After recent rains, I decided to take a hike on one of the shortest trails in Fullerton. Running along the border of Fullerton and La Habra, the Lucy Van Der Hoff trail is approximately 0.88 miles long and branches off from the more popular Juanita Cooke trail into nearby suburbs. It’s maintained by the Fullerton Parks and Recreation Department and is listed on the city’s website as a connector. However, when I walked on the trail, it was rather overgrown and poorly maintained. In certain spots, there were quite a few lost objects and pieces of garbage, possibly swept down the pathway by rainwater.

This trail is also something of a mystery because no one seems to know who Lucy Van Der Hoff was or why the City decided to name this short connector trail after her. I reached out to Cheri Pape at the Fullerton Public Library’s Local History Room, and she didn’t have a single thing on Lucy Van Der Hoff. Pape explained via email that several of the trails were named for members of the Recreational Riders, who were instrumental in converting the rails to trails. But, after going through the Rec Riders material in the library’s archives, Pape didn’t find anything with Lucy’s name on it.

The best way to access the Lucy Van Der Hoff trail is to start by Cooke’s Corner, located across the street from Laguna Lake. To get to this point from Euclid, I took Lakeview Drive, turned on Hermosa Drive, and turned right on Lakeside Drive, where I parked on the part of the road that runs parallel to the Juanita Cooke Trail. According to Walter Clark’s Fullerton Walks website, public works landscapers call this area Cooke’s Corner because it is triangular in shape, and the main trail through it is the Juanita Cooke, which I followed across West Hermosa Drive.

The wide dirt path proceeded straight and continued under a bridge beneath West Las Palmas Drive. Heading north, past an uprooted tree, the Juanita Cooke trail continues across another bridge and eventually reaches Imperial Highway. However, I turned to the right just before the bridge on what looked like a bike trail. The only indicator that this was still part of the city’s network of trails was a faded brown triangular “trail courtesy” sign telling me to yield to equestrians and bicyclists. Next to this sign, there were two pairs of women’s shoes that had been randomly attached to a tree that divided the two pathways. The bike trail continued downhill, past a discarded pumpkin, before curving behind some gray storage units and running underneath the Juanita Cooke trail, which was Fullerton’s first Rails to Trails project. The City converted an old Pacific Electric line into what’s now the Juanita Cooke Trail.

Following a drainage channel that ran underneath the concrete railway bridge, the Lucy Van Der Hoff trail went in a straight line for about a block and a half. Sandbags lined a small waterway near the beginning to direct rainwater toward an opening in a wall that led into the parking lot of an apartment complex. Since I had chosen to walk on the path after recent rains, it was a mix of mud and dried dirt. The only views on this trail were of people’s backyards. I stepped around some discarded plastic bags, bottles, pillows that were torn open, unidentifiable articles of clothing, pieces of broken wood, old soccer nets, and cans, making my way forward.

Branches from trees and privacy hedges, as well as overgrown ivy, stuck out at certain points. Because of the accumulated water, a lot of plants were thriving on this trail. Power line poles were easily accessible beyond Lakeview Drive. I went a little further but didn’t continue because the vegetation was becoming too thick, and the trail was only getting muddier. According to maps of the area and Walter Clark’s Fullerton Walks website, it continues and then turns left, going uphill where it obliquely joins Hermosa Place, which becomes Hermosa Drive in a few hundred feet. That road curves east at Cooke’s Corner.

Instead, I left the trail and walked along Lakeview Drive. After a while, there was another trail on my left that was unnamed, but it was marked with a yellow crossing sign. This got my hopes up that the path back to the Juanita Cooke trail would be in better condition, but it was not. It went behind backyards, which led some residential dogs to bark at me as I followed the path straight back to Juanita Cooke, where it emerged 10 feet above the main trail. Since the way straight down the cliffside was too steep to hike on, I made my way down the embankment by turning to the right and following a narrow bike path, which eventually sloped down toward the trailhead near Cooke’s Corner. So, while my hike was interesting, I really wouldn’t recommend taking the Lucy Van Der Hoff trail.