Mission Trails Regional Park

The park consists mostly of rugged canyons and hills, with both natural and developed recreation areas, including beautiful flowers. It is the seventh-largest open space urban park in the United States, consisting of nearly 7,000 acres (28 km²). The highest point is 1,592-foot-high (485 m) Cowles Mountain, which is also the highest point in the city of San Diego. The San Diego River flows through the park. A one-way access road goes through the park, allowing hikers, bikers and pedestrians on one side and cars on the other. The park is open every day of the year.

The park has 60 miles of hiking, mountain bike and equestrian trails, a rock climbing area, and the Kumeyaay Lake Campground with 46 camp sites adjacent to a small lake. There is also the 14,000-square-foot (1,300 m²) Mission Trails Regional Park Visitor and Interpretive Center. It includes a number of exhibits, a library, and a 93-seat theater that includes a Blu-ray projection system with a large screen. The Visitor Center also includes an art gallery. The most popular trail of the park is the Cowles Mountain trail (pronounced Colz), which takes hundreds of people per day to the summit for a 360-degree panorama of San Diego County. Another popular stop is the Old Mission Dam, which was built to supply irrigation water to farm land that supplied food for the Mission San Diego de Alcala, the first of the chain of missions established by Junípero Serra in California. Another popular destination within the park is Lake Murray, a reservoir supplying water to San Diego neighborhoods. It has a surface area of approximately 168 acres. The lake is periodically stocked with trout and bass.

On December 17, 2014, West Sycamore was officially opened to the public. This increased the size of the park by just over 1,100 acres and includes 6 miles of trails. West Sycamore is located adjacent to the Scripps Ranch community and is at the very east end of Stonebridge Parkway. It is north of the main area of MTRP.

Special annual events at Mission Trails include the Amateur Photo Contest which begins in March, with entries due by the middle of April.

The park is in the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion. It has coastal sage and chaparral and riparian habitats and plant communities of California native plants.

In July 2022, the City of San Diego purchased 25 acres to add onto the park. In September 2022, The Mission Trails Regional Park (MTRP) Foundation officially announced that it had received a 2 million dollar grant from the San Diego River Conservancy to extend the park into what is currently private, but uninhabited land. This proposed addition for adding more land would be within the uninhabited "planning area" of East Elliott Community, north of State Route 52 and bordering Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.

The MTRP Foundation itself acts as a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving, protecting, and improving the park and is receiving the grant from the San Diego River Conservancy (SDRC) since the San Diego River runs directly through the Mission Trails area, including the Old Mission Dam which a historic conifer for the river. The SDRC operates as an independent, non-regulatory state agency established with a similar goal to the MTRP Foundation by intending to preserve, restore, and enhance protected regions or systems in and around the river. This seemingly may also include other watershed ecological such as adjacent canyons and Lake Murray; which is also technically part of Mission Trails.

Due to the preserve already being one of the largest urban parks in the United States, both of the new acquisition efforts will purportedly obtain more than 100 additional acres of land for the park. Both purchases would support the park's "2019 Master Plan Update" and the City of San Diego’s Multiple Species Conservation Program (MSCP), which aims to preserve essential landscapes and their (largely endemic) ecosystems. Notably, the introduction of such projects which are characterized by extension of the park’s land and preservation of nature would also support the policies of related organizations like The California Natural Resources Agency by virtue of implementing various ecological benefits such as habitat conservation, and protection of wildlife corridors, as well as in addition to the same or similar practices like the San Diego River's watershed areas there juristically technically included within the Mission Trails Regional Park; such as surrounding scenic zones like the Lake Murray reservoir or nearby canyons.

The expected conservancy grant is estimated to take up to two years. During this time, the MTRP Foundation will work to secure additional funding to support other land acquisition opportunities in the East Elliott Community Planning Area. Altogether, this could result in roughly 600 additional acres which are now under private ownership.

A significant portion of the park was burned by the Cedar Fire in 2003. As is typical of a chaparral ecology, within a few years the park had recovered and exhibited little evidence of recent fire damage.[2]

• Old Mission Dam
• Lake Murray
• Kumeyaay
• San Dieguio
• San Diego River

• San Diego's Mission Trails Regional Park : Official Guidebook, by Pamela Crooks, 2003, ISBN 0-9706219-1-4

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mission Trails Regional Park.

• City of San Diego: Mission Trails Regional Park website.

• City of San Diego: Mission Trails Regional Park Foundation website.