Fifty years ago this year, the Kestrel family signed over roughly 2,400 acres of forest, wetland, and ridgeline to Alder County, with one condition attached: the land would stay open to the public, free of charge, for good. That single decision is the reason Kestrel Ridge exists as a park today rather than as house lots or a private hunting preserve.
The Kestrel farmhouse itself is long gone, but the old orchard near the Ridgeline Road lot still produces apples every September, and a few of the original stone walls that marked the farm’s boundary are still visible along the Deep Woods Loop if you know where to look.
What’s changed most in fifty years isn’t the land — it’s the number of people who use it. The park saw a few hundred visitors a year in the 1970s. Today it’s closer to 60,000, and the trail network has grown from a single fire road to fourteen miles of maintained trail, almost all of it built and kept up by volunteers.
We’ll be marking the anniversary with a few small events this year, starting with an extended ranger-led walk covering the history of the land. Details will be posted here and at the kiosk as they’re finalized.
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