Stoney Point Park Is Open Every Day. The 1,325 Acres Next Door Are Open One.
August 20, 2026
August 20, 2026
Drive north on Topanga Canyon Boulevard toward the 118, and within about half a mile you pass two of the wildest pieces of ground left in the San Fernando Valley. On your right, sandstone boulders rise straight out of the sidewalk, no gate, no ticket booth, no hours posted anywhere. On your left, past a stretch of chain link and barbed wire, sits over a thousand acres of oak woodland, marsh, and grassland that almost nobody who lives in Chatsworth has ever set foot on. Same neighborhood, same afternoon light, two completely different ideas about what "open space" is supposed to mean.
Most people who have lived here a while know one of these places by name. Fewer realize how strange it is that they sit within walking distance of each other and run on opposite rules.
Stoney Point does not have a ranger, a fee, or a locked gate. It has had climbers instead. Development in the small bouldering area began in the 1930s when Sierra Club members started scrambling the rock, and by the 1950s and 60s it had turned into a proving ground for the people who would go on to define American rock climbing: Royal Robbins and Yvon Chouinard, who later founded Patagonia, both learned to climb here. Bob Kamps was a fixture on the rock from 1959 to 1995, reportedly showing up most Tuesday and Thursday afternoons to teach anyone who asked. Ron Kauk, John Long, and John Bachar came through too, and in the 1970s the Stonemasters, the loose crew of climbers who reshaped the sport's ambitions, treated Stoney Point as a home gym.
The rock itself has a name most residents never hear: geologists call it the Chatsworth Formation, sandstone outcroppings more than 65 million years old, laid down by underwater turbidity currents when this stretch of California sat somewhere off the coast of Central America or Baja. The medium-grained sandstone is kind to hands, which is part of why it became a bouldering destination in the first place, but it turns brittle when wet. Climbers who show up the day after rain find holds that were solid a week earlier crumbling in their fingers, and the local guidance passed down through the climbing community is simple: give it a day or more to dry out before you trust it.
The city designated Stoney Point a Historic-Cultural Monument in 1974, and Hollywood found it long before that, using the rocks as a backdrop for Seinfeld, The Lone Ranger, and Cliffhanger. Today the park runs on roughly 81 acres, including a five-acre equestrian center the city purchased in 2007. There is no staff enforcing etiquette on the boulders. Instead there is a code that climbers police among themselves, documented on sites like Mountain Project: no adding bolts to routes that have always been top-rope only, no chipping holds to make a problem easier, and an unwritten expectation that if you climb here regularly, you show up for the occasional cleanup day too.
That is the whole governing structure. It has held for close to a century.
Cross to the other side of Topanga Canyon and the philosophy reverses completely. The Chatsworth Nature Preserve covers 1,325 acres between Topanga Canyon and Valley Circle boulevards, on the old site of the Chatsworth Reservoir, and it is the largest undeveloped private property in Los Angeles County. It is also fenced, and for all practical purposes closed. Carla Bollinger, one of the leaders of the Chatsworth Nature Preserve Coalition, put the reasoning bluntly when KTLA covered the preserve last year: "we have to protect it from invasion."
The preserve exists as protected land because of a fight, not a default. Former Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson and a coalition of environmental groups pushed the city to lock in permanent protections in 1994, when the Los Angeles City Council passed Ordinance 169723 limiting the land to nature preserve and educational use only. Before that ordinance passed, the site had been floated for a golf course, a resort hotel, and youth sports fields. Any one of those plans would have paved over what is now habitat for more than 200 bird species, including the greater roadrunner, California quail, and ferruginous hawk, along with amphibians like the western spadefoot toad and slender salamander. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power still owns and manages the property today.
The only regular public access is one day a year. This past March 28, LADWP hosted its annual Spring Equinox Open House at the preserve, drawing an estimated 1,000 visitors for guided hikes, a Native American blessing performed by the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, live animal exhibits, and a bird observation station, put on in partnership with the Santa Susana Mountain Park Association, Sky Valley Volunteers, and the Herp Connection. Los Angeles Councilmember John Lee, whose district includes Chatsworth, called it "a magical place that is only open to the public on special occasions like this one." That open house has already come and gone for 2026. The next scheduled chance to walk inside those fences will not arrive until spring 2027.
Set side by side, these two places tell you something about how this stretch of the Valley has chosen to hold onto open ground. Stoney Point survived because generations of climbers treated it as theirs to protect, informally, without a fence or a fee, relying on a code that gets handed down rather than posted. The nature preserve survived because it was locked away entirely, defended by an ordinance and a coalition rather than by daily foot traffic. One landmark stays wild by staying accessible. The other stays wild by staying closed.
Both approaches worked. Neither would have worked for the other property. A thousand-acre wetland with year-round public access would likely need infrastructure, staffing, and rules that don't exist at Stoney Point. An 81-acre bouldering crag locked behind a fence would have lost the very thing that made it famous, the informal community of climbers who show up on their own schedule and answer to no one but each other.
There is a third piece of this that ties the two together, at least once a year. The Chatsworth Neighborhood Council's Day of the Horse festival is held each spring at Stoney Point Ranch, the equestrian center at 10861 Andora Avenue that sits on the same parcel as the climbing park. This year's 22nd annual event ran April 18, drawing families for horse demonstrations and kids' activities that lean into the neighborhood's long equestrian history, a history that predates most of the housing tracts now surrounding it. It is a reminder that Chatsworth's outdoor identity was never just about the boulders. Horses, hiking trails, and a fenced marsh full of migratory birds are all part of the same stretch of ground.
For residents who haven't been to Stoney Point in a while, or ever, a few practical notes worth knowing before you go:
Chatsworth residents drive past both of these landmarks often enough that it's easy to stop noticing them at all. But the contrast between a crag that asks nothing of you and a preserve that asks you to wait until next March says something true about the neighborhood: some of what makes this place worth living in is meant to be used every day, and some of it is worth protecting precisely because it isn't.
If you're weighing a move within Chatsworth, comparing it to a neighboring community, or just curious what a particular block is like to live on day to day, our Chatsworth neighborhood guide covers the details that don't show up on a map. And if you'd like a conversation about buying, selling, or simply understanding what your home is worth in this market, Gary Khachatrian is glad to help. Let's Connect.
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