Multitudes of surfers, hikers, birdwatchers, campers, mountain bikers and others who relish getting away from Southern California’s urban sprawl can thank President Richard M. Nixon for San Onofre State Beach.
An exhibit on display this summer in the cottage visitor center at San Clemente State Beach describes Nixon’s bold move 45 years ago to create what has become one of California’s most visited state parks. It showcases San Onofre’s surfing heritage, the Marines’ training mission and stewardship of Camp Pendleton and the value of having a 3,000-acre wilderness park to escape the megalopolis of Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties.
The display can lead one to wonder: If Nixon had decided to make, say, Laguna Beach or Newport Beach the site of his summer White House instead of San Clemente, might there be no state park at San Onofre? No Kelly Slater surf victories at Trestles? No blufftop campground with six rustic trails leading to remote beaches undisturbed by civilization?
The exhibit – titled “Coastal Wilderness in the Heart of Southern California” – tells how Nixon, taking office in January 1969, went house-hunting in Southern California. He selected a secluded beachfront mansion on San Clemente’s border with Camp Pendleton and decided that, when he left office, he wanted to build his presidential library close to his home.
“He was planning to live here forever and he wanted the presidential library there,” said Steve Long, a retired state parks superintendent. “The law wouldn’t allow it on Marine Corps property. He started looking for an alternative on how he could do this.”
The exhibit tells how Nixon created the Legacy of Parks program, a federal move that the Nixon Foundation says transferred more than 80,000 acres of surplus federal lands to create some 640 parks nationwide by the late 1970s.
“San Onofre happened to be one of the first ones,” Long said.
Legacy of Parks proved to be one of Nixon’s most beneficial domestic policies during his presidency from 1969-74, the exhibit says, but his hopes of putting his library on state park land across I-5 from his San Clemente home were squelched when the Watergate scandal forced him to resign.
The library ended up in Nixon’s birthplace, Yorba Linda.
“San Onofre State Beach remains as a shining example of the best of his legacy, today recognized as a world treasure and referred to as the Yosemite of Surfing,” the exhibit says.
Long, who worked with retired state park colleagues Mike Brousard and Jim Serpa to assemble the exhibit, said he learned of the library story from “Lost Honor,” a book by former Nixon aide John Dean. The exhibit includes San Onofre surf scenes from the 1930s, photos of the federal government creating Camp Pendleton in 1942 to train Marines for World War II, views of Marines training there today and an evolution of surfing at San Onofre.
The Navy signed a 50-year lease in 1971 with the California Department of Parks and Recreation. The lease expires in 2021, and Long said preliminary talks between state parks and the Marines have begun.
The exhibit salutes Camp Pendleton Marines for their role in protecting the nation and their stewardship over nearly 200 square miles of land that, absent Camp Pendleton, would likely be paved over like San Clemente or Oceanside.
“They effectively stopped the urban sprawl that would have overcome the zone,” the exhibit says. “The establishment of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton created a public trust assuring that generations to come will forever have access to the San Onofre coast.”
Brousard said the exhibit is designed to recognize what a treasure San Onofre State Beach is, a stretch of remote coastline and trails “surrounded by tens of millions of people, and it’s been preserved by the Marine Corps and is a state park.”
Contact the writer: 949-492-5127 or fswegles@ocregister.com
