## Facts

- Private owners held three oceanfront parcels on the seaward side of West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz, including an area containing an old roadbed formerly associated with a public roadway.
- For roughly decades, the general public openly used the level area near the road for parking and used the surrounding area for ocean viewing, fishing, and related recreation.
- The use occurred without the public asking permission and without substantial interference by the owners.
- The City undertook actions consistent with public recreational use, including minor filling, placement of riprap, installation of an emergency alarm system, and paving the parking area in the early 1960s.
- The owners contested that a public right existed over their property.

## Issues

1. Whether long, open, and continuous public recreational use of private coastal land, without permission and without substantial owner objection for at least the prescriptive period, supports an implied dedication creating a public easement.
2. Whether an implied dedication requires direct proof of the owner’s subjective intent to donate the land to public use, or may be inferred primarily from public use and owner acquiescence.

## Decision

- The California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment recognizing a public easement over the parcels.
- The Court held that long-continued, open, and unpermitted public use for at least the statutory prescriptive period, coupled with owner acquiescence, justified inferring an intent to dedicate the land to public recreational use.
- The City’s improvements and maintenance were treated as strong corroborative evidence that the land was being treated as a public facility, and that the owners acquiesced in that treatment.
- Sporadic or ineffective assertions of private control are insufficient to defeat implied dedication when extensive public use continues essentially uninterrupted.

## Legal Principles

- An implied dedication to public use may be found when the public’s use of private land is open, notorious, and continuous for a period at least equal to the prescriptive period, and occurs without the owner’s permission and without substantial, effective objection.
- The intent to dedicate may be inferred from the character and extent of public use and the owner’s acquiescence; direct proof of subjective “donative intent” is not required.
- Extensive use by the general public “as if” the land were public is not treated as mere neighborly accommodation absent concrete evidence of permissive limitation.
- Governmental maintenance or improvements are not required to establish implied dedication, but they are significant evidence supporting the inference of a public easement.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a public recreational easement by implied dedication over privately owned coastal parcels where the public used the area openly and continuously without permission for the prescriptive period and the owners failed to take effective steps to stop that use, with municipal improvements further supporting the inference of dedication.


Gion v. City of Santa Cruz, 2 Cal. 3d 29 (Cal. 1970)