FREMONT — The first new East Bay Regional park in six years opens Thursday in the hills between Fremont and Sunol with sweeping views of San Francisco Bay, six new miles of trails, and places for future trail connections to several parks.

The $8 million Vargas Plateau Regional Park has 1,249 acres of rolling hills and wooded canyons on a 1,000-foot-elevation plateau with scenic places to hike, run, and ride mountain bikes and horses.

East Bay Regional Park District officials call their 66th park an environmental gem with kinder, less steep trails than nearby Mission Peak Regional Park.

“Vargas Plateau has spectacular views. You can see San Francisco Bay, the San Jose salt flats in one direction and the ridges in Sunol and Pleasanton to the east,” said Bob Doyle, the regional park district general manager. “It is a great place for whole families to ride mountain bikes because the trails are on gently rolling hills.”

As he toured the park Wednesday, a golden eagle soared above the undulating grasslands where cattle have grazed since the 1800s.

Vargas Plateau Park is not adjacent to other regional parks. However, the park district hopes to establish trails to connect Vargas Plateau with several other regional parks above Fremont, Newark, Pleasanton, Sunol, and Castro Valley — as well as a trail being considered through or above Niles Canyon.

Vargas park has two new miles of the Bay Area Ridge Trail, a partially complete 550-mile path on ridges around San Francisco Bay.

Bern Smith, a trail and mountain advocate, said he’s stoked by the prospect that cyclists some day will be able to ride long distances on trails connecting Vargas Plateau, Garin, Mission Peak, Pleasanton Ridge and other parks.

“Opening Vargas Plateau is a good step,” Smith said, “but what I really look forward to is taking long rides through several parks.”

Vargas Plateau has been a long time coming. It took longer to open — 20 years — than any regional park that district officials can recall.

The delay is a painful reminder of the obstacles the park agency faces as it continues to buy more land but struggles with providing access to it.

The park district bought much of Vargas Plateau land in 1996, but public access was delayed for two decades in part due to opposition and a 2008 lawsuit by two neighbors over parking and traffic on the narrow, sparsely populated roads leading to the park.

In a 2012 legal settlement, park officials agreed to widen stretches of Vargas Road, trim roadside vegetation, and limit the park entrance to a parking lot with space for no more than 25 vehicles.

No parking is allowed on narrow roads leading to the park.

“It’s very disappointing that after we purchase park land, it takes so long to open parks,” said Dennis Waespi, a park board member from Castro Valley. “But we have to be a good neighbors. We have to provide safe access. We have to do environmental planning.”

Doyle said the opening also took time because the district had to do extra habitat improvements for the California salamander after it received new state threatened species protections. Park officials also had to do environmental reviews for a park land use plan.

Kelly Abreu of Fremont, a member of the Mission Peak Conservancy, said the park district overpromised in saying it would open the park years earlier than it did.

“They have all this money to buy new park land,” Abreu said, “but they should place a higher priority on opening it to the public.

Contact Denis Cuff at 925-943-8267. Follow him at Twitter.com/deniscuff or facebook.com/denis.cuff.

[[[Normal]]][[[Normal]]]{"Infobox Head"/}HOW TO GET THERE

{"Infobox Text"/}To reach Vargas Plateau Regional Park, take the Vargas Road exit on Interstate 680 in Fremont and go north. Drive 1.6 miles to Morrison Canyon Road and turn right to reach the parking staging area. Car-pooling is recommended as there are only 25 parking spaces in the lot. There is no street parking in the area.

Admission is free. Hours are generally 8 a.m. to dark.

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