Letter: Why isn’t San Benito the Home of the Pinnacles?

There are over 3,000 counties in the United States. There are 63 national parks. 

Counties throughout the state of California, and the nation at large, would love to have a national park in their backyard. Pinnacles National Park is probably the most under-utilized aspect of our county in terms of revenue generation and general cultural enrichment. It’s easy to forget how lucky we are to have this natural wonder sitting in our county, less than an hour away from town. 

I encourage the residents, if you haven’t been recently, to drive out to the Pinnacles and be amazed at the sheer number of visitors the park has every weekend—visitors primarily from Silicon Valley and the Bay Area. 

We have this incredibly rare commodity in our county, however you wouldn’t even know it unless you went out of your way to find out. 

San Benito County needs to become the “Home of Pinnacles National Park.” There needs to be grandiose signs exclaiming this. The remainder of Airline Highway needs to accurately become Pinnacles National Park Highway. 

There needs to be a concentrated effort to market our county in this way. To me, this seems to be one of the most obvious ways to generate much-needed revenue for our county while also creating a deeper sense of identity to our geography. 

Previous county boards of supervisors have supported these efforts in theory but little action has been taken up to this point to start materializing this vision. Myself, along with other current county supervisors, have indicated that we are and will continue to pursue this as one of our many focuses. 

It is completely foolish to waste the opportunity that we have in front of us. San Benito county needs to be the Home of Pinnacles National Park. 

Dom Zanger

Supervisor, San Benito County District 1