Rural Bonny Doon Association

The Rural Bonny Doon Association exists to retain the natural environment and rural feel of the local community.

The Rural Bonny Doon Association was first founded in 1957. Bonny Doon's community leaders realized that they would soon be going up against a lot of growth, as they were seeing in the surrounding regions, and decided to implement a plan to keep things safe, rural, and unspoiled. This was known as the Bonny Doon General Plan and was the first of its kind at the time in Santa Cruz County. The plan ensured that for decades, zoning regulations favor the desires of area residents to prevent overdevelopment. The association fought off everything from tract housing to shopping malls.

Some of the development proposals that have been thwarted over the years thanks to the RBDA: 

• A golf course and retirement housing development, which today exists as the Bonny Doon Ecological Reserve instead
• A nuclear plant
• An RV park in Wilder Ranch State Park
• Houses and timber harvests on what is now instead the Gray Whale section of Wilder Ranch State Park
• Old tires being burned for fuel 
• Expansion of the limestone quarry, which would have eliminated many redwood trees

The association has also helped improve the quality of law enforcement, fire protection, and more.