Urban Hike: Golden Hill’s 32nd Street Canyon Wasn’t Always So Nice
By Priscilla Lister
It’s also one of the best examples of the value such urban oases offer.
Take a walk through its 12 acres of peaceful space in Golden Hill, bordered from Cedar to C streets, between 31st and 33rd. You’ll smell the sage, ponder the leafy pepper trees and trod a trail which has been softened with loads of sawdust.
It wasn’t always so inviting.
“When we started, it had many signs of blight: diminishing native ecosystems, many invasive weeds, drug encampments, a fire and even signs of prostitution,” says the 32nd Street Canyon Task Force on the Web site of the Friends of 32nd Street Canyon (www.32ndstreetcanyon.org).
Tershia d’Elgin, a member of the Friends of 32nd Street Canyon, sometimes she calls herself the “busybody of 32nd Street Canyon.” We caught her in the canyon leading a group of fourth-graders from Albert Einstein Academy on an exploration.
“Five people started the group in 2000 to keep the (San Diego Unified) school district from developing the canyon,” she told us. “That threat galvanized friends and neighbors.” Development threats are a common refrain among many of the “friends” groups of local canyons, which were originally sponsored by the San Diego Sierra Club and are now held together by San Diego Canyonlands(http://sdcanyonlands.org/).
D’Elgin, an award-winning writer and editor, also serves on the City of San Diego’s Forest Advisory Board. “I’m from Colorado, where there are forests,” she said. “This kind of vegetation didn’t mean anything to me.” But now she’ll pick a sage leaf and ask a child to smell its lovely fragrance. Or she’ll point to the red berries of what appears to be a holly bush and point out its real name is toyon. “They named Hollywood after this berry bush, but it really should be Toyonland,” she noted.
“When I moved to Golden Hill about a block away from the canyon, my friend, Dave Buchanan, was doing restoration here,” said d’Elgin. “He taught me the value of native plants.”
Native plants in this coastal sage scrub habitat are essential to a vibrant local ecosystem. The canyon’s “self-sustaining carbon-sequestering greenscape also diminishes air and water pollution and offsets the ‘urban heat island’ effect,” according to the 32nd Street Canyon Task Force. “Our coastal canyons are literally this region’s life support, supplying fresher air and water, energy conservation and many other critical benefits.”
To d’Elgin, the canyon isn’t only about habitat. “It’s also about human well-being,” she said.
“It has shown me the value of community, and how we can make a difference. Just like the way plants and animals help each other, this feels like a good model.” She also noted that Golden Hill residents tend to respond to local needs and turn out to help.
Indeed, in just the last few years, nearly 10 tons of debris has been removed from 32nd Street Canyon and some 4,000 native plants have been planted. Much of the labor comes from neighbors who live near it or children who learn in it.
On Nov. 9 when we were there, dozens of fourth-graders from Albert Einstein Academy (www.alberteinsteinacademy.org), a charter school at 30th and Ash Street just a few blocks away, were spending a half-day field trip in the canyon with d’Elgin and representatives from the Ocean Discovery Institute. They were planting native sage and buckwheat bushes while learning about this “dry wetland” and how important it is to the region’s ecosystem.
There’s a movement afoot to combine all the vital canyons that help define San Diego’s topography — even its beauty. “Without canyons, San Diego would be a hotter, smoggier slab of humankind,” notes the task force of the 32nd Street Canyon on its Web site.
San Diego Civic Solutions goes even further: “The natural infrastructure of our place — the fundamental beauty — if not the uniqueness that makes San Diego special, are the canyons that connect all neighborhoods. We have significant quantity of these wonderful natural places; the question is, do we love them enough, do we appreciate them enough to sustain their presence,” the organization stated in a paper proposing establishment of a Canyonlands Park throughout the San Diego region. Read it on the 32nd Street Canyon’s Web site, in the appendix of the Canyon Policy Portfolio.
But first, take a walk through 32nd Street Canyon and see what natural beauty can do for you.
To reach the trailheads: Download a good map of 32nd Street Canyon from the city’s Park and Recreation Department Web site: http://www.sandiego.gov/park-and-recreation/pdf/32ndsttrailmap.pdf. There are three main entrances: on Cedar Street at 31st Street, at the dead end of 32nd Street at B Street, and on C Street between 32nd and 33rd.
