Surfers can continue riding the rolling waves at the secluded cobblestone beach. Campers can still pitch tents for a getaway at San Mateo State Park. Hikers and bikers can keep exploring the expansive trails just south of San Clemente.
At least for the next three years.
The Department of the Navy, the United States Marine Corps and California State Parks agreed this week to extend the lease for San Onofre State Beach in “an effort to continue serving San Onofre State Beach visitors.”
The Department of the Navy’s current leasing of the state beach property, which is a portion of Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, expired on Tuesday. The lease extension, which expires Aug. 31, 2024, allows time for the required real estate surveys to be completed in preparation for the execution of a new lease, a State Parks release said.
“With this extension, most terms of the original lease still apply, and California State Parks will continue managing operations of the park,” it said. “Most importantly, the public still has access to all previously open areas of San Onofre State Beach.”
The Department of Navy will now complete land surveys, document property lines and determine fair market value that will, hopefully, result in a longer 50-year lease, said Bob Mignogna, chair for San Onofre Parks Foundation’s Lease Renewal Task Force.
“Most people won’t even know this took place,” he said.
The nonprofit has worked with the government agencies to form an agreement for the past six years. Mignogna admitted getting a bit nervous last week before the official documents were signed.
“If you don’t sign a contract before it expires, it expires. And it opens the door for changes to be made in the agreement,” he said.
The cost of the current three-year lease? $1.
When President Richard Nixon approved a lease with State Parks 50 years ago, the cost was $1 for the entire duration of the agreement.
“The goal remains an affordable 50-year lease renewal and the extension gives all parties the opportunity to prepare that contract properly,” Mignogna wrote in a social media post notifying the public about the news. “The Foundation will continue its work to facilitate the long-term lease so that these pristine surf breaks continue to be open to the public for generations to come.”
San Onofre has a storied history. Indigenous tribes once called the area home. By the ’30s its perfect, tucked-away surf was luring early wave riders who would haul in big, wooden boards to take the Waikiki-like waves.
The area became so popular among surfers that the fish camp changed its name to become the mainland’s first “surf camp.”
It was during World War II that private landowners sold San Onofre to the Marine Corps. For $4.7 million, the Marines received about 160 square miles, plus 16 miles of coast starting at San Clemente’s southern border and going down to Oceanside, to be used for amphibious landing training.
In 1952, after the military took over, wave riders created the San Onofre Surf Club, a select group that were allowed on the military property provided they had a sticker on their windshield to access the surf beach.
Some surfers ventured north to off-limits waves, such as Lower Trestles, and returned with stories of military personnel running them out of the area, taking their boards or handing out citations.
When Nixon set up his “Western White House” on San Clemente’s southern border in 1969, the idea was raised to open a portion of the Camp Pendleton land to the public. It would become the first in Nixon’s “Legacy of Parks” program, which sought to give the public a place to escape urban sprawl, a way to make use of surplus federal land that wasn’t being used.
California State Parks has been the steward the stretch that spans 6.5 miles just south of San Clemente since 1971.
The San Onofre Surf Club lobbied to add Trestles, which had a world-class wave that today draws some of the globe’s best surfers, to the State Parks jurisdiction. That goal was achieved by the mid-’70s, though the military opted to keep a swath between Trestles and San Onofre Surf Beach, dubbed “Church,” for military camping and training exercises.
The 2,000-acre park isn’t just for surfers. Mountain bikers trek the back-country trails, and campers pitch tents along the bluffs at the San Onofre trails or inland at the San Mateo State Park campground.
It’s one of the most popular areas in the State Parks system, with an estimated 2 million visits per year.
