  

The austere, cuts-only budget will hurt people in a variety of different ways, most of them more profoundly than by closing 48 parks.  But the symbolism of having to close the land, having to close the ocean view, having to close part of what makes California what it is, this is truly ignominious.  And at some point, you’d think Californians would hold their leaders responsible for this shame.