The Carr Lake property in Salinas – 480 acres of farm fields in the middle of a city – presents a unique opportunity to revitalize communities and serve residents. The Big Sur Land Trust is on the case.
But it doesn’t function as a nucleus – if anything, aside from being productive ag land for one growing season each year, it only keeps the communities on its borders further apart. It doesn’t unite – it separates. But that is set to change, soon, at least in part. In 2017, the Big Sur Land Trust bought, for $3.95 million, 73 of those 480 acres, which is all the property once owned by the Ikeda family, one of the three families that have been farming on the land since the early 1920s. That was when Carr Lake, a historical wetland, was drained along with the completion of the county’s Reclamation Ditch, which passes through the property and eventually flows into Monterey Bay.
