The most popular hiking trail in the San Diego region and the sprawling nature park that surrounds it are preserved for public use thanks mostly to a series of coincidences 50 years ago and some bold moves by community leaders.
Cowles Mountain — the city’s highest peak, with a network of trails that now draw about a million hikers a year — is having a year-long celebration to commemorate the purchase of the mountain away from housing developers in 1974.
New trail markers and descriptive panels were installed last month to honor a remarkable success story that transformed a mountain that had no formal trailhead in 1974 and was known mostly for the giant “S” that San Diego State students would paint on it each year for homecoming.
The transformation is the result of successful efforts by a few neighborhood leaders — in particular one PTA parent and community planner who arranged for a fateful view from above — to persuade city and county officials to buy and preserve Cowles for $2.2 million.
Former San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy talks in his office Tuesday, July 12, 2005. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)
At the time, the purchase wasn’t intended as a step toward any grand vision. But it would turn out to be the catalyst for combining Lake Murray, Cowles Mountain, Fortuna Mountain and Mission Gorge into what would become Mission Trails Regional Park.
“It was a significant purchase that really sparked the vision for the wider park,” former San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy, whose district included the park when he served on the City Council in the early 1980s, said last week. “Mission Trails Regional Park is one of my most significant accomplishments as an elected official.”
The Cowles purchase came amid an unusual political climate fueled by concerns about overdevelopment in the city’s eastern suburbs, the beginnings of the environmental movement and rising awareness of Indigenous sites like the former Kumeyaay settlements in the park.
But it took more than those forces to turn the Cowles purchase into the catalyst for a regional park that now spans more than 8,000 acres, said Larry Stirling, who represented the area on the City Council and in the state Senate and Assembly.
It also took a lot of luck, he said last week.
Jacqueline Kaner hikes Cowles Mountain on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025 in San Diego. Kaner does the hike a few times a week. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Cowles was acquired on the last day of 1974. But it wasn’t until a few years later, in 1977, that millions of dollars to buy the private land needed to create the park became available when voters approved the Proposition C parks and open space bond measure.
The measure had been approved by voters with the intention of providing new neighborhood parks for a rapidly growing city — not to help create a new regional park in the city’s eastern suburbs that no one had even proposed at that point.
But Stirling and other leaders made sure Proposition C provided crucial funding to add about 2,500 acres to Mission Trails between 1981 and 1984 — land that helped connect the other main features of the park.
“I have a strong sense of the luck it took for everything to fall into place,” Stirling said. “It was lickety-split.”
The city has continued to acquire more land over the years. But it was the addition of those acres in the early 1980s that pretty much cemented the park as it is today, Stirling said.
And he credits the work of one local community volunteer and visionary in particular whose advocacy for acquiring Cowles allowed any of it to happen.
Dorothy Leonard, who had risen in the early 1970s from parent-teacher association volunteer to president of the local neighborhood group, the Navajo Community Planners, had supported Stirling in his 1977 race for City Council.
She was concerned about the rapid development of the city’s eastern suburbs — Allied Gardens, Del Cerro and San Carlos — and wanted to preserve some of the area as open space. And she had the drive and determination to make it happen.
Leonard ultimately successfully lobbied Stirling to get her plan considered by the City Council. She repeatedly met with city and county officials.
And — perhaps most crucially — she arranged for them all to take a plane ride together over the site.
Soon after taking off from Gillespie Field in El Cajon, those leaders got a remarkable overhead view that significantly changed the course of planning for the area — without requiring her to twist many arms.
“That plane ride was really key,” Leonard said last week. “I could hear them saying, ‘We have to preserve this.’”
People hike Cowles Mountain on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025 in San Diego. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Before their trip, her vision had differed from that of other leaders — especially the visions of county officials who had proposed two separate regional parks, one around Lake Murray and another around Fortuna Mountain.
A later county plan linked Cowles with Lake Murray, but the idea for a sprawling park that included everything was unusually bold.
