If you walk, bike, or ride out to Foster Park most weekends, you already know the parking lot has been closed for a while. What you might not know is what's actually happening because of that closure, and why the county is now treating it as a safety conversation instead of a construction footnote.
The short version: closing the lot didn't stop anyone from using the trail. It just moved where people park, from a fenced lot inside the park to the shoulder of a state highway. That shift is the real story here, and it's why the Oak View Neighborhood Council put it on the agenda for a public meeting this coming Monday.
What actually happened to the park
Foster Park sits along Highway 33 just outside Oak View, where the Ventura River runs through ten acres of sycamore and oak shade that most valley residents treat as a default trailhead. It's the southern anchor of the Ojai Valley Trail, the nine-mile paved and equestrian path that runs from the park to Fox Street in Ojai, and it connects into the larger Ventura River Parkway Trail, a 15.8-mile route that earned National Recreation Trail designation back in 2014 and was repaved in 2025.
The current closure traces back to January 2023, when storms buried the park under one to three feet of sediment. Ventura County Parks needed two separate cleanup phases just to get pedestrians and equestrians back in. Once that work wrapped, the park moved into a third and final phase: rebuilding the day-use parking lot itself. That's the phase still underway now, and it's the reason cars can't get inside the park even though people clearly still can.
The workaround nobody planned for
Here's the part that turned a routine construction timeline into a neighborhood council agenda item. With the lot closed, regulars haven't stopped showing up. They've started parking along the shoulder of Highway 33 and under the Casitas Vista Road overpass, then walking in on foot.
Colter Chisum, deputy director of Ventura County Parks, addressed the situation directly:
"People are parking on the park side of Highway 33. They're not crossing. They're on the park side."
Chisum also pointed out that overflow parking was never a clean problem to begin with, closure or not. During busy season, when the lot is fully open, visitors already spill into the underpass and the overflow area across Casitas Vista Road. The construction closure didn't create the overflow habit. It just moved the entire overflow onto the highway shoulder instead of onto the shoulder as one option among several.
Caltrans has told the county it has no record of crashes tied to this stretch, and maintenance crews haven't personally observed anyone crossing the highway on foot. But the county is still in active talks with Caltrans about signage or other fixes, and that ambiguity, cars parked on a Caltrans-maintained roadway near a trailhead everyone knows kids use on bikes, is exactly why this is going to a public meeting rather than getting handled quietly.
What's open right now, and what isn't
For anyone planning a walk or ride this week, here's where things actually stand:
- Pedestrian and bicycle access into the park is open.
- The day-use parking lot inside the park is closed for reconstruction.
- Restrooms are open and functioning.
- A newly installed filtered water dispenser is running, a small but real upgrade over what was there before.
- Overflow parking is happening along the Highway 33 shoulder and under the Casitas Vista Road bridge, which is the situation prompting the current safety discussion.
None of this affects the trail itself. The Ojai Valley Trail through the park is intact and walkable. What's changed is simply how people get from their car to the trailhead, and that gap is where the friction is.
The meeting worth knowing about
The Oak View Neighborhood Council is holding a public meeting on Monday, August 24 at 6:30 p.m. at the Oak View Community Center, 18 Valley Road, specifically to discuss the parking and safety situation at Foster Park. If you use this trailhead regularly, whether that's a morning dog walk, a weekend ride toward Ojai, or dropping kids off with fishing poles headed for the lake, this is the venue where local input actually shapes what happens next.
According to Chisum, the third and final phase of reconstruction is expected to wrap within the year. Once it does, parking will be reorganized at the front of the park and gated, which the county says will eliminate the need for the current fencing setup entirely. In other words, the endpoint isn't just a repaved lot. It's a different, more contained entry sequence than what existed before the 2023 storms.
Separately, Ventura County Parks ran a public comment period earlier this year on a broader Concept Design Plan for restoring Foster Park, with input accepted through January 16, 2026. That's a longer-horizon planning effort layered on top of the immediate lot reconstruction, and it's worth watching if you care about what this park looks like five years from now rather than five months from now.
A smaller thread worth knowing too
If you've spent enough weekends at Foster Park, you've probably heard someone mention the old amphitheater tucked further north toward Oak View, the one everyone calls Foster Park Bowl. It's been abandoned for years, but there's a standing community effort, informally known online as Save Foster Park Bowl, pushing to see it preserved rather than left to fully deteriorate. It's not part of the current parking project, but it's part of the same park, and it's one more reason this stretch of the valley has more going on than a simple lot closure suggests.
Why this matters if you live here
None of this changes what makes Foster Park worth the walk. The sycamores are still there. The river still runs through it. The trail still connects all the way to Ojai the same way it always has. What's changed is the entry point, and for the next several months that entry point runs through an active safety conversation rather than a quiet parking lot.
If you're a regular, the practical move is simple: park with intention, not by default. Give yourself the extra few minutes to park under the Casitas Vista Road overpass or in the designated overflow area rather than pulling onto the highway shoulder itself, and if you have opinions about how the county should solve this longer term, Monday's meeting is the place to say so.
This is also a good reminder of something easy to forget when you've lived somewhere long enough to stop noticing it: the infrastructure around the places you love doesn't take care of itself. Foster Park has weathered a flood, two cleanup phases, and now a parking rebuild, and it's still standing because people who live in this valley keep showing up to use it and to advocate for it. That's the same spirit worth bringing to a community meeting about a trailhead as it is to anything else that shapes daily life in Oak View.
If you're curious about what else is shaping life and property in this corner of the valley, our Oak View neighborhood page is a good next stop. And if Foster Park, Lake Casitas, or anywhere else in the Ojai Valley has you thinking about your own next move here, the team at Sharp Ramsey Group would be glad to talk through what that could look like. Request Your Free Home Valuation any time you're ready.
