Big Sur Land Trust and Salinas cut the ribbon on Ensen Community Park.

Traveling through certain landscapes, I like to play a game: Imagine what it once looked like, before modern human impact. If you try hard enough, you can imagine grizzly bears tromping through the wetlands of the Salinas Valley, or windswept coastal grasslands where Carmel neighborhoods now stand.

Usually this exercise means going back in time. The idea that we can go forward in time and reclaim certain heavily impacted landscapes as habitat seems elusive. But in Monterey County, two such projects are now underway. At Palo Corona Regional Park, construction on the banks of the Carmel River is restoring habitat and a more natural shape to a river channel that for years ran through a golf course; that former golf course is being revegetated with native plants (and also lined with recreational paths for humans – this is, after all, the 21st century). Just downriver, the Big Sur Land Trust is awaiting final federal funds for its Carmel River FREE project that would similarly restore the floodplain.

Meanwhile, Big Sur Land Trust is about to cross the finish line on a long-anticipated project. Part of Ensen Community Park in Salinas will open on Sunday, Aug. 17, a major achievement for the nonprofit, a fabulous new asset for Salinas and a rare success story of transforming industrial agricultural land back to nature, flood control and community recreation.

The park is located at Carr Lake, which was drained to make way for agriculture. In the 1920s, the Reclamation Ditch was built and the multiple lakes were converted into 480 acres of farmland that for a century have been owned by three farming families, the Hibinos, Higashis and Ikedas.

Finally, in 2014, the Ikeda family was ready to sell their 73 acres; the Big Sur Land Trust bought the property in 2016 for $4 million and a promise to create a community-serving park – and the organization’s first urban park – within 10 years.

“One of the things we are most proud of is we made a promise that we kept,” says Rachel Saunders, BSLT’s vice president of conservation. “For decades, people had been dreaming about, how can this be transformed to serve the community?”

The public input process began almost right away, in 2017, when over 120 people came to a meeting. They were asked to complete the prompt: “My dream for Carr Lake is ___.”

Those dreams were blended with the constraints of the land itself – historically it was a lake, and it still seasonally floods with regularity. That meant no housing and limited infrastructure. The resulting plan features a six-acre park (the part opening on Aug. 17) on higher ground, and a 67-acre habitat area with 1.7 miles of trails slated to open in 2026.

(Due to that natural flooding cycle, these trails likely won’t be entirely accessible year-round. BSLT has an agreement with the city to continue doing maintenance on the habitat portion, but the city will be responsible for the smaller park portion.)

Saunders says the total cost is about $39 million, raised largely from a bevy of state agencies. The parkland will all be transferred to the City of Salinas for free. (The city contributed $1 million toward the six-acre park, which cost about $13 million to build.) Next, fundraising will begin in earnest for ongoing maintenance, and a friends group will form to keep up the shiny new equipment.

I went out to see the park and take a hard hat tour with Saunders, while some play structures are still in process of being installed. (The big, steep slide is ready for prime time.)

While we’re there, a man with a car full of kids drives up to ask if it’s open yet; Saunders says this is a daily occurrence. People are eagerly anticipating the skate area, the dog park, the playground, the shaded barbecue pits, the basketball court, the pickleball court. These high-use areas include turf, which then thoughtfully transitions to native grass and then to the habitat area.

Standing in the park with Saunders, she notes that the traffic noise from Sherwood Drive and Natividad Drive has quieted; walk a mile out into the habitat area (now a construction site), and she says it fades to just a murmur.

“When you are standing out there, it becomes peaceful,” she says. “This is restoration in all the ways that you can think about it – natural and human.”

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycountynow.com.