Billionaire must let public access Martins Beach

How do youn think this would affect land owners whose parcel has no precedence of public access? 

I would think that if you buy a new property with a history of providing public access then a legal battle with potential for loss should be one of the considerations you evaluated when purchasing.  There are plenty of homes, properties and private estates that you cannot cross to access public land....well unless you want to be hauled away for trespassing.  I don't foresee this affecting anyone that is not trying to privatize a historically accesible beach.   

Martins Beach has long been a paying guest (by permission only) access beach not a public access beach. Huge difference. The beach is and will always be public. The road which requires expensive maintenance is not. I used to go down there on business and the previous owners always eyed me carefully to make sure I wasn't some yahoo trying to access for free. If you didn't pay you were out of there. Sheriff's Deputies liked to fish down there were friends of the owners and they usually responded fairly quickly if someone wanted to preach free access rights. Now that there is another owner ( who happens  to be super rich) he suddenly  doesn't have the same rights?

 We let our neighbors access the beach on my Sierra property on a non-navigatible river (meaning no public access) and it is understood that this is by permission only. If we did not do so, in seven years it would be public access.
I once stopped two guys with machetes coming up the river. They insisted it was BLM land and they could access. I set them straight that they were surrounded by private property. I directed them to a beach just downstream and said it was OK this one time if they did not  have a fire. I went down there later and there were these foot long uncooked hotdogs in the river. The breeze in the river canyon can come up quickly.  We were a couple roasted dogs away from a Kings / Pollock Pines type fire. I have other stories like one of people who were let camp there overnight once or twice  and suddenly they thought they could stay for weeks when we were not there. Let's just say they weren't big on digging latrines.  Think of the problems Big Jim has made us aware of at the Stillwater /PB bathrooms ( places like PB and TC and OC are pay access).  There will be no bathrooms at Martins Beach. So we now literally expect the new Martins Beach owner to deal with our shit?

Surf rider was pro MLPA all the way. This is good news but if it was for fishing access they could give a shit.

^Yup. Quite unfortunate.

Depends on which local chapter.  DaveW was on the NC RSG with the following credentials listed, "member, NorCal Kayak Anglers and Vice Chair, Surfrider Foundation’s Mendocino Chapter"

-Allen

Yeah, Surfrider was pretty uncomfortable with that--but they were happy with the outcome--that we reached a unilateral agreement.

I don't get too hung up on organizational dogma.  If you can use a group's power and credentials to do what you think is good--have at it.  Nothing's sacred in my mind as far as NGOs go.  Let's enjoy this beach.  I'm gonna surf it next time I'm down there, even if the surf sucks.  Just to do it.

This guy bought the property knowing the Californians consider beach access a public right, so I'm not that sympathetic.  It's not like someone sneaking up your creek and camping on your property.  The guy's a billionaire....just fix the road, make friends, and be happy everyone bought your software--or whatever.  Life's too short.

....just fix the road, make friends, and be happy everyone bought your software--or whatever.  Life's too short.

Well said

How do youn think this would affect land owners whose parcel has no precedence of public access? 

I would think that if you buy a new property with a history of providing public access then a legal battle with potential for loss should be one of the considerations you evaluated when purchasing.  There are plenty of homes, properties and private estates that you cannot cross to access public land....well unless you want to be hauled away for trespassing.  I don't foresee this affecting anyone that is not trying to privatize a historically accesible beach.   

Martins Beach has long been a paying guest (by permission only) access beach not a public access beach. Huge difference. The beach is and will always be public. The road which requires expensive maintenance is not. I used to go down there on business and the previous owners always eyed me carefully to make sure I wasn't some yahoo trying to access for free. If you didn't pay you were out of there. Sheriff's Deputies liked to fish down there were friends of the owners and they usually responded fairly quickly if someone wanted to preach free access rights. Now that there is another owner ( who happens  to be super rich) he suddenly  doesn't have the same rights?

