HOME > OUR WORK > • River Patrol • Creekkeeper Volunteers
• Water Monitoring • Advocacy • Riverkeeper Park • Foss Creek Project • Education

Riverkeeper Park

In February 2005, Russian Riverkeeper received donation of the 5-acre parcel from the Horne Family. Located on the north bank of the Russian River between the Hwy 116 and pedestrian bridges in Guerneville with the intention of creating a public park and river access. The property is over-run by invasive non-native plants, garbage and drug users making it a community nuisance.

Our concept is to create a natural pedestrian park with access to the Russian River in downtown Guerneville that reflects and demonstrates the goals of restoring the native plant community and proper ecological stewardship of the river banks for the benefit of lower river property owners while balancing human desires for view corridors and river access. The park should connect visually and physically to downtown Guerneville and improve the visual gateway to Guerneville. The park will provide space for a natural kids play area, interpretive loop trail, demonstration pervious parking area, picnic tables, sitting benches and small gathering area for watershed education. Russian Riverkeeper intends to retain ownership and maintenance responsibility of the park property and utilize it for ongoing educational programs ourselves and make it available to other organizations.

This project would increase river access in this heavily used section of river, provide stewardship examples and resources to lower river property owners, provide a downtown park for the local community and visitors as well as provide educational programs and train volunteers in native revegetation. This park project would be connected via the pedestrian bridge to the new county Guerneville River Park across the river and would compliment the county Park's amenities for users, especially on busy summer weekends.

We are very proud to announce our partnership with Marmot Mountain LTD on our Demonstration Revegetation and Community Park project between the bridges in Guerneville. On October 3rd, over 50 Marmot Mountain employees (everyone but shipping!) came out to Guerneville to roll up their sleeves and put in some sweat equity for the local community. Under the guidance of Creekkeeper Volunteer and experienced revegetation pro Victoria Wikle, the hard working Marmots removed over 40 cubic yards of invasive and non-native vegetation by hand, clear out over 25 cubic yards of trash weighing over 2000 pounds and get the project off to a fast start!

We are having volunteer workdays every Thursday from Noon to 4pm - heavy rain cancels. Volunteer duties range from invasive plant removal to trash collection to erosion control to mapping and other work as needed. Volunteers will need to wear long pants, long sleeves, something to drink and work boots or shoes. We will provide gloves, tools and training!