“Everything came together at the right time,” Leonard said. “It was a perfect storm.”
Once that idea became the prevailing vision sometime around 1978, there was still a big problem: The proposed name was “Lake Murray/Cowles Mountain/Fortuna Mountain Regional Park,” Murphy said.
A naming contest ensued, and the result was Mission Trails Regional Park, the largest urban park in California.
In recent interviews, Leonard, Stirling and Murphy were all willing to take some credit for the creation of the park. But each also stressed that it took many, many people to make it happen.
And at the time, they said, none of them had any idea how significant their efforts were, nor how important the park or Cowles Mountain would become to the San Diego region.
They also had no idea at the time that they were mispronouncing the name Cowles. Unbeknownst to many San Diegans, it doesn’t rhyme with “vowels” — it rhymes with “holes.”
Stirling learned that the hard way while on a radio show around 1978. He mispronounced the name a couple of times, and a member of the Cowles family called in to correct him.
The mountain is named for the family of George Cowles, an East County businessman in the 1880s who founded a city then known as Cowlestown — now Santee because after his death, his widow, Jennie Blodgett, married Milton Santee.
The park continues to grow as the city and the Mission Trails Regional Park Foundation buy more private property — especially in an area long known as East Elliott.
Bob MacDonald, a trail guide, right, leads as Trina Semorile, of New York, follows on a hike on Oak Canyon Trail at Mission Trails Regional Park on Wednesday, April 9, 2025 in San Diego. “(The park) is great for hiking and great for preservation,” said Semorile. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
That area had once been earmarked for a large subdivision similar to Tierrasanta. But concerns about climate change and sprawl prompted city officials to nix those plans, creating an opportunity to enlarge the park.
Slowly and steadily, with a few dozen acres here and there, the city and the park’s foundation are adding land from East Elliott to the park.
With the help of those additions, officials say the park could eventually grow to as large as 9,000 acres.
At 1,593 feet tall, Cowles is known for the panoramic views hikers get of Point Loma, Coronado, downtown and the rest of San Diego from the mountain’s western face.
Jennifer Morrissey, executive director of the park’s foundation, said pre-pandemic estimates put the number of yearly Cowles hikers at about 800,000 — a number she estimates has risen to about 1 million since the COVID-19 pandemic made outdoor activities like hiking more popular.
She said the foundation is keenly aware of how important Mission Trails is to the region, and how important it is to keep Cowles and the park in top shape.
And Leonard, Stirling and Murphy deserve enormous credit for sharing it with the public, Morrissey added.
“This is only here thanks to the visionaries who made it happen,” she said.
On the mountain’s slopes last week, hikers praised Cowles for its panoramic views and for letting San Diegans conveniently experience nature close to home.
“The views are spectacular — you can see the whole city up there,” said Melissa Nickerson, a La Mesa resident who hikes Cowles once or twice a week. “It’s very exhilarating.”
People hike Cowles Mountain on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025 in San Diego. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Her husband, Dustin, said the couple is usually able to avoid crowds — especially notorious weekend crowds — because they have unconventional work schedules.
But Melissa loves the hike even when there are more people than she’d like.
“It’s pretty bad Saturday mornings, but it’s worth it,” she said. “The view is worth the hike and the crowds for sure.”
Even though the views are mostly the same each time she hikes, the weather provides some variety.
“It’s fun all four seasons,” she said. “When there’s a lot of winter rains, you’ll see waterfalls. We’ve hiked in hail!”
Jeff Den Herder, who moved to nearby Del Cerro in 1983, said he’s seen Cowles evolve from a sort of best-kept San Diego secret into something arguably become too popular.
Den Herder only recently resumed hiking Cowles after a long stretch of mainly sticking to cycling. But he still loves the place because of the views, and because it’s an example of what makes San Diego great.
“You can see the whole city, and it reminds you that you can’t beat living in San Diego — period,” he said.
Originally Published: August 29, 2025 at 5:00 AM PDT