McMenemy Trail and Modoc Trees Controversies to Get Public Airing

A Santa Barbara County committee with the unwieldy acronym of CRAHTAC will meet on Tuesday afternoon to discuss the fate of the McMenemy Trail and also the bike, foot, and horse paths along Modoc Road. While Modoc Road has become a rallying point in Hope Ranch over the potential elimination of trees to create the pathways, moving the McMenemy Trail is a quieter controversy in the hills above Montecito, a fact that disturbs Dave Everett. It should be noted that CRAHTAC has only an advisory capacity and doesn’t make policy.

Recognized by the City of Santa Barbara in 2011 for his leadership among the many volunteers who put in hot sweaty hours maintaining miles of front country trails, Everett has been asking CRAHTAC — the County Riding and Hiking Trails Advisory Committee — and Montecito Trails Foundation to be more public about the plans to move the eastern part of McMenemy Trail. The new route would head over the brow of the hill, down the back slope, and then up along a scarp. Everett said the new route would be “far less scenic than the current trail route, on steeper hillsides which will make it much more challenging to maintain, and greatly prone to erosion.”

Everett’s been working on a book about Santa Barbara’s trails when he isn’t otherwise working as a physical therapist or on a trail, and he said the original path was called the Old Pueblo Trail and has existed for more than 100 years, connecting Romero Canyon with Hot Springs Road. In 1965, Logan and Elizabeth McMenemy granted an easement to the county across their property for the trail, and it was used as a firebreak between Los Padres National Forest and Montecito homes. An easement for the trail also runs across part of San Ysidro Ranch.