Oso Flaco Bridge will soon be seeing repairs after suspected arson is to blame for the damage to the walkway over the lake.
Larger than normal crowds are visiting the Oso Flaco State Park after the road to the Guadalupe Dunes was washed out during last year's storms. Visitors are blaming recent damage on those bigger crowds.
“It's really unfortunate, actually," Nipomo resident Xesh Hurst said. "It takes so much longer just to get to the beach side. ... Yeah, it's really unfortunate. I'm pretty bummed that somebody would do such a thing.”
According to local Tom Slater, a frequent visitor of the state park, the crowds flocking to Oso Flaco State Park have been enormous and he says there is no enforcement in place to keep those larger crowds under control.
“I kind of feel like state parks are kind of an absent landlord to this," Slater noted. "You have this amazing place that people love to visit, but if you're not going to be here and have some kind of presence, then people are going to do whatever they want to do. And this is all evidence of that.”
Slater says the large crowds have resulted in a packed parking lot, no dog or bike riding enforcement, and now arson after a portion of the bridge in the park was burned.
"Every Morro Bay Winter Bird Festival, every Martin Luther King Day, my son and I take a group of 15 people out [to show them] the different birds that hang out here," Slater recalled. "It's kind of like a wildlife sanctuary — or it used to be.”
Kevin Pearce, superintendent of California State Parks, says they have not identified any unusual increase in reported activity and have increased patrols in the area.
The crowds should return to normal after road repairs leading to Guadalupe Dunes are complete by June of this year. The road entrance to the park was washed out during the 2023 winter storms.
The arson investigation is still underway.
