The 20,000-acre Fort Ord Army post closed in 1995, and is now being transformed. A new campus, California State University at Monterey Bay, is already open with an enrollment of 2,000, and is expected to grow to 20,000 undergraduates. It now occupies 1,350 acres and has asked for 100 more. The University of California at Santa Cruz has begun final plans for its Monterey Bay Science and Technology Center on 500 acres, with another 600 acres dedicated as nature preserve. Of the total land area of Ft. Ord, 65 percent will be permanently protected. The Bureau of Land Management has opened about 8,000 acres for mountain biking, hiking, and equestrian use. Within Fort Ord State Beach, an existing native plant preserve will anchor State Parks' efforts to restore about 650 acres of dunes behind the four-mile beach.
Continuing south, the trail enters Seaside and changes from a Class I trail, separated from the road, to a Class III trail, which is merely a lane in the roadway, shared by fast automobile traffic. This will soon change: about a mile of Class I trail will be built this summer along the backside of the dunes in adjacent Sand City--dunes that have seen hard times. In the past 50 years they have been mined, bulldozed, stripped, or used as landfill. Restoration is already under way at an abandoned landfill in Sand City and has been completed at Seaside Beach. Between these sites, the new Class I trail link will be built.

Sand City is hardly a typical city. It was incorporated in 1960 as an industrial city of sand mining and warehouses. Its residents number only 190, and only 32 of them voted in the November 1996 election. Sand City's certified Local Coastal Plan (LCP) did not recognize parks and open space as a legitimate land use in the coastal zone. Despite this, the Regional Park District and State Parks acquired almost 30 percent of the city's land. The Coastal Commission certified the LCP in 1984. Later, however, in response to the park district's argument that there was a greater-than-local need to revisit this plan, the Commission, for the first time in its history, stepped in and revised a certified LCP. On April 8, 1996, the Park District, State Parks, and the City reached an agreement that permits almost 80 percent of the Sand City dunes to be acquired for parks and open space.
Leaving sand city, the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail skirts a restoration project at the popular Seaside Beach (a unit of Monterey State Beach), where fantastic kites fly on weekends and sunbathers sprawl across the sand like so many contented seals. In autumn, lucky observers may see thousands of sooty shearwaters streaming by in a feeding frenzy just offshore.
The trail winds inland past Roberts Lake, where it again becomes a Class I trail. Remote-controlled model powerboat races are held here occasionally, and it's a good spot to scope the waters for many seasonal shorebirds migrating along the Pacific Flyway. You proceed next into the City of Monterey, along a spectacular Class I section of the trail. It hugs the backside of the dunes while shadowing Del Monte Boulevard on a three-mile section of the former Southern Pacific Railroad line. You move past the Naval Postgraduate School, and through a forest of 200-foot-tall eucalyptus. A trail and stairway lead over the dunes and to the beach.

