Rancho Corral de Tierra – A Treasure Protected at Last!
by Lennie Roberts



Perseverance is one of the Committee for Green Foothills' watchwords. For nearly 40 years, we have stuck tenaciously to our mission of protecting the scenic natural landscapes of the Peninsula and Coastside.

Our tenacity paid off recently in the announcement by Peninsula Open Space Trust of the acquisition of the Rancho Corral de Tierra property — 4,262 acres of bucolic coastal terrace farm fields, chaparral clad foothills, and the dramatic skyline ridge behind Montara and Moss Beach.

Just 30 years ago, Deane and Deane (Westinghouse) owned some 8,000 acres around the City of Half Moon Bay and the Midcoast area, including the Corral de Tierra properties. They planned to develop these areas with homes, condos, shopping centers, hotels, and golf courses. The Devil's Slide Bypass Freeway was scheduled to be built to accommodate all this sprawling growth.

Enter the Committee for Green Foothills! Our small but effective organization joined the fray on many fronts. We rallied citizens to support State Senator Arlen Gregorio's bill, SB 1099, to acquire Montara State Beach, thwarting Deane and Deane's plans for the beach to become the private preserve for a Del Monte-style 400 unit lodge, plus some 1,600 units of condos and apartments surrounding a golf course. "Will North Montara Beach soon become a State Park...or will it be sacrificed to benefit private developers?" queried a 1972 CGF flyer urging members to write the State Senate to support SB 1099. The bill passed and today, visitors enjoy this spectacular beach due to public pressure overcoming a powerful development lobby. Deane and Deane argued that if the State purchased the property, the site would be paved over for a 1,000-car parking lot.

Now, after thirty years, the northern portion of the Corral de Tierra property completes the protection of the watershed of Martini Creek and the agricultural fields of Ocean View Farms located just east of Highway One at Montara State Beach.

A critical component of Deane and Deane's development plans was the notorious Devil's Slide Freeway Bypass project. Caltrans, working closely with the landowners and local Chambers of Commerce, designed the ultimate "access" project — seven miles of freeway that would have destroyed the quiet communities of Montara and Moss Beach, in addition to devastating Montara Mountain and despoiling seven separate watersheds. In 1972, Committee for Green Foothills and other environmental groups went to court and won an early key decision that highway projects came under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and were required to file Environmental Impact Statements (EIS). The outcome of this legal and political battle is the Devil's Slide Tunnel, which is close to becoming a reality.

By the late 1970s, Deane and Deane had sold their land holdings to Half Moon Bay Properties, who objected bitterly to the County's designation of their lands in the Local Coastal Program as agriculture or open space. Half Moon Bay Properties' lawyers wrote to the Board of Supervisors, "The only effect (of the proposed zoning) will be to artificially depress land values and maintain open space at the expense of private landowners." The County went forward with very low density zoning on the rural lands, but that bold stroke didn't deter new attempts at development.

Over the years, CGF has had to weigh in against various proposals on Rancho Corral de Tierra. In 1986, when an environmentally hostile Board of Supervisors was ready to unravel the Local Coastal Plan (LCP) protections of rural areas such as these parcels, CGF sponsored a countywide initiative to make any weakening amendments to the LCP subject to a vote of the citizens. However, despite the resounding success of Measure A, in accordance with State law, annexation of land to Half Moon Bay would not be subject to voter approval.

Today, with this critical acquisition, much of the rural side of the urban/rural boundary around Half Moon Bay is permanently protected, not just through zoning and voter control, but by acquisition. Without CGF, the land would not have been in its natural state today, but without POST, who knows what the future could hold?