Arcadia: a place or region that epitomizes rural contentment.

Some days it seems the people we elect and pay to oversee our civic affairs are working for somebody else. That’s apparent with their oversight of our financial system. The same goes for management of our public property.

My sense of split loyalty spikes each time I drive between Cannon Beach and Nehalem – the most beautiful commute on Earth. I feel it when I look up at the butchered hill above Hug Point. Not long ago that scalped slope was part of Hug Point State Park, before government traded it off to a private owner.

This culling of our common wealth is ugly, and it created other problems for nearby Arch Cape residents. The rural hamlet depends on springs located above Hug Point for water. Transference of this public land into private hands has undermined efforts to secure this water source for local citizens.

That’s bad enough, but it might have been just a blip on my radar had it not been coupled with other foul news. Turns out roughly 20 acres of Arcadia State Park was also transferred to a private owner who hopes to use the property for a residential subdivision. That reduces the park’s size by about 90 percent. Most people, myself included, didn’t know about it until the new owner applied for rezoning.

“We’re still trying to piece together the details of what happened,” says Doug Deur, an environmental historian who lives in the area. “There was no public notification or comment on the disposal of the Arcadia parkland, so far as we can tell. The State Parks manager who oversaw parks along the North Coast, including Arcadia, told us that he didn’t even find out about the Arcadia swap until after the transaction was complete.”

With a doctorate in environmental biology, Doug is a well-respected resource on matters important to the North Coast. He has written and lectured extensively on the natural history and cultural heritage of our region.

“The disposal of park land along this coast is bizarre,” Doug says. “Oregon’s parks here get the highest use of any place in the state. At the same time Salem was executing this swap, State Parks officials were trying to acquire coastal property here to meet the growing demand for rustic camping sites and other amenities.”

The cliché criticism for this glitch in government is that the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing. These days, a more politically literate appraisal might be that the right-wingers have clipped the wings of everyone else.

Leadership didn’t always look like this. The public lands between Cannon Beach and Manzanita have a long history with Oregon State Parks. For the visionary founder of the department, Sam Boardman, these parcels were hallmark holdings. Doug, along with National Park Service Historian, Stephen Mark, is working on a book about the history of Oregon’s coastal parks. His sketch of Boardman’s interest in our area is captivating.

According to Doug, Boardman was inspired by the development of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park during the Great Depression. He saw what was going on with Olympic National Park to the north and Redwood National Park to the south. He believed that the beauty of Oregon’s North Coast matched these places, and that a park of such national caliber belonged here. The undeveloped areas from Ecola State Park to Oswald West were to be the centerpiece of that proposal.

Loss of parkland at Arcadia and Hug Point despoils Boardman’s dream of providing world-class camping, hiking, and viewing opportunities along our stretch of shoreline. The shared economies of South Clatsop and North Tillamook depend on visitors who come here to enjoy our scenic and recreational resources. Diminishment of this wealth hurts us all.

The first opportunity for citizen input on this issue will be a hearing on zoning changes desired by the new private owner. In order to build a subdivision on our former parkland, Clatsop County officials must approve a request to change the zone from recreation and forestry to residential. I encourage citizens to send written comments to the county planning commission before the hearing on Jan. 13.

In my opinion, the reasonable thing to do is preserve the current zoning. Existing land-use rules should stand until government has reviewed and resolved the dearth of due process regarding Arcadia State Park.

If public officials really work for us, their loyalty won’t be split by profiteers who want our property.

Watt Childress is a Cannon Beach bookseller and freelance writer who lives on a Nehalem Valley farm. Email him at wattchildress@yahoo.com.