CANYON EYED AS PARK CITY, CONSERVANCY BID FOR WHITNEY.

Byline: Patricia Farrell Aidem Staff Writer

NEWHALL - Whitney Canyon, studded with oaks and sycamores and home to a rarity in Southern California, a year-round creek, has been eyed as an off-road vehicle park, a landfill and a housing development.

Now the land is undergoing appraisal as the city of Santa Clarita and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy bid to buy the nearly 500-acre canyon to preserve it as open parkland.

``Few people have had the opportunity to go back there, but it's a really splendid little canyon with its combination of oaks and sycamore trees and a year-round stream that runs through the property,'' said Joe Edmiston, the conservancy's executive director. ``You've got opportunities for camping, certainly for as much hiking as you'd ever want.''

An appraisal was to be submitted last week and Edmiston said he expects the state to approve the purchase in early August. The specific appraisal will remain confidential pending a sale, but the price has been estimated at $5 million, city officials said.

Whitney, Edmiston said, is a gem, tucked in the San Gabriel Mountains, south of the Antelope Valley Freeway at San Fernando Road.

With the demise of a plan for a major landfill in neighboring Elsmere Canyon and a rough topography that limits development, owner Ray Watt wants to sell Whitney Canyon, land he bought from a rancher.

The city has $3.5 million to contribute toward the purchase and is looking to the conservancy for the remainder. An earlier appraisal came in close to $15 million, but Edmiston said he expects the recent estimate to be far lower as about 90 acres have been subtracted because it houses active and inactive oil wells.

``That's not what it's going to sell for,'' Edmiston said.

Watt paid an estimated $1 million for the land in the late 1980s, and submitted plans to Los Angeles County to build houses and condominiums on the property.

The land also was offered as a buffer to the planned Elsmere Canyon landfill to the south, but after the dump proposal all but died, Watt has offered the land for sale.

At the same time, the county Parks and Recreation Department had planned an off-road vehicle park in Whitney, a proposal that drew fire from nearby residents and the Walt Disney Co., which has a filming ranch over a ridge in Placerita Canyon.

Whitney, with its charm and natural beauty - as well as its function as part of a wildlife corridor - is at the top of Santa Clarita's wish list for open space, Deputy City Manager Rick Putnam said.

Putnam is engineering an effort to acquire a ring of open space around the city. The Whitney acquisition, he said, would be an easy goal toward preserving a green belt.

``It has been threatened in the past with development, but it now comes under the category of a willing seller,'' he said.

Planners envision trails linking Whitney with nearby Placerita Canyon and the Angeles National Forest. And the accessibility to the canyon - from an existing park-and-ride area at the east end of San Fernando road - is a big plus.

``The value of Whitney Canyon as a portal into the national forest makes it a really exciting acquisition,'' Edmiston said. ``And it's not just going to be for Santa Clarita - it'll be one of the most accessible parks in our entire system.''

Because the land lies outside city limits in unincorporated territory, Santa Clarita wants Los Angeles County to help pay for signs, picnic tables and drainage pools.