“We must protect, preserve and restore our canyons – they don't make them anymore!”

Marian Bear
Clairemont Civic Activist and Rose Creek Watershed Conservation Hero
(as quoted by former San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson)

Clairemont resident Marian Bear was the Rose Creek Watershed’s first true preservation champion who loved San Diego’s canyons and fought tirelessly to preserve them. Lawyer Jim Milch worked with Bear while serving as then Mayor Pete Wilson’s appointee to the Park and Recreation Board. Milch said, “Marian Bear was no holds barred; strong in her positions and effective. She measured her moments but was always gracious.”

Civic activist and long-time conservationist Diane Coombs remembered Bear this way:

“Marian Bear was a total lady, a class act who had a vision recognizing the amazing amenity we had in San Diego with our system of canyons and mesas. It is a belated tribute to Marian and the many people who followed her leadership that there is a new initiative to save our canyons, to preserve and restore them and to link them together into an interconnected open space system for current and future residents. We have an opportunity now – and the window is closing – so we must seize that opportunity in remembrance of Marian and other pioneers for preservation.”

Bear, who died in 1979, is owed much of the credit for the preservation of San Clemente creek. Working with then-city planning director Harry Haelsig and then-city councilmember Floyd Morrow, Marian Bear led the public fight to block a Caltrans proposal to construct Highway 52 in the San Clemente creek bed at the bottom of San Clemente Canyon. Largely due to her civic activism, the state Highway Commission agreed to lift the proposed freeway from the floor of the canyon placing it instead on the north hillside, thus making way for San Diego’s first open space park.

Marian Bear was also active in other aspects of public life, serving as the Chair of the Clairemont Mesa Development Committee, the Clairemont community planning group and as the Chair of the city-wide Community Planning Committee. Bear also worked tirelessly to preserve Tecolote Canyon in Clairemont and Linda Vista as an open space park and played a leading role in the passage of Proposition C, a $65 million city bond measure since used to help build the city’s open space park system.

Eloise Battle, long-time advocate for the preservation of Tecolote Canyon, worked with Marian Bear on many community activities. “In the beginning I was a rookie in dealing with city hall. I learned most of what I know about community planning and lobbying at the knee of Marion Bear. She was a community leader of legendary proportions.”

Bear was a former actress and often dramatic in her approach to civic affairs. According to Battle, Bear would “sweep past the front office of the city council, seldom making an appointment, to walk back and see whomever she wanted to see.” During one of Bear’s first meetings to urge the preservation of San Clemente Canyon, she addressed a group of 500 to 1,000 community members with a megaphone while standing on the roof of her Clairemont canyon-edge home.

On July 31, 1979, the San Diego City Council rededicated then San Clemente Canyon Park as Marian Bear Memorial Park:

“On behalf of the people of this city who are indebted to Marian Bear for her energetic and unselfish efforts as a planner, naturalist and conservationist and her lasting contribution toward the preservation of open space for future generations.”

San Diego City Council
July 31, 1979

In July of 1979, more than 200 city officials and civic leaders gathered in San Clemente Canyon to participate in the ceremony rededicating San Clemente Park in memory of Marian Bear, whose volunteer efforts and activism helped create a legacy of preservation for future generations to follow. Then-Mayor Pete Wilson spoke at the ceremony. Wilson in his speech talked about Marian and her many efforts to protect our canyons. He quoted Bear as saying at a City Council meeting: “We must protect, preserve and restore our canyons – they don't make them anymore.”