Students and community members have hiked the pastoral hills behind Gavilan College for more than 25 years – until recently, when private property owners put the kibosh on public trail access.
On Monday morning, Gavilan College staff received an email from campus security warning them that the trail had been closed to the public, said Jan Bernstein-Chargin, Gavilan’s public information director.
By noon Monday, word had spread around the campus about the 45-minute trail loop’s demise. A large, shiny sign that read “No Public Access, Private Property” stood near a wire fence just about a quarter of a mile into the yellow wildflower-dotted trail near Gavilan’s gymnasium.
The school and the property’s owners enjoyed a friendly relationship for years that allowed students and the public to walk the trails behind Gavilan, despite the fact that the land was privately owned, said Ron Hannon, the college’s athletic director.
“The property owners are entitled to protect their property, and we’re going to do our very best to respect that and make sure that our students are adhering to the guidelines,” Hannon said.
Hannon said college authorities aren’t yet sure why the area was closed all of a sudden, but wondered if it stemmed from problems with trail users in the past.
“We’re not sure if something went down on the trails, we’ll try to find that out,” Hannon said.
Hannon also said that students have plenty of other options for exercise on campus, and the public has many more choices of trails in the greater Gilroy area – that the loss of this one trail won’t be too mourned.
Bernstein-Chargin said that because the widely-used trail begins and ends on Gavilan property, the community refers to it as “The Gavilan trail.”
“I’m assuming there will be a lot more discussion about this because the community uses that trail a lot,” Bernstein-Chargin said.
