On a Saturday morning in February 2022, close to 60 people gathered at the end of a dirt road across De Portola Road from Shiraz Way. There was no ribbon. Someone had strung a length of rope across the trailhead instead, and when the moment came, the crowd pulled it apart by hand. Then a line of riders mounted up and took the new trail's first official pass, from Valle de Los Caballos toward Oak Mountain Road.
If you live along this corridor, that stretch of dirt is probably one you've crossed a hundred times without thinking about how it got there. It didn't come from a parks department budget or a county bond measure. It came from three volunteer organizations spending years negotiating land access one property line at a time, and it's still how new trail gets built here. Most people who ride this corridor, or just live next to it, don't know whose handshake made that possible.
Three Names Worth Knowing If You Ride This Corridor
The trail network threading through the vineyards and ranchettes off De Portola Road isn't owned or maintained by a single agency. It's stitched together by the Rancho California Horsemen's Association (RCHA), Temecula Valley Rural Lifestyles Inc. (TVRL), and Temecula Eq-Wine Riders (TEWR), three groups that spend far more time in easement conversations with private landowners than most residents realize.
When the Valle de Los Caballos connector opened, RCHA credited the work to a specific kind of persistence, writing that the club had "led the charge to secure an important, safer trail easement" with the water district that owned the land. That's the pattern across this whole network. Nobody zoned this trail system into existence. Somebody asked, repeatedly, until a landowner said yes.
Getting Riders Off a Road Everyone Calls Dangerous
The reason that particular trail mattered wasn't scenery. It was safety. A spokesperson for what was then called Temecula Equine-Wine Riders put it plainly on Facebook at the time: "Riding along De Portola Road is dangerous." The new connector gave riders an alternative to sharing the shoulder with vehicle traffic, rerouting them instead through a safer crossing near the Renzoni, Fazeli, and Somerset winery properties, then linking onward toward Galway Downs and the Vines to Valley trails.
That crossing point is worth knowing if you're new to riding this area. It's not marked with much signage. It exists because Rancho California Water District agreed to let the trail run through its property, and because RCHA and TVRL did the legwork to fence it and get it licensed for horse traffic in the first place.
Who Actually Paid for the Newest Mile
The most recent addition to the network is the Pat Ommert Trail segment, dedicated in 2024, and the donor list behind it says a lot about how this corridor actually functions. Funding came from Riverside County District 3, but also from Bob and Erin Brown of California Ranch Company and Ken and Tina Smith of Galway Downs, working alongside RCHA and TEWR. The segment allows cyclists and hikers in addition to riders, bars motorized vehicles, and sits at what organizers called the entry point to the Equestrian District of Wine Country, meaning it's often the first trail visitors and new residents encounter.
The people who organized the dedication weren't county staff. They were TVRL board members Lorraine Harrington, Mark Matson, and Margaret Rich, the last of whom runs Green Acres Ranch nearby. That's the corridor in miniature: a rancher, on a volunteer board, coordinating with two competing local venues who both wrote checks for the same fence line.
Twenty Years, and the Club Keeps Recruiting Sideways
TEWR marks two decades this year. The club describes itself as formally established in 2006, which puts 2026 at its 20th anniversary, and its founder and club president, Juanita Lee Koth, has spent that time building something that extends well past trail advocacy. In 2013, TEWR sponsored the formation of the Temecula Cowgirls Parade & Drill Team, which won first place in its very first outing at Old Town Temecula's Independence Day Parade. A year later, the team became the first nonprofit community color guard to be gifted a personal City of Temecula flag, presented at City Hall by then-Mayor Maryann Edwards. The Cowgirls went on to ride in the Tournament of Roses Parade in both 2020 and 2022, representing Temecula on national television on New Year's Day.
None of that happens without the trail work underneath it. The parade team, the drill routines, the fundraisers, all of it runs on the same club that spends its off-season negotiating easements with wineries and water districts. The visible, photogenic side of equestrian life here is subsidized by a lot of unglamorous meetings.
The Ranch at the End of the Road Keeps Adding Reasons to Stop By
California Ranch Company sits on 70 acres at the corner of De Portola and Anza roads, and it's changed shape even in the last couple of years. The ranch recently welcomed Aqua Equine to its property, bringing equine hydrotherapy and rehabilitation services on site, a resource that didn't exist here before and now means horse owners along the corridor don't have to trailer out for that kind of care. CRC has also launched a Dinner Under the Lights series, a four course outdoor dinner with wine pairings and live music from Chef Jillian Fae, and it partners with Pechanga Resort & Casino to offer a resort credit to visitors who scan a QR code inside its covered arena. In 2024, the ranch was nominated for the Outdoor Adventure Pioneer Award by the Temecula Valley Xenia Hospitality Awards.
Look closely at that list and you'll notice it follows the same logic as the trail network. None of it is public infrastructure. It's private landowners deciding to add something, then telling their neighbors about it. The ranch didn't wait for a tourism board to greenlight a hydrotherapy pool or a dinner series. It just built one, the same way RCHA and TVRL just kept asking Rancho Water for easements until the answer was yes.
What This Means If You Live Here
The takeaway isn't that the trails or the ranch are fragile, though they are more dependent on goodwill than most residents assume. It's that this corridor runs on a specific kind of local labor that rarely gets named. A handful of people, mostly volunteers, keep negotiating access, keep fundraising for fence lines, and keep adding to what's here, one relationship at a time. If you ride the Valle de Los Caballos connector or eat at Dinner Under the Lights, you're benefiting from work that has names attached to it: Sherry Turner, Gil Pankonin, Juanita Lee Koth, Margaret Rich, Bob and Erin Brown, Ken and Tina Smith.
Knowing those names doesn't change your ride. It just means you understand what you're actually looking at when you cross that trailhead off De Portola Road. It isn't a park. It's a favor, renewed continuously, by people who happen to live next door to you.
If you're curious what your own piece of this corridor is worth, whether it's a ranchette with trail access or a home a few miles up Rancho California Road, Gena Elfelt has spent years getting to know the people and the properties that make this area what it is. Her team offers a fast, free instant home valuation whenever you're ready to take a look.
