Mission Statement:
The Valley Center Trails Association is dedicated to connecting the community by advocating for the development of multi-use trails and footpaths and promoting their use.
Goals:
• Establish a series of safe non-motorized pathways and multi-use trails throughout Valley Center.
• Preserve open spaces for future generations to enjoy.
• Link trails and pathways to adjacent communities.
• Encourage private developers to include public trails / pathways within their developments linked to proposed and existing pathways and trails. These trails / pathways must allow access for everyone.
• Improve our environment and reduce air pollution by reducing motorized travel within Valley Center.
You can be part of the effort to create more parks, open space, and trails in Valley Center. The work of dedicated volunteers has resulted in the Heritage Trail, along Valley Center Road, major land acquisitions adjacent to Hellhole Canyon Preserve, the preservation of the Stone House in Keys Creek, public access to Rancho Lilac Preserve and resent Butterfield Trails Ranch approval by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors to budget funds for the purchase of Butterfield Trail Ranch.
Valley Center Trails Association is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to the creation of non-motorized trails and pathways in Valley Center.
Membership in the Valley Center Trails Association is open to all individuals/households and businesses in the community. A modest membership fee is charged. Please support our efforts with your Membership or Donation. Thank you!
2025 Valley Center Trails 5k & Kids 1/2-mile Fun Run before the Western Days Parade
Important we need you to help to keep Butterfield Trails County Park Natural!
San Diego County Dept of Parks & Rec is conducting a survey looking for your input. How you answer these survey questions will have an effect on the final designs of both Parks and where the IGC is built. There are 3 main goals on this survey:
Placing the Intergenerational Center (IGC) of one of these two parks.
What does the community want to have at Butterfield Trails Park when developed?
What does the community want to have at Star Valley Park when developed?
We encourage you to make your voice heard. We also invite your consideration of our position on the IGC.
Butterfield Trails County Park
When Friends of Hellhole Canyon, Valley Center Trails Association and many other local groups advocated for Butterfield Trails Ranch to become a San Diego County Park in 2022-2023, the community wrote many letters and was very vocal in support of a natural park at Butterfield. The purchase of this park was made possible in part by a $2,000,000 donation by a conservation and environmental education foundation, in addition to County funds. We would not have Butterfield as a park today if it were not for the conservation funds that helped complete the purchase.
Today Butterfield Trails County Park is in the County planning and evaluation process and our vision remains the same: keep it a Green, Dark and Natural Park in the heart of our developing town for future generations to enjoy. We favor amenities at Butterfield consistent with a natural open space park, including Picnic Tables, Playground, Walking-Biking-Riding Paths, Indigenous Interpretive Display, Multi-Station Workout Path, Public Labyrinth.
Intergenerational Center
First, do Valley Center residents support the proposed Intergenerational Center of up to 10,000 square feet costing tens of millions of dollars? If so, then the priority should be to site it in the best possible location with the future of Valley Center ten and twenty years from now in mind. We are not in favor of it being placed at either of our parks because it would be a huge footprint and isolated at either park location. Rather we would like to see it sited among other compatible facilities, for example:
At the vacant parcel next to the fire station at VC-Lilac Roads, which connects to our already outgrown Community Center. This parcel could also site additional ballfields.
Near the Library/Museum complex or as a small expansion of the existing Library (which has an ever-diminishing number of books in this digital age).
Included in the proposed Indian Creek development where the developer has already planned a senior center.
Or another location imbedded with other compatible facilities.
Instead of planning Butterfield as a developed park, let’s put those funds toward siting the IGC in an optimal location. We would serve the community well to preserve this as a natural park, a quiet space for us and future generations to enjoy.
If you share this vision, please let the County know by sending two emails and taking the County survey:
Email Supervisor Jim Desmond: Jim.Desmond@sdcounty.ca.gov
Email Planner Luke Taylor: Lucas.Taylor@sdcounty.ca.gov
Thank you,
Valley Center Trails Association & Friends of Hellhole Canyon