So while hiking in Northern California (and I think here in Maryland) I’ve seen houses directly abutting a regional park, and similar parks, that have a gate in their back fence that opens up into the park, giving their owners access. Its not something I’ve thought about much (other than “oh that would be cool”) until I noticed a house we are considering buying here in Maryland does in fact have a back fence directly abutting a regional park.
If you end up in a property like that, can you just put in a gate into the park if you fancy it? Is there a process involved to ask permission? Or is it actually completely a no-no and the times I’ve seen it, its been “grandfathered in” where the house and the gate pre-dated the park (or its not allowed but not actually enforced by the powers that be).
I’m assuming the home owner, we are talking about a regular wooden fence like you would have around any garden, not an official looking chain link fence such as you would have around a park.
I’m trying to envision what the concern is here. Unless I misunderstand what “regional park” means in the U.S., it’s not something that would usually have any restriction on public access. No access fee or permit requirement as you might have in a National Park or State Park. So why do you feel direct access from an abutting property might be of concern?
I’m American, but not sure what “regional park” means.
My town has several small parks, and most of the abutting properties have fences (to tell park-goers not to walk on their land) and gates in those fences (so the property owners have access.
I assume that both the fences and the gates belong to the homeowners.
I was wondering if the op was describing some larger type of park.
Assuming its a nature conservation type park rather than just grassy town park, then the sorts of things park managers would be concerned about is the proliferation of little trails and tracks spidering out from the boundary. Lots attention is given to controlling foot and vehicle access because they cause erosion, cut up habitat and provide places where people dump rubbish.
Also generally security - any property manager wants to be able to control entry when they need to.
Some parks will have a perimeter track that follows the fence. Much less of an issue if you go through your gate onto that than wandering along an unplanned trail through what might be fragile habitat.
All true enough, but I wouldn’t have referred to a conservation area or nature reserve as regional park. Perhaps I’m mistaken on the terminology, does anyone have any expertise on this? Googling it’s really not very clear exactly what the term “regional park” means in the U.S.
In my experience, a regional park is owned/operated by a public park district whose tax base & service area overlap with two or more local governments. The East Bay Regional Park District, for example, covers all of Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. Mostly, the parks tend to be open space areas, rather than developed city-type parks. If your property happens to back up onto one, cool. You’ve got easy access.
The house I grew up in backed onto a high school, rather than a park. We had a back gate in our fence, and the school yard was definitely accessible for recreational use during non-school hours.
Oh I guess that the very boundary that is to be expected. How else can you maintain a fence and
how else can the local service people get to sewerage lines, without a trail down the boundary… and the member of the public can generally walk anywhere in nature reserve park… of any level.
Its not like its a city park with “keep out of the garden” rules.
Often the concept is that the park authority isn’t going to pay for a fence, so the private land owner is going to build whatever fence the private land owner wants. The park authority would have to get the local county/city to stipulate rules for gates in fences, and that would require some important reason. like a specific danger, like they have to close the park at night… like the gate ruins their access control fence along the way… Well the park authority could just ask the local land owners to close off gates, not build gates just out of safety concerns. but they wouldn’t normally had authority to demand it just on their own… they’d have it approved by the local development authority (county, city, or state for unincorporated ? ) and put that rule on the land title ?
Right. I would think if the park wants to control access, it needs to build its own fence. That also seems simple than trying to get a municipality to prevent a homeowner from putting a gate in the homeowner’s fence.
In my (Canadian) experience, the sort of parks where you must stick to marked trails, need permission to hike, etc. usually are those extensive dozens to hundreds of square miles off in the far wilderness. That wouldn’t describe most parks with a row of houses and manicured lawns adjacent.
The other sort might be super-decorative parks with fancy flowerbeds and pretty walkways, and keep-off-the-grass signs. Something like that likely has an impenetrable row of shrubs and trees to block the backdrop of houses, since those houses would detract from the prettiness of the natural look. In those cases, “Keep Off The Grass” rules would likely apply.
Most urban parks would likely be inexpensively maintained simple grass and trees areas, and walking randomly through the park is not discouraged. the gate (and fence) would likely be set up by the home-owner to indicate the edge of public access property. And gate? It would be really silly to have to walk 2 blocks down the road and around the corner to get to the public entrance and through the parking lot if your property abuts the park.
I’ve never heard the term “regional park”, and suspect that it has as many definitions as the US has regions. And it’s not at all clear, just from the name, what kind of park it’d be: For instance, in the Cleveland area, the Metroparks (which cover many municipalities and even bits of other counties) often do abut directly up against private home lots, but most of the parks themselves are kept in a mostly-wild state where they wouldn’t want a proliferation of footpaths. Plus, the parks are often in river valleys, with the boundary at the top of a very steep hill or cliff, and so they’d also be worried about both erosion and liability for injuries.
In my County, the Parks Department is not concerned with foot traffic, so a fence and/or gate allowing pedestrian traffic from private land wouldn’t bother them. I’ve been told by park officials, that even if the park is closed, and even if the front barrier is down, the public is welcome to walk into the park as long as they follow all the rules, such as no camping, no fires, etc. If someone just wants to walk or jog through the woods and trails at night, they don’t care.
@Twoflower gave an example of a “regional park” system in California, which seems to be administered by several adjacent counties; my suspicion is that the OP encountered a park from that regional park system (they noted that they saw this in Northern California), or something similar.
I agree that I’m not familiar with any “regional parks” in my area of the Midwestern U.S., though we have plenty of parks administered by different governmental levels (city, county, state, national). It seems like a regional park is probably most closely analogous to a county park, and it is probably only a “thing” in those areas where several counties are jointly administering a park district.
As far as the OP’s actual question, there is undoubtedly no one answer: it’ll depend on the park (and park authority) in question, and whether there are already fences erected by the park. As others have noted, it will depend on whether it’s a matter of the park trying to keep people out (or at least forcing them to use the park’s official entrances), or whether it’s a homeowner looking to keep random park visitors from entering private property.
Yeah, we do too. Also parks administered by colleges, by conservation societies, horticultural societies, parks that are their own thing … And they all have different rules regarding access by the general public. Some are completely open all the time, some close at night, some request donations, some have staff and require fees for access… It’s all over the board.
But in general, i think that if any of those parks wants to keep out the public, they need to put up their own fence. If a fence has a gate to someone’s backyard, i would assume the fence was erected by the homeowner to keep the general public from their backyard, not vice versa.