What Does It Take To Save Trestles?

Located between San Onofre State Beach and South San Clemente, Trestles features five distinct breaks. From north to south, breaks include Cottons, Uppers, Lowers, Middles, and Church. At its best, Lowers is a high-performance A-frame over a cobblestone bottom and has been a regular stop on the WSL World Tour and a breeding ground for top-tier surf talent in Southern California for decades.

The Toll Road

In 2005, a six-lane toll road was proposed that would have cut through San Onofre State Beach – damaging the last remaining undeveloped watershed in southern California, the five surf breaks, multiple endangered species, and sacred Indigenous sites.

Lakey Peterson, giving the groms lessons on water displacement. Photo: Jeremiah Klein / Surfline

Save San Onofre Coalition

The first step in the battle to save Trestles was the formation of our mighty Save San Onofre Coalition (SSOC), which represents millions of people from local and national organizations. In 2005, SSOC first came together when over 1,000 activists showed up at a Parks and Recreation Commission hearing to speak out to protect the surf break.

Over the course of a decade, SSOC mounted a historic activist-led opposition against the toll road development. In 2008, this formidable coalition organized the largest public turnout in California Coastal Commission history, where over 3,500 people attended the Commission hearing, and the road was unanimously rejected.

Following the Coastal Commission vote, toll road developers appealed to overturn the Commission’s decision.  But the appeal decision didn’t stop our activists. Once again, we organized — thousands of people attended the Department of Commerce hearing, voicing strong opposition to the toll road — and we won again.

SSOC continued our winning streak in 2013, 2014, and 2015, when both the State and Regional Water Quality Control Boards rejected TCA’s attempts to build the road in “segments.” These victories, over the course of a decade, helped us achieve a landmark lawsuit settlement in 2016 that banned toll road developers from building in the park. Unfortunately, in 2017, two lawsuits were filed by the City of San Clemente and The Reserve Management Corporation to undo our park protections.

In September 2020, Governor Newsom signed AB 1426 into law — permanently protecting San Onofre State Beach and Trestles from any type of road construction. AB 1426 shores up protections we have fought so hard for, codifies the judicial decree that currently protects San Onofre State Beach, the Donna O’Neill Land Conservancy, and the San Mateo Watershed, and validates nearly 20 years of grassroots advocacy.

The word “historic” is often overused, but in light of this legislation and the environmental protections it has enshrined, the battle to protect Trestles was truly historic. The legislation and previous lawsuit settlements were the culmination of years of hard work to Save Trestles — one of the hardest-fought and longest-lasting environmental battles in California’s history.

Photo: Jeremiah Klein / Surfline