Oceano Dunes: A Tribune special report

An obscure controversy has arisen in recent months over the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area--one that has little to do with the familiar topics of public safety or endangered shorebirds.

The teenager lay howling in the Oceano Dunes while park rangers and safety workers clustered around, trying with little success to make him comfortable.

It's Saturday on Memorial Day weekend at the Oceano Dunes. The park is abuzz with off-road vehicles, and thousands of campers dot the sandy rolling hills with RVs, trailers and tents.

Before Paige Carter began dating her late husband, Jerry Carter, he came to her work for a haircut at Bakersfield's Rage Salon.

Those who live in and around the Oceano Dunes may look at off-roading from many perspectives, but there is one group that is close to single-minded about it: those who treat the injured.

Companies that make the machines that roam over the Oceano Dunes are well aware of the dangers and try to help customers avoid them.

Take 4,000 acres of wind-swept dunes, five-and-a-half miles of beach and numerous rare plants and animals and combine that with 2 million people and tens of thousands of trucks and off-highway vehicles a year.

To most people, a long stretch of fenced-off beach in the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area looks like a windblown, barren desert.

Chris Cannon fires up a Polaris utility vehicle, shifts the mechanical workhorse into gear and heads out to patrol the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area on a windy afternoon.

Verona ReBow slips off her boots and steps barefoot into the cool sand of the Oceano Dunes Preserve.

Everyone seems to agree on one thing about the Oceano Dunes off-roading area: It's a moneymaker.

Is there any way to keep cash flowing to the South County if all-terrain vehicles leave Oceano Dunes and roar off to some other destination?

As a fifth-generation Oceano resident, Craig Angello walks the lines that mark the controversy over off-roading on the Oceano Dunes.