Dedication of the Fair Oaks Bluff Donor Plaza at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 29 will celebrate anew a successful, 14-year campaign by citizens groups and public and private entities to preserve a 4.5 acre natural area 100 feet above the American River.
The Plaza, designed by local artist Hugh Gorman, is paved with engraved bricks recognizing donors who contributed to the $1.2 million price of the land. A Bluff Benefactor Monument embedded in a river rock wall recognizes major donors. There's a seating area and drinking fountain for visitors and their canine companions.
Multi-color interpretive panels across Bridge Street from the Plaza tell how the Bluff was preserved, its natural history, First People, geology, the American River, and City of Fair Oaks History. Sponsors of the dedication planned to request a special permit to allow parking on Bridge Street that day.
Origins of the effort to protect the Bluff go back to the late 19th century when planners included it in a public open space called "Riverside Park" stretching for almost a mile in Fair Oaks. Over the years most of the area evolved into private ownership as homes appeared on the Bluff, leaving a 600-foot long strip with access to Bridge street via a steep narrow trail.
Since the 1970s, control of the undeveloped area was subject to disputes, even litigation over title and county easements. All the while, the area was and remains a popular gathering place for nature lovers, photographers, painters and those who simply wish to enjoy the panoramic view of the Sierra to the East and Mount Diablo in the San Francisco Bay Area on a clear day. A large blue oak at the edge of the Bluff is a popular local landmark.
Citizens became increasingly concerned that developers would take over the entire Bluff and joined forces with other American River Parkway protector groups in 1998 in an organization called "Friends of the Fair Oaks Bluff." Issues of ownership and easement were defined and argued at meetings and hearing and eventually the development group won clearance to sell the land as three residential lots for $1.2 million.
That was the signal for one of the Bluff's neighbors, Tracy Martin Shearer, a young wife and mother who had played on the Bluff as a child, to found Citizens to Save the Bluffs (CSB) in 2000 to spearhead a fundraising drive to purchase and savethe Bluff as open space.
The next four years were marked by a "Perils of Pauline" series of donations, pledges, deadlines, and extensions of deadlines. Major contributors were Raley Foundation, the Fair Oaks Park District, and a Fair Oaks couple, Gerry and Karen Kamilos. By December, 2004, this textbook example of citizen involvement had succeeded and the American River Parkway was assured of 4.5 acres of Bluff land providing protected wildlife habitat and a tranquil oasis for human rest and relaxation.
For or more information: http://www.arnha.org/books/fobluff.html
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