Clover Creek Preserve

My air bnb place is 5 minutes walk from here so I came here for jogging twice during my short stay. It’s very quiet and serene. I see some joggers both in the morning and afternoon. The park is pretty clean, I highly recommend it.

My husband and I are new to the area, relocating from So. Cal. We only live a few short blocks from Clover Creek and love walking the trails here. In addition we recently adopted a dog which we have been wanting for a long time. We bring her here for her morning walks most of the time. Its a beautiful place to walk. But I have to agree with some the other comments. If dog owners don’t start following the rules (and you know who you are) we will probably loose the privilege of be able to have our dogs here. Pick up after your dog no matter where it goes. There are trash receptacles at just about every entrance/​exit. We see people all the time letting their dogs off the leash — yes some are well behaved but the law is «they must be on a leash». We have even seen one woman allow her dog to chase after the wild ducks and cranes that are feeding in the pools. Fortunately one man (who we later found our doesn’t even live here) told her to stop and said he was going to report her. Evidently she told him «I live here». I guess that gives her the right to break the law and have this taken away from the rest of us who follow the law. More people should speak up when they see a wrong being done.

Just got back from a bike ride around the Clover Creek Preserve. I did seven fast laps and can never remember how far it is around so I was looking it up on the computer, ended up here. I read the reviews and fully agree with the ones about dogs, their owners and the mess SOME leave. Not to mention the long leashes allows them to take up the whole path. I suspect the dog owners are in danger of loosing this park, however we have become an ever tolerant society. We also used to be able to smoke everywhere or talk on our cell phones whenever. Beware pet owners, beware. As far as the preserve goes, I think it is a excellent addition to the neighborhood, another park in the same area as Kids Kingdom but different. So what if it was designed to fix a very old problem… it did. People’s childhood memories seem to be more fantasy than reality. I moved into the neighborhood in 1970. I still live here. That area was first of all very flat. Before I even lived here, I suspect in 1965, that entire area was bulldozed flat for a housing development that never came to fruition. The area where the water runs through was about fifteen to twenty feet wide with straight up and down sides about 7 feet deep. Dirt roads extended to that creek from the original Star View Estates. I can remember a old cinder block house out in the middle of this vast star thistle flatland, it had a basement that we could crawl down to. Sure a great childhood adventure, a dangerous one. They had dug the ditches for drainage pipes that were never put in. We would use them as dugouts while playing war. Yes, we would play war. The whole neighborhood has changed, we sometimes call it progress. This is a step in the right direction, this is peace and tranquility in the middle of the urban sprawl, both of which we need and desire.

I’d been avoiding Clover Creek Preserve mostly because of Shana E’s smack-​down — I wasn’t chomping at the bit to see the place that she described as the now-​ravaged wild playground of her youth. Bummer, kid.
Teacher lady, however, is recovering from a fractured ankle, and yesterday was the first day she felt like taking a nice hike — but on something relatively flat, with little risk of ankle-​twisting. She talked me into heading for CC Preserve. We did two laps — the first on the outer paved path, and the second on the inner decomposed granite path — for a total of three miles. A nice, easy stroll.
A little background: Due to questionable planning and rampant development, the upper watershed of Clover Creek had been paved with subdivisions. All of that impervious surface area caused sheet-​flow runoff into the creek during storms and was causing flooding problems downstream in other subdivisions. A typical fix for a situation like that is to build a detention basin. Often the detention basin area becomes a park, with the rectangular basin’s floor and slopes sodded with grass — the bottom becoming a soccer field or whatever.
City of Redding decided to go in a different direction. Their detention basin is big, and it’s got several different types of wetland and upland habitats. The downside is that it definitely has an engineered look to it. It’s a detention basin — that’s its first purpose — and it has the typical basin floor and sloping walls. But it’s not a rectangular basin, and there’s some topographical relief in the bottom (some of which, again, looks kind of funky-​engineered, including faux vernal pools that look equal parts vernal pool and rice paddy). But all in all, it’s not bad. The planted oak woodlands on and above the slopes are coming along nicely. The freshwater marshes are lush. There are ducks on the ponds. The fake vernal pools actually have vernal pool vegetation in them.
Shana E, the thing is, if Redding hadn’t messed up its planning and allowed too many housing developments in the upper watershed of the creek with no place for the runoff to go, there would have been no need for this detention basin and no need for the preserve. It’s likely that the lands on the preserve would have been developed as subdivisions, and obliterated. So give CC Preserve a decade or so more for the valley oaks to mature a bit, and consider that as a big tract of undeveloped land surrounded by suburbs in a growing part of the city, it was destined for worse.

