Martial Cottle Park

In 2003, Walter Cottle Lester donated 153 acres of his family’s ranch to Santa Clara County, and sold the adjacent 137 acres to the State of California for $5 million. He did so with the stipulation that the County and State cooperate to create an agricultural park. This evening, I attended a meeting of the Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation Commission where the Final Draft Program Document for the Martial Cottle Park Master Plan was presented.

It seems too good to be true. The park will contain working farms that will make (probably) organic and (definitely) locally-grown produce available. That alone is a wonderful thing. There will be trails, connected to the local trail system, for bicycle and pedestrian access. Educational programs will complement those already offered at Emma Prusch park.

And there is an opportunity to restore Canoas Creek from a flood control channel to an actual, functioning stream.

On another happy note, I received my first PayPal donation through this website! I’m very happy to get such support based on what I’ve been saying online.

On my links page, I’ve also added an excellent video about water recycling. It’s about 195 MB, and 23 minutes long, so don’t try it with a dialup connection.

5 thoughts on “Martial Cottle Park

  1. Hi Diana,

    The link to the video from your blog did not get me to your home page or the video.

    As to the Lester philanthropy, I will always remember the Lester family getting some of the Water Board to be their cheerleader for putting Calabasas Creek UNDER the parking lots at the Valco Industrial Park, east of the shopping center. One brave woman working for the Corps of Engineers successfully blocked half of the burial, showing that the proposal severed the riparian corridor too severely. The Director from District 5 at the time, James Lenihan, lead the charge for the District and was forever chagrined by the defeat by the COE.

  2. Another historical note:

    Coyote Creek used to overflow its banks during flood stage and dump water into the Guadalupe River through what is now Canoas Creek. I brought this fact to the attention of the COE when they were studying the Guadalupe and Adjacent Streams in the 70’s.

    There is much to be learned about watershed management and land use policies by reviewing the work done by the San Francisco Estuary Project in their Coyote Creek Historical Ecology Study. I’ll send you the links or files to your e-mail address.

  3. Thank you, Pat. I’m sorry the video link was obscure; it was a link to another link, but I’ve fixed it in the post so that it goes directly to the video.

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