Continuing on, you arrive at Window on the Bay Beach and its volleyball park. At this point you can take a side trip, leaving the trail to explore the harbor in a kayak, available for rent from Monterey Bay Kayaks. You can cruise the shoreline, keeping an eye out for sea otters and sea lions, or you can head a little farther out to enjoy a unique view of the Peninsula. If you paddle far enough, you might even see white-sided dolphin or, on a rare day during the winter-spring migration, a gray whale.
Between Municipal Wharf No. 2 and the Monterey Bay Aquarium (a distance of about 1.5 miles) you pass more than a dozen parks, public areas, and historic sites, as well as many stores and restaurants. There's a buzz of activity in and around Custom House Plaza, by Fisherman's Wharf, as there was in the 1800s when Monterey was the state's first capital. This is a state historic park now, and includes the capitol, a few blocks inland. As the trail curves along the shore--not sandy here but rocky, punctuated by tidepools--you arrive at San Carlos Beach, where scuba divers gather. Continue along the old rail line to Cannery Row and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where the new Outer Bay Wing opens a window into the vast expanses of the open ocean.
Just beyond the Aquarium is Pacific Grove. The trail hugs the blufftop for the next mile or so to Lovers Point and its popular beach. You might stop at one of the many trailside benches and look across the bay toward Santa Cruz, enjoying unobstructed views of the coastal mountains. Shoreward, search out the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History at the corner of Central and Forest Avenues (admission free). At Lovers Point you can rent a kayak or play some informal yet competitive volleyball, surf, snorkel or scuba dive, warm up a barbecue, or simply sit on the beach.
The trail continues through Pacific Grove along Ocean View Boulevard as an unmarked Class III route. If you are walking, rather than biking, you can use a Class I pathway atop the bluffs. Near Point Piños the trail improves to Class II and passes the 1855 lighthouse, the oldest continuously operating lighthouse on the West Coast. Here you might keep a lookout for whales during migration season. Ocean View Boulevard turns into Sunset Boulevard at Asilomar State Beach, a haven for surfers and visitors to the Asilomar Conference Center. A public boardwalk leads through restored coastal strand habitat, the kind that once covered much of the area but is now rare. Here again is a place to take heart: at one time most of these dunes were eroded down to bedrock, today we can enjoy showy spring flowers on 55 revitalized sandy acres.
After Asilomar Beach the trail leaves the shore and swings up Sunset Drive into the community of Pebble Beach (if you drive up to the Pacific Grove Gate you pay; if you bike or walk, there is no fee). Among the towering Monterey pines of the Del Monte Forest, you will be enveloped in serenity, as well as a sense of wealth and privilege. Pause awhile, then continue downhill on 17-Mile Drive past Spanish Bay (a world-class golf course and resort) and return to the shoreline at Point Joe. From there the trail hugs the coast for another mile or so before ending just onshore from Seal Rock, at the intersection of 17-Mile Drive and Spyglass Hill Road.

Presently, this is the end of the trail. However, the Regional Park District is working with Monterey County and the Pebble Beach Company to connect Seal Rock with the City of Carmel-by-the-Sea. The company provides only an unmarked Class III trail here. Follow Spyglass Hill Road to Stevenson Drive and back onto 17-Mile Drive, which will take you to Carmel Way and the Carmel Gate. South of Carmel, at Rio Park, the Park District is planning a crossing of the Carmel River and an extension of the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail as a Class I trail through Carmel River State Beach. 
Eventually, the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail is to extend still further south, as far as Point Lobos State Reserve. There are no specific plans for this stretch yet. However, the Point can be reached by traveling on the shoulder (Class II) of Highway 1.
Meanwhile, in the north, federal funding has already been secured for a two-mile segment that will link the cities of Marina and Castroville with the Salinas River Wildlife Refuge. The Class I route will follow Del Monte Boulevard from where the trail now begins, Locke Paddon Park, and head north into Castroville, where a Class II trail already exists. Along this stretch, you will be able to look west across artichoke fields as far as the Martin Dunes, some of the most pristine dunes along the central coast. They are high on the wish list of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other wildlife agencies, for they provide excellent habitat for several endangered species, including the western snowy plover and Smith's blue butterfly.
Large-scale public projects take much time and persistent effort. The Monterey Bay Coastal Trail originated in 1974 with a partnership of the Regional Park District and the cities of Pacific Grove and Monterey. Later, the Coastal Conservancy joined the project. There was some opposition in the early years, notably from the Cannery Row Merchants Association. Twenty years later, with thousands of visitors a day on the trail, the Association petitioned the City of Monterey for permission to open the back sides of buildings toward the trail, so that cafes and bistros could become trailside attractions. These merchants, along with others, now see the trail as a major recreational and economic community asset. In time, the Monterey Bay Coastal Trail will surely come to be seen as a grand achievement in progressive regional planning, a worthy complement to the Monterey Bay State Seashore and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.  

Tim Jensen is the coastal unit supervisor at the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District.