Noticing xi - repurposing a golf course

Here on the Monterey Peninsula we have, according to Golf Advisor, 20 world-class golf courses, including three private and five public courses in Pebble Beach alone. Pebble is home to the annual AT&T Pro-Am tournament, started in 1937 in Rancho Santa Fe by Bing Crosby (when it was known as the Crosby Clambake), and revived after WWII at Pebble, where Bing had a residence. Every ten years or so, the U.S. Open is staged at Pebble Beach as well. And every December for the past few years, I've worked as a chauffeur for a Lexus-sponsored golfing benefit—which is as close as I get to an active "interest" in the sport.

Rancho Cañada Golf Course

So why do I mention golf at all? Well, today we took our afternoon walk on a golf course! Okay, not quite: we took our walk at Palo Corona Regional Park in Carmel Valley, which last year opened its newest extension, the 140-acre Rancho Cañada unit—formerly the Rancho Cañada Golf Course.

The land was purchased in 2016 by a coalition of environmental groups, including the Trust for Public Land, Trout Unlimited (the Carmel River, home to anadromous steelhead, runs through the property), the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District, and the local Santa Lucia Conservancy. The water company also contributed, since ceasing the need to keep golf greens green is reinfusing the river with some 300 acre-feet annually.

The acreage had been owned since the late 1800s by a local family, the Hattons, who ran dairy farms. To their credit, they opted not to sell to the highest bidder, but rather to preserve the land from development—for posterity, and for wildlife. (They did get a cool $10 million for the land; it's not like they gave it away.) Palo Corona Park is the northernmost publicly held parcel in a connected string of properties that extend all the way to Hearst Ranch in San Luis Obispo County, a distance of some 90 miles.

I took a few photos today. The former course is far from green because we're in the summer dry period. It looks and feels natural. I did notice a couple vestiges of the land's former purpose (including some of the paved paths we walked along).

This riverside land hosts a lot of cottonwood trees.

You can't see it, but there is a great blue
heron in this shot. It was patiently fishing.

A closed-off bridge to the former sixth tee.