This land is your land. This land is my land.

Sometimes, anyway.

Woody Guthrie's words from 1940 are in harmony with this week's cover story -- a look at three new parks where we can roam free.

Three amazingly different parks.

Have you wanted a long, quiet walk on undeveloped Lake Erie beachfront? The opportunity is now there, with two additional miles headed your way.

Do you crave a green space close to home but away from the malls, somewhere for a quick meander with the kids and the dogs? The gates are open to a private golf course, now a metro park.

And have you wished that the quiet little wooded ravine in the neighborhood could be protected for the public? Get ready to step into a third park, one with a terrific view of Cleveland's skyline.

It's hard to believe, in this built-up age, that parks are still being born. Land is expensive, and park districts have little money to spend on new properties.

Potential parkland can cost 10 times as much as what a district can afford. Fortunately, there is money from government sources -- otherwise known as our tax dollars, especially from Clean Ohio -- and private donors.

Rich Cochran, head of the nonprofit Western Reserve Land Conservancy, who helps put together land for parks in Northeast Ohio, summed it up this way.

"One hundred years from now," he said, "people are not going to gaze with awe upon a landscape of subdivisions and malls. Rather, they will celebrate our great parks like Acacia, Lake Erie Bluffs and West Creek, and be truly thankful for their existence."

So tie on your comfy shoes and get out there. It's spring. It's almost Earth Week, soon to be greener than ever.

More of it will be ours.

Location: 2901 Clark Road, Perry Township; take Ohio 2 east to Perry, then go north on Blackmore Road and turn right on Clark.Call 440-639-7275.

Headlands Beach State Park in Mentor is only a few miles to the west, offering lots of sand and surf. But the new Lake Erie Bluffs of Lake (County) Metroparks does a better job of taking you back another century -- when there were just woods, beach, waves and sky.

It's restorative to be on an undeveloped section of shoreline. Eighty percent of Ohio's coastal property is developed or privately owned.

The 140-acre bluffs park will get four times bigger later this summer, when all legal aspects are finalized. Right now you can park your car, walk a short trail to an overlook, and walk another short switchback down the bluff to the water.

It's pretty down there, with lots of wave-polished driftwood, sand and rounded stones. As you walk, the only sounds you might hear are waves splashing onto the beach. It's a sensory trigger to vacation time.

You also can roam the place with a park naturalist.



Lake Metroparks director Paul Palagyi says we should keep our eyes open for bald eagles.

"It's the most likely place to see an eagle soaring along the edge of the lake," he says.

When Lake Erie Bluffs expands, sometime around July, there will be a second parking area with another trail to the beach. Kayaks can be launched there, and swimming allowed. (No lifeguard, though, and there are illustrated warnings about dangerous algae blooms.)

A whopping 450 acres will be added to the park this summer, thanks to coordination by Western Reserve Land Conservancy.

The beach trail will expand from 1,700 feet to two miles, and inland through woods and meadows.

It's that habitat that attracted national funding from coastal wetlands-protection grants.

"Those people rated different areas they wanted to protect, including the Gulf Coast, and the East and West coasts," says Palagyi. "This shows they recognize our area as important nationally."

Palagyi imagines the park becoming a destination for birding and fishing as well.

Meanwhile, he's making plans to pave the upper trail for wheelchair access to the bluff view, and has increased park hours to 11 p.m. for sunset watching on the longest days.

Location: 26899 Cedar Road, Lyndhurst; take I-271 to Cedar, go west. Entrance before Richmond Road.Call 216-635-3200.

Those of us heading to Beachwood Place or Legacy Village have passed the grassy hill and the spring-flowering trees in bloom. But unless you were a member of Acacia Country Club, the place was off-limits.

Then the 155-acre club went up for sale, and the highest bidder, at $14.7 million, was Cleveland Metroparks -- armed with conservation funds from a variety of sources outside the park system.

Ownership transferred a few weeks ago, and now the sign has been replaced. The former 1.7-mile golf-cart trail is hosting plenty of feet and paws.

It's early in the game, but parks director Brian Zimmerman says the deluxe former clubhouse will not be a nature center. Instead, it will be a party facility for rent. A caterer has already been selected.

Restrooms are being constructed in a former bath house, with portable facilities available until then.

Otherwise, expect few changes. The land, Euclid Creek and its tributaries will be encouraged to return to nature.

Zimmerman says parks staffers are working with the community to design programming to convey healthy food and activities.

"The site had a mystique," he says. "It was private for 92 years . . . Now we're hearing that people are pleased to have an oasis in a highly urbanized area."

Location: 2277 W. Ridgewood Drive, Parma. Take I-480 to State Road exit, go south to West Ridgewood, then left for one mile. Call 216-635-3200.

West Creek Reservation is not just a Parma thing. This 324-acre park embraces a principal waterway that flows into the Cuyahoga River and then into Lake Erie. That's one reason you'll see a new building on the property called the Watershed Stewardship Center, scheduled to open in June. Zimmerman said the lodgelike structure with its plant-covered roof will teach about how our behavior affects the health of our "watershed," the term for how water flows through a specific region to a single source.

"The 22,000 acres of the Cleveland Metroparks are largely built around the water corridors -- the Chagrin, the Cuyahoga and the Rocky rivers -- that flow into Lake Erie," said Zimmerman. "It's a riparian park system, and I hope we can really talk about the influences we have on this water and its environment."

Although the center and the trails are not yet open, there are several nature programs going on this month. Check the park's website, listed above.

Also, the park's 1.6 miles of all-purpose trails are being refurbished. Another three to four miles will remain unpaved. From the park entrance on West Ridgewood, take the trail to the left, over the bridge and straight up the hill. At the top is a view of the gold domes of an Orthodox church in one direction, a richly wooded ravine below and, looking north, a splendid view of downtown Cleveland. From that spot in the park, it looks like the Emerald City.

Like the other two parks in this story, West Creek benefited from many levels of government money, especially the Clean Ohio fund. But anyone reading Parma news over the past few decades knows that community support groups were instrumental in saving the natural character of the area.

"If not for local citizens who wanted to protect it, the park would not be there now," said Zimmerman. "The people asked for this to become a park."

They helped make this land our land.