 We let our neighbors access the beach on my Sierra property on a non-navigatible river (meaning no public access) and it is understood that this is by permission only. If we did not do so, in seven years it would be public access.
I once stopped two guys with machetes coming up the river. They insisted it was BLM land and they could access. I set them straight that they were surrounded by private property. I directed them to a beach just downstream and said it was OK this one time if they did not  have a fire. I went down there later and there were these foot long uncooked hotdogs in the river. The breeze in the river canyon can come up quickly.  We were a couple roasted dogs away from a Kings / Pollock Pines type fire. I have other stories like one of people who were let camp there overnight once or twice  and suddenly they thought they could stay for weeks when we were not there. Let's just say they weren't big on digging latrines.  Think of the problems Big Jim has made us aware of at the Stillwater /PB bathrooms ( places like PB and TC and OC are pay access).  There will be no bathrooms at Martins Beach. So we now literally expect the new Martins Beach owner to deal with our shit?

I expect there to be a toll road in which the public pays to access the beach, same way it's been for the decades before this guy purchased it.

Lol, I don't need to read Jim's posts about the kookery at Stillwater, I've seen plenty of it.  The access setup is pretty close to the martins beach toll road.  We've already drawn plenty of attention, so much so that they started enforcing the parking rules.  There's no doubt in my mind that the pebble beach company would toss us unwashed riff raff out on our ass if they thought they could.  If they denied us access it'd be nation wide news and it'd be the same result as martins. 

You said this was a bad ruling for landowners everywhere, I don't see it having any effect on the thousands of other private coastal residences and properties that are, and always have been, off limits to people.

Definitely bad news for someone that wants to buy property and alter established access.

....just fix the road, make friends, and be happy everyone bought your software--or whatever.  Life's too short.

Well said

I would love nothing better. Be great to see the rich give back.

However what if it were still in the hands of the original family and for family or whatever reasons they were barely hanging on and couldn't manage it and needed to close it for a few years. Would you have the same expectation that they fix things etc?
 While the truth is that justice isn't really blind, we have to at least try for equality. Rich or poor, the same rules need to apply.
As for it not applying to some mountain creek, this is a legal precedence. Lawyers love precedence. It doesn't have to be an exact match, it just has to be in the ballpark and the judge could swing either way.

Once again nobody was being stopped from being on the beach. They just had to put some effort to get down there. I've seen surfers near La Jolla channel their inner mountain goat to get down 500 foot cliffs.. Some people just assume that they have a natural right to do things the easy way at someone else's expense.

Of course, the State or County could buy access and maintain it. I'm willing to have a larger tax bill if it means I can fish Martin's Beach. Are you?

It was a partial victory. I grew up in California when there were private beaches and I could not gain access. After the voters' initiative Prop 20 was passed in 1972 access was guaranteed to all the public coastline. After all the beaches up to the mean high tide mark are owned in common by the people of the United States in California and have since 1848 when we forced the Spanish out.

 But special interests have been working since 1972 to find ways to circumvent the laws and when lots of money is involved it is an uneven playing field. There has also been rampant development along much of the California coast. When I lived in SoCal I could bicycle from Newport Beach to Laguna Beach and the scenery was like that found in the area around Monterey and Big Sur. By the mid 1980's I could not even see the ocean along 90% of this stretch the coast highway and was looking into the backs of condos. Even the place I used to surf fish in Laguna which was a private beach when I first started going there and which became a public beach in 1972 is now blocked by a Ritz Carleton making access exceedingly difficult and expensive.

We are very lucky as there are only two other states that provide public access to the beaches, Texas which was the first state to do this (go figure) and later Oregon in 1967 and lastly California in 1972. Oddly enough this progressive thinking has not been extended to a single other state in this country in the intervening 42 years. When I go to the east coast and want to go on to a beach I have to know someone who has a house in the area and has a pass they will give me or I am limited to the state park beaches.

It is very important to fight each attempt to restrict access to a section of the CA coastline as once the access path is closed it is closed forever.

We are very lucky as there are only two other states that provide public access to the beaches, Texas which was the first state to do this (go figure) and later Oregon in 1967 and lastly California in 1972. Oddly enough this progressive thinking has not been extended to a single other state in this country in the intervening 42 years. When I go to the east coast and want to go on to a beach I have to know someone who has a house in the area and has a pass they will give me or I am limited to the state park beaches.

It is very important to fight each attempt to restrict access to a section of the CA coastline as once the access path is closed it is closed forever.

Hawai`i too, although if you were inferring that it doesn't count as a state thats cool with me 

public access to the coast is HUGE!!!!! +1000 to everything you said