Hikers in the Santa Cruz Mountains have a new place to explore. Santa Cruz County Parks scheduled the opening of the Pace Family Wilderness Trails at Quail Hollow Ranch County Park for Monday, Oct. 26, at 800 Quail Hollow Road in Felton. The county says the project opens nearly 80 acres of open space that the public couldn't reach before, with about 6 miles of new hiking trails.
The trails
A trail of about half a mile connects the park's existing Sunset Trail to the Pace Family Wilderness property. The county says the routes were laid out to avoid sensitive plants and natural drainage. The land is part of the Santa Cruz Sandhills, a rare habitat with plants and insects found in very few other places. County Parks Director Jeff Gaffney called the property “an unreachable island of public open space” until now.
Sculptures of species found nowhere else
The trails also feature Sandhills Sentinels, four steel sculptures with bilingual signs. Each one shows a species found only in Sandhills habitat: the Ben Lomond spineflower, the Ben Lomond wallflower, the Mount Hermon June beetle and the Zayante band-winged grasshopper.
Who built it
County Parks built the trails with community partners, park volunteers and AmeriCorps. The project was paid for in part with a $200,000 matching grant from the state's Habitat Conservation Fund. District 5 Supervisor Monica Martinez said the new access lets people “truly experience this unique landscape” while preserving it.
Before you go
The volunteer group Friends of Quail Hollow says the Pace trails are for hikers only, with no dogs or bicycles. You can reach them only through Quail Hollow, from the main trailhead at park headquarters or an informal trailhead on Quail Hollow Road. The group lists park hours as sunrise to sunset. It says the longest loop in the park, Woodrat/Sunset/Pace/Sunset/Italian, is about 5.8 miles with roughly 1,100 feet of elevation gain. Rare species live here, so stay on the marked trails.