"We're not seeing a huge demand for what we saw after the park first opened, with folks wanting to go cross-country and wanting to cut between areas of the park. It seems folks have figured out the flow, generally, of the preserve and are being respectful of that."
That's Mike Warner, the ranger who supervises Foothills Nature Preserve for Palo Alto's Community Services Department, describing a problem that used to exist. He said it to the Parks and Recreation Commission on October 28, 2025, while staff walked through a construction plan built to solve a crowding crisis that had, by the time anyone got around to funding it, mostly gone away on its own. If the timeline the city laid out that day holds, this is the season the fix finally arrives. It just arrives late enough that the thing it was designed to fix isn't really there anymore.
The Surge That Justified the Plan
For decades, only Palo Alto residents and their guests could get into the 1,400-acre preserve tucked into the eastern foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. That changed at the end of 2020, and the numbers moved fast. Annual visitation had historically run around 175,000 people a year. Between 2020 and 2024, it averaged 221,000, a jump that showed up as speeding cars on narrow park roads, overflowing lots at Boronda Lake and Vista Hill, and hikers cutting cross-country through chaparral that wasn't built to take it.
That surge is what put the current improvement project on the books. It's also, according to the city's own reporting to the commission, mostly over. Attendance is now close to pre-pandemic levels. The behavior that worried rangers in 2021 and 2022, people wandering off-trail looking for their own private corner of the preserve, has settled down too. The infrastructure project moving forward this fall was sized for a crowd that peaked years ago and has since thinned back out.
A Plan That Kept Shrinking
The version the commission reviewed in October 2025 is not the version the city was building toward in 2023. Budget pressure did most of the editing. In the lead-up to that meeting, the council had approved roughly $6 million in citywide cuts, and staff were told to shrink the Foothills scope in response. The estimated cost dropped from about $450,000 to about $300,000.
What got cut tells you something about what the city now thinks the preserve actually needs. Compare the two plans directly:
- The 2023 version called for six-foot-wide pedestrian paths running alongside existing roads, a new asphalt parking area near Boronda Lake with 19 additional stalls, a bus parking lot at the top of Vista Hill, and a new trail connecting the lake to an overflow lot.
- The 2025 version narrows the paths to three or four feet, built from the same quarry fines material the city already uses at Pearson-Arastradero Preserve, and limits them to the busiest stretch, the corridor between the park entrance, Boronda Lake, and Vista Hill. The asphalt lot is gone. So is the bus parking. What's left is a set of traffic-calming basics: new crosswalks, stop signs, speed bumps, and a feature staff call "tiger teeth" at Vista Hill, meant to stop drivers from going the wrong way on the one-way loop.
Commissioner Shani Kleinhaus called the reduced version a good balance, and even floated adding a newt crossing where the roads see the most foot and paw traffic from the preserve's smaller residents. The commission's overall read was that the original plan had been sized for a crisis, and the crisis had passed.
What Changes If You Walk In This Month
Here's the part that actually matters if you're planning a visit. The city's stated timeline, as of the October 2025 meeting, put council approval in spring 2026 and construction starting this fall, wrapping by year's end. Whether that held on schedule is something only a visit this month will tell you for certain. But if it did, the corridor most likely to feel different right now is the one between the entrance gate, Boronda Lake, and Vista Hill, the same stretch that's always carried the heaviest weekend traffic.
That's useful information even if you have no interest in park politics. It means the quietest fall walking this year is probably not going to be the lake loop everyone already knows. Wild Horse Valley Fire Road, which follows the upstream reach of Buckeye Creek, sits away from the entrance corridor and away from any work zone. So does the Costanoan Trail, which climbs 442 feet at a 9.5 percent grade and rewards the effort with the preserve's best elevation views. If you want flat and easy instead, the Chamise Trail stays out of the construction footprint too.
The Pass Math Nobody Runs
A day at Foothills costs $6 per vehicle. An annual pass costs $50 for Palo Alto residents and city employees, $65 for everyone else, and covers up to two vehicles from the same household. Seniors 60 and older get a 25 percent discount on the pass price.
Run the numbers and the break-even point is lower than it feels. A resident household pays for its annual pass after nine visits in a single vehicle, or after five round trips if you're bringing two cars on different days. For a preserve that's open every day of the year and sits a short drive from most of Palo Alto, nine visits is not an ambitious number. The city has also made the pass easier to get. In January 2025 it expanded the Foothills Nature Preserve Library Pass program, letting cardholders reserve vehicle access online instead of showing up and hoping the gate has room.
Fall is worth timing around one more rule: dogs are allowed in the preserve, but only on weekdays and non-holidays, and only on a leash no longer than six feet. If your weekend routine involves a dog and a hike, the preserve isn't that hike. If your weekday routine has room for either, this is the season to use it.
Where the Birds Actually Are This Fall
The preserve supports somewhere north of 90 bird species across the year, and fall is when the cast changes over. Acorn Woodpeckers, California Thrashers, Western Bluebirds, jays, finches, Bewick's Wrens, and Black Phoebes hold territory here year-round, so you'll see them in any season. What fall adds is the arrival of Golden-crowned and White-crowned Sparrows, Hutton's Vireos, and Ruby-crowned Kinglets, birds that show up as the weather turns and stick around through winter. Overhead, look for White-tailed Kites, Red-tailed Hawks, and Turkey Vultures working the thermals above the ridgeline.
The easiest way to see most of this in one outing starts at the crushed-granite trail near the entrance restroom and heads toward Boronda Lake, a ten-acre man-made lake named for a daughter of the Boronda family, stocked with bass, perch, and sunfish, open to fishing, rowing, and canoeing but not swimming or motorized boats. The Toyon and Woodrat Trails both begin at the lake's edge. From there, driving or walking deeper into the preserve gets you to the Orchard Glen Picnic Area, shaded by oaks, bay trees, and coast redwoods, where a scattering of old fruit trees marks a planting done by the stockbroker who bought the land from the Boronda family back in 1914. It's a detail that has nothing to do with birds and everything to do with how long people have been quietly reshaping this particular hillside.
The Season That Doesn't Change
Whatever the construction schedule ends up being this fall, most of what makes Foothills worth visiting isn't on the city's project list. The oak woodlands, the chaparral, the 200-foot elevation climb from the Arastradero gate up into the preserve proper, the sparrows arriving for winter, none of that is being paved, narrowed, or rerouted. The infrastructure is finally catching up to a visitation curve that peaked years ago. The preserve itself was never waiting on it.
Christopher Mogensen writes about the details of daily life across Menlo Park and the Mid-Peninsula because understanding a place well enough to walk it on a Tuesday is the same skill that matters when you're deciding whether to put down roots there. If you're thinking about either one, Christopher Mogensen is a good person to talk to. Let's Connect.
