Wilderness Gardens County Preserve

    Early inhabitants of this pretty, little valley included Luiseno Indians who used it as a seasonal camp for gathering acorns which were dried and ground into a flour. As settlers from the eastern US states moved west, the Stickler Brothers from Missouri built a water powered gristmill. Later settlers established a ranch and a hunting preserve. In the 1950s Manchester Boddy, owner of the Los Angeles Daily News and an avid horticulturist, began developing the land as a public garden. The garden was never finished and the property was given to the county when Boddy died in 1967.

    Little evidence of all this human activity exists in the valley. There’s an acorn grinding stone along the main trail, a barn in disrepair, a ranch house used for the park headquarters and a tiny museum, a partial foundation of the gristmill, and a pond from Boddy’s garden.

                 Four miles of interconnected trails loop through the preserve. Pick up a map at the day fee/information board because it’s easy to get confused about which trail goes where. The preserve has a large variety of vegetation, birds, and animals. We even got to see a honey bee swarm!

             

       

             

    The picnic area has an accessible parking space and concrete paths to a picnic table and an accessible porta-potty. The rest of the preserve is not very accessible. The Main Trail, a dirt road used by the previous owners, is fairly hard packed but accessing it requires traversing through a wash which has steep sides and loose sand. A strong helper is necessary. The Pond Trail is at the far end of the Main Trail loop and is accessible. The Camellia Trail has large rocks and loose sand. The Alice Fries Trail has steps, large rocks and loose sand. The Alice Fries Trail which is only 1/2 mile long and starts at the information board was the one we thought would be accessible. It starts out good after clearing a hump of loose sand but becomes more rocky as it goes. Stop and turn around after the first rocks as it just gets worse. The museum is not accessible due to steps.

    The entrance road is hard to spot and has a uneven dip where it meets Route 76 so drive slowly and cautiously. RVs can be parked along the road past the day fee/information board or backed up over the grass in the parking area. Preserve   33.34838, -117.02718