In 1972, a wheelchair-using California conservationist helped protect the Santa Monica Mountains, creating a 56,000-acre network of parklands

Helen Martin was 79 and using a wheelchair when a scenic overlook in California’s Santa Monica Mountains was dedicated in her name in January 1989, where she had spent 28 years working to protect it from development. The Los Angeles Times reported that Martin had helped create the network of state and federal park sites spread across 56,000 acres of the range between the Hollywood Bowl and Ventura County’s Mugu Rock.Martin had been working on the mountains for decadesIn 1961, Martin was among the organizers of the first Southern California chapter of the California Native Plant Society, and later became a director of the Nature Conservancy and joined the board of the Topanga-Las Virgenes Resource Conservation District. Her work also brought her into the process of establishing protected land in the Santa Monica Mountains. The Los Angeles Times reported that in 1972, Martin helped create a network of state and federal park sites covering 56,000 acres, which stretched from the Hollywood Bowl west toward Ventura County and Mugu Rock.By 1989, development pressure was still visible across the range, and The Times described luxury homes appearing with increasing frequency and quoted Martin, who urged supporters to acquire as much land as possible. The conservation effort involved multiple agencies and organizations rather than Martin alone.The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy was established by the California Legislature in 1980, and became one of the institutions involved in preserving and connecting public land across the region. The agency says its work has since helped in preserving more than 75,000 acres of parkland in Southern California.Why the 1989 ceremony mattered to her workThe overlook dedication was not the creation of the 56,000-acre park network, since that work had already begun years earlier. Instead, the ceremony recognized Martin’s contribution to the conservation movement and her knowledge of the mountains. The Times reported that officials credited Martin with having information about the Santa Monica Mountains and the people connected to them when the federal recreation area was being established. One official called her the “John Muir of the Santa Monicas,” while another said her work had helped preserve open hillsides that otherwise might have been developed.Martin had moved to Agoura’s Malibu Lake in 1966 after marrying actor Strother Martin. The Times reported that she became increasingly involved in environmental meetings and parkland studies while her husband was working in the film industry. Her work was not limited to simply opposing development, as the wider conservation system involved state and federal agencies that were acquiring land and managing it as parks and recreation areas. By the late 1980s, the Santa Monica Mountains already contained a patchwork of protected sites under different jurisdictions.The network kept growingThe 56,000-acre figure described in the 1989 Times report referred to land already preserved for parkland across the mountains, while other reporting from the period shows the network was still expanding. A May 1989 Times report noted that the state Department of Parks and Recreation and the National Park Service together controlled 56,000 acres in the mountains.The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy’s current history says that the agency has helped preserve more than 75,000 acres of parkland in wilderness and urban settings and has worked with federal and state agencies, local governments, nonprofit groups and private landowners to acquire and protect open space. Martin died after decades of conservation work, but the overlook that was dedicated in her name remains part of the record of the movement that shaped the Santa Monica Mountains.Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.