![\"Former](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SUT-L-cowles-50-1.jpg\")
Former San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy talks in his office Tuesday, July 12, 2005. (AP Photo\/Lenny Ignelzi)<\/p>\nThe most popular hiking trail\u00a0in 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.<\/p>\n
Cowles Mountain \u2014 the city\u2019s highest peak, with a network of trails that now draw about a million hikers a year \u2014 is having a year-long celebration to commemorate the purchase of the mountain away from housing developers in 1974.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cS\u201d that San Diego State students would paint on it each year for homecoming.<\/p>\n
The transformation is the result of successful efforts by a few neighborhood leaders \u2014 in particular one PTA parent and community planner who arranged for a fateful view from above \u2014 to persuade city and county officials to buy and preserve Cowles for $2.2 million.<\/p>\n
Former San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy talks in his office Tuesday, July 12, 2005. (AP Photo\/Lenny Ignelzi)<\/p>\n
At the time, the purchase wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a significant purchase that really sparked the vision for the wider park,\u201d 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. \u201cMission Trails Regional Park is one of my most significant accomplishments as an elected official.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cowles purchase came amid an unusual political climate fueled by concerns about overdevelopment in the city\u2019s eastern suburbs, the beginnings of the environmental movement and rising awareness of Indigenous sites like the former Kumeyaay settlements in the park.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It also took a lot of luck, he said last week.<\/p>\n
![\"Jacqueline](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SUT-L-cowles-mountain-10.jpg\")
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)<\/p>\n
Cowles was acquired on the last day of 1974. But it wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
The measure had been approved by voters with the intention of providing new neighborhood parks for a rapidly growing city \u2014 not to help create a new regional park in the city\u2019s eastern suburbs that no one had even proposed at that point.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 land that helped connect the other main features of the park.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a strong sense of the luck it took for everything to fall into place,\u201d Stirling said. \u201cIt was lickety-split.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
She was concerned about the rapid development of the city\u2019s eastern suburbs \u2014 Allied Gardens, Del Cerro and San Carlos \u2014 and wanted to preserve some of the area as open space. And she had the drive and determination to make it happen.<\/p>\n
Leonard ultimately successfully lobbied Stirling to get her plan considered by the City Council. She repeatedly met with city and county officials.<\/p>\n
And \u2014 perhaps most crucially \u2014 she arranged for them all to take a plane ride together over the site.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 without requiring her to twist many arms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat plane ride was really key,\u201d Leonard said last week. \u201cI could hear them saying, \u2018We have to preserve this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SUT-L-cowles-mountain-8.jpg\")
People hike Cowles Mountain on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025 in San Diego. (Ana Ramirez \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
Before their trip, her vision had differed from that of other leaders \u2014 especially the visions of county officials who had proposed two separate regional parks, one around Lake Murray and another around Fortuna Mountain.<\/p>\n
A later county plan linked Cowles with Lake Murray, but the idea for a sprawling park that included everything was unusually\u00a0bold.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything came together at the right time,\u201d Leonard said. \u201cIt was a perfect storm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once that idea became the prevailing vision sometime around 1978, there was still a big problem: The proposed name was \u201cLake Murray\/Cowles Mountain\/Fortuna Mountain Regional Park,\u201d Murphy said.<\/p>\n
A naming contest ensued, and the result was Mission Trails Regional Park, the largest urban park in California.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
They also had no idea at the time that they were mispronouncing the name Cowles. Unbeknownst to many San Diegans, it doesn\u2019t rhyme with \u201cvowels\u201d \u2014 it rhymes with \u201choles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stirling learned that the hard way while on a radio show around 1978. He mispronounced the name a couple of\u00a0times, and a member of the Cowles family called in to correct him.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 now Santee because after his death, his widow, Jennie Blodgett, married Milton Santee.<\/p>\n
The park continues to grow as the city and the Mission Trails Regional Park Foundation buy more private property \u2014 especially in an area long known as East Elliott.<\/p>\n
![\"Bob](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SUT-L-Prem-City-Canyons-30.jpg\")
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. \u201c(The park) is great for hiking and great for preservation,\u201d said Semorile. (Ana Ramirez \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SUT-L-cowles-mountain-5.jpg\")
People hike Cowles Mountain on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2025 in San Diego. (Ana Ramirez \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n