San Gabriel Mountains, National Forest Or National Park?

Angeles National Forest-- Congress directed the National Park Service (NPS) in 2003 to conduct a study to determine whether the San Gabriel River Watershed is eligible to become part of the national park system. As can be seen from the NPS map, this would include the majority of the Angeles National Forest accessible from the eastern San Fernando Valley. More information can be found on-line at the National Park Service website at www.nps.gov/pwro/sangabriel.

Congresswoman Hilda L. Solis representing the San Gabriel Valley area and parts of East Los Angeles introduced the legislation in January 2003 which passed into law in July 2003 directing the National Park Service to conduct a "special resource study". Seventeen of the twenty co-sponsors of the legislation were California Representatives.

The geography included in the special resource study is "portions of the San Gabriel River and its tributaries from the city of Santa Fe Springs to the north, and the San Gabriel Mountains within the territory of the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy. This area includes portions of the Angeles National Forest, as well as many communities along the San Gabriel River."

According to the NPS, the purpose of a special resource study is to determine whether an area is eligible to be designated as a unit of the national park system. The study will take five years to complete and the initial planning phase was started in 2004. A notice of scoping was published in the Federal Register on January 19, 2005, initiating a 90-day public comment period for the study, ending on May 20, 2005.

You can send the NPS comment by mail at National Park Service - Planning, San Gabriel Watershed and Mountains Study, 1111 Jackson Street, Suite 700, Oakland, CA 94607, or by email at PWR_sangabriel @nps.gov. The NPS Project Manager is Martha Crusius, (510) 817-1447.