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Almost every morning, Colleen Mullenex starts her day by taking her black Labrador, Shadow, out for a leisurely walk at the Cuesta Park Annex, the 12-acre plot of open-space near Mountain View’s southern border. But on a hike last month, she noticed something strange — across the green fields were what looked like new paths of dead, brown grass.
The brown tracks, about two feet wide, seemed too stark and linear to be natural, and they cut across the entirety of the open space. When she returned one week later, Mullenex was surprised to see even more trails of dead grass running through the property.
What Mullenex and city parks officials suspect is that someone has illicitly been spraying herbicides throughout the Cuesta Park Annex in an attempt to create new walking trails. The park already features an extensive trail looping through the property, but about six new pathways have appeared on the site in the last two weeks. Whoever committed this act remains a mystery, but it seems likely that person came in the late evening hours under cover of darkness, Mullenex said.
“I just don’t understand why someone would do this — this changes the whole beauty of the park,” Mullenex said. “We don’t need 50 million new walkways covering the entire field.”
Bruce Hurlburt, Mountain View’s Open Space and Parks manager, largely agreed with that assessment. No formal chemical analysis has been done, but he said the pattern of dead grass indicated someone had used a spray-can to apply weed-killer across the property. It could be treated as a criminal act, he said.
“I see this as an act of vandalism no different that putting graffiti on our walls,” he said. “It’s really a mystery to me why someone would do this — it’s one of those odd things that happen.”
City officials aren’t planning any particular response to the herbicide, and they say the grass should soon regrow as long as hikers avoid the new walkways. The herbicides should present no health hazards now that they’ve already soaked into the ground, Hurlburt said.
Mullenex, on the other hand, said she remains a little nervous about the health impacts. Her dog became sick last week after running around the park, and she suspects the herbicides may have played a role. At the very least, she hopes that drawing attention to the problem will make the perpetrator think twice before doing it again.
Local residents are protective of Cuesta Park Annex, which is considered one of the last undeveloped open sites in Mountain View, and is next to Cuesta Park. Over a period of decades, the site’s most ardent fans have resisted efforts to use the site to build a housing development, dig a flood basin and make a variety of other alterations to the parcel.
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Uther Pendragon performs at “The Shelter,” a San Jose music venue in 1973. From left, the band members are Mark Lightcap, Bruce Marelich, Mike Beers and Martin Espinosa. / Photo courtesy of Craig Pedersen. -
The San Antonio Manor, a Mountain View care home for disabled adults, was ordered to shut down this week after health inspections uncovered numerous violations that weren’t being corrected. Photo by Michelle Le
I don’t think this is some do-it-yourself trail maker. Likely some jerk with a gallon of roundup. Get a big heavy walking stick and begin walking at night.
Has anyone done an aerial shot of the field to see if there is a message spelled out by the brown areas? Maybe it is ISIS or the Trilateral Commission coming to get us…
I think it’s a baby crop circle.
It is unfortunate that some commenters think this is a joke. This activity has been going on for at least a year and the parks department appear to have done nothing about it. If city staff truly consider this vandalism, why don’t they get the police involved? It is not funny when people, their pets and (yes) wildlife are placed in jeopardy because of the antics of one or more lunatics.
So what has to happen is the City needs to go and block off the pseudo trails just as they do in the local mountain hiking parks like Rancho San Antonio, Alum Rock Park, and Mission Peak areas.
This usually stops encroachment onto pseudo trails.
If this doesn’t stop the problem then maybe a tighter neighborhood watch program need to be put in place. This is the citizens park not some ‘fake park rangers’. I say this because it is usually park rangers that initiate and keep up the trails with help from volunteers, not malicious ‘new trail’ makers. Rather illegal!
Too many birds use the neutral unused areas of this park for this to be an occurrence.
i don’t suppose anyone has bothered to see if people are just cutting across the field to optimize for time?
perhaps they are just ‘desire paths’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path
People may have thought about it, until they actually looked at the path. Check the pictures and you will clearly see these are not paths worn over time.
Desired paths do not pop up in a matter of 2 days. This is vandalism.
In my experience the City (Public Works, Parks, Police and Fire) never take legitimate complaints from residents seriously. We are just annoying them with such issues. They work for the developers and to keep a lid on the poor along California Avenue. For the rest of us, they might as well just say “go away” you’re bothering us.
Brown is the new green?