Wilderness fans can now explore Henry Coe State Park’s rugged
southeastern section more easily when the Dowdy Ranch Visitors
Center officially opens this weekend.
Gilroy – Wilderness fans can now explore Henry Coe State Park’s rugged southeastern section more easily when the Dowdy Ranch Visitors Center officially opens this weekend.
The new $2.5 million visitors center, located seven miles in from Pacheco Pass’s Bell Station exit, has been planned for more than 20 years and has been under construction for the past two years. The park has scheduled a grand opening ribbon-cutting ceremony open to the public at 11am, Saturday.
The center will open up the eastern section of the 87,000-acre park for recreational opportunities, said C.L. Price, the Gavilan sector superintendent for the California State Parks system.
“Now that the construction is complete, we’re ready to open it up and let the public ride horses and mountain bikes and hike in the southeast portion of the park,” he said.
The center has restroom facilities and plenty of parking, including space for equestrian trailers, Price said. It will eventually include interpretative displays teaching visitors about the natural history, the geology and the ranching past of the region, he said.
Initially, the Dowdy Ranch site will only be open on Saturdays and Sundays and holidays from 8 a.m. to sunset. It will be closed during rainy months for public safety because the dirt road leading to it becomes hazardous when it is muddy, he said.
Visitors on day trips will be able to park their cars at the center and enjoy picnics spectacular vistas of the surrounding mountains, which look much as they did when Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza passed through in 1775, Price said. The parking fee is $5 per vehicle.
“With the Dowdy opening up, people can get closer to the Orestimba Wilderness on the eastern side,” said Sheryl Neufeld, a California State Park Ranger based in San Juan Bautista who will be involved with the grand opening this Saturday. “It opens up a whole new opportunity for backpackers in that area.”
Neufeld highly recommends that visitors to the Dowdy Ranch region realize that this section of the park is much more rugged – and can have much higher temperatures in summer – than the western section where the Henry Coe main headquarters is located at the end of East Dunne Avenue. They should bring plenty of water, proper hiking shoes and clothes, and carry a portable emergency kit if hiking long distances, she said. Visitors should also make sure they have a good spare tire on their vehicle, she said, just in case. The dirt road from Bell Station to the Dowdy Ranch site has several steep changes in elevation and many turns and bends, and it can get dusty.
The South Valley region is lucky to have California’s second largest state park – after the more than 600,000-acre Anza-Borrega Desert State Park in Southern California – within easy driving distance for most people living in the area, Neufeld said. “(The Dowdy Ranch site) provides an opportunity to see one of the most wild areas left in California near an urban center because (Henry) Coe is on the outskirts of a major metropolitan area,” she said.
From the new visitors center, adventurous trekkers can visit several wilderness locations, she said. Among them are “Hole in the Rock,” a old-fashioned swimming hole on the Pacheco Creek; Kingbird Pond, a small ranch pond stocked with bass; Mustang Pond, a small lake; Jackrabbit Lake, a large lake reputed to have the best bass fishing in Henry Coe State Park; and Rooster Comb, a rocky ridge formation that looks much like the comb on a rooster.
The rugged terrain surrounding the Dowdy Ranch site will give park visitors a sense of early California farming days in the South Valley region, said Teddy Goodrich, historian for the Pine Ridge Association, a volunteer group dedicated to preserving the wilderness at Henry Coe State Park. “There’s some neat things out there,” she said. “I’m sorry the ranch buildings are gone because I think they would have been a great interpretative feature because the Dowdy’s were there so early.”
In an article published in the Pine Ridge Association newsletter, Goodrich wrote that the Dowdy family came to California in 1853 by traveling in covered wagons from Missouri by way of Oregon. They first settled in Portola, in Plumas County, but moved to Gilroy the next year because the climate was better. In 1869, Orren “Dick” Dowdy settled on land near the headwaters of the South Fork of Orestimba Creek in Stanislaus County.
Goodrich wrote: “Orren Dowdy was remembered by those who knew him as politically outspoken, a hunter and trapper who sometimes worked at Garish’s Hotel, the precursor to Bell’s Station on Pacheco Pass. Those few words conjure up an image of a grizzled mountain man. Orren never married; he died in 1893. His ranch buildings probably burned in one of the wildfires that swept through the Orestimba around the turn of the century. Today the only trace left of his homestead is a rock-lined cellar hole near the banks of the creek. There is no proof, but it is quite possible that his corral stood where the Orestimba corral is today.”
Orren’s brother, Perry Dowdy, kept a ranch home along Day Road west of Gilroy and served as Justice of the Peace of the city for almost a quarter of a century. Dowdy Street is named after him.