CLOVER CREEK PRESERVE
A Preserve is:
a place to keep alive and in existence; to keep safe from harm; to protect and spare.
Please keep your dogs on a leash at the Preserve. Walk them without a leash in other places. They scare our wildlife away! We have lost too many critters this last year! If you want to walk/​run/​ride in the Preserve, your pet must be leashed and stay on the path!!!
And thank you for be responsible and «picking up» after your pet! We thank you!

Our first visit and after reading Shana’s review, I was a little hesitant. We went with our Roots & Shoots club and were delighted to observe the following birds:
Coots
a white duck (not certain of species)
Mallards
Hummingbird
Raven
Turkey Vulture
White crowned sparrow juvenile
Lark Sparrow
Western Meadowlark
Acorn Woodpecker
Killdeer
Red winged blackbird
Northern Flickr (audible)
House Finch
Lesser Gold Finch
Western Scrub Jay
Western Bluebird
House Wren
Fox scat

I have been walking in the morning and riding my bicycle in the afternoons at this park. I love it, it is very calming, not crowded. I don’t get people who cannot pick up after their dogs even though there are signs at entrance that tell you to. I have not taken my dog there yet but I have picked up dog poo that is on the path, come on people, do not ruin this for everyone else. I guess if you make rules some people feel they have to break them. I do like the quiteness of the park and seeing the surrounding mountains.

I cannot out of good conscience give this park more than two stars. My house is nearby and before this area became a «reserve,» it was a lush green area filled with wild flowers, plants, and trees. There were a myriad of unpaved, forged trails that ran through this area of wilderness, and I have many fond memories of exploring them with my dad on foot or bicycle. I moved away from Redding for a year and then came back only to find that every tree on the 128-​acre space was knocked down, every hill was leveled, and a man-​made lake was put in. To top it off, they had the nerve to call this new park «Clover Creek Preserve.» Hmm, I guess the only thing they were «preserving» was the open view for the new development that was conveniently built at the same time at the top end of the area.
Although it looks completely barren to what is used to be, I give it two stars because I see that many people can easily enjoy the area now. It is great for its walking trails, paved lanes, and easy access, and I still like to go around the area on bike or foot to view the lake and the little duckies that inhabit it. Just don’t expect to find any trees that will provide shade. All of the natural ones are gone now, and all that’s left are dinky planted twigs that have yet to grow.

Clover Creek is a great addition to the Redding area. It will only look better in time as plants grow etc.
That said, I was there yesterday with one of my dogs. There was doggie poop all along the paths to the side. It is NOT o.k. to leave your dog crap just because it went off the path!!!
What is wrong with you people, pick up after your dog!!!
Do you want them to say ‘No’ dogs??? Please don’t ruin it for the rest of us!

Finally! A safe place where you can walk your dog and it’s not crowded. There are a few drinking fountains throughout the park for you and your doggy as well. I do with there were more trees. It seems pretty sparse right now.
This 128-​acre open space park features a 6.7 acre lake within a 46-​acre detention basin that will provide flood protection to over 5000 acres of the Clover Creek Watershed. Approximately 40 acres of the entire site will be preserved «as is» and will be augmented by the creation of over 15 acres of new wetland and riparian areas, 25 acres of grassland/​meadows that could be converted in the future to recreational areas, and 55 acres of blue oak habitat.
2 miles of paved bike trails and 2 ½ miles of hiking trails.
The Clover Creek Preserve has hiking and biking trails that wind through natural grass, blue oak, and valley oak.