Pamo Valley Ride

This month’s ride will be hosted at Pamo Valley in Ramona.

Directions –

East County – Hwy 67 thru Ramona. Turn left on 7th Street.  7th Street turns into Elm. Turn right on Haverford, then left on Pamo Rd. Follow Pamo road down the hill and continue til you see the Los Senderos sign on the right.

From Julain – Hwy 78 towards Ramona, Turn right on 7th Street.7th Street turns into Elm. Turn right on Haverford, then left on Pamo Rd. Follow Pamo road down the hill and continue til you see the Los Senderos sign on the right.

THE HISTORY OF PAMO VALLEY:

The Pamo Valley is surrounded by 4,052-foot-high Black Mountain to the east, 4,221-foot-high Pine Mountain to the north and Orosco Ridge to the west.

Both Santa Ysabel Creek and Temescal Creek run through here, the former a tributary of the San Dieguito River that runs from Volcan Mountain near Julian to the ocean near Del Mar. Temescal Creek flows into the San Luis Rey River.

The San Dieguito River Park was formed in 1989 by the county and the cities of San Diego, Del Mar, Escondido, Poway and Solana Beach.

One of the major goals of both these entities is to ultimately establish the Coast-to-Crest Trail, a 55-mile-long trail extending from Volcan Mountain to the ocean between Del Mar and Solana Beach. Several portions of this trail are open, but some gaps, including Pamo Valley, remain.

Most of the valley bottom of Pamo Valley is owned by the city of San Diego public utilities department’s enterprise water fund, said Pasek, an avid hiker. The city leases the land to Bob Neal, a Ramona rancher, who maintains, patrols and fences the 3,769 acres while grazing cattle.

“The city came to own this land in the 1950s as a reservoir site,” Pasek said. “While there are no plans to build a reservoir here now, no other good reservoir sites are left in San Diego County.”

The city holds the land if it ever needs such a reservoir in the future.

“That’s good, because the land then can’t be sold for development,” Adams said.

As a result, Pamo Valley remains relatively pristine as ranch land, which it has been since at least the 1860s.

Homesteaders started ranching here about then, according to an extensive website that covers the history of Pamo Valley. The Foster family, which maintains the website, pamoranch.com, began dairy and stock ranching here in the early 1900s. The family also formed a water company that considered damming for a reservoir here. Neal had worked for the Foster family on their ranch.

We bushwhacked our way through tall green grasses, reaching ridges that offered panoramic views of this verdant valley. Wildflowers were in full bloom. Leslie Woollenweber, conservation programs director for the conservancy, identified ivory-colored cream cups, bright yellow tidy tips, yellow/orange deerweed and ever-present chamise, which she said is highly flammable and helped spread the devastating fire that ravaged this land in 2007.

In the lower reaches of the valley, near Santa Ysabel Creek, oak woodlands still harbored healthy old oaks that survived that fire. Sycamores and cottonwoods lined the free-flowing creek, where we had to take our shoes off to cross.

Several gatherings of granite boulders were dotted with morteros and metates. The old acorn grinding holes revealed this area to be a major campsite for the Northern Diegueno Indians who lived here for hundreds of years before the homesteaders.

The word “Pamo” probably comes from the Diegueno word, “paamuu,” according to “California Place Names” by Erwin G. Gudde and William Bright. They cite an Indian rancheria called Pamo in Spanish records as early as 1778, and the Valle de Pamo, or Santa Maria, land grant was dated 1843.

The land here hasn’t changed much since then, it seems. “You turn down a road here and you’re in old California,” said Charty Bassett, a conservancy board member.

Priscilla Lister is a freelance writer from San Diego.