Point Reyes National Seashore
Point Reyes National Seashore is a park preserve located on the Point Reyes Peninsula in Marin County, California. As a national seashore, it is maintained by the US National Park Service as an important nature preserve. No other park in the world hosts breeding hoofed megafauna and marine megafauna. Some existing agricultural uses are allowed to continue within the park. Clem Miller, a US Congressman from Marin County, wrote and introduced the bill for the establishment of Point Reyes National Seashore in 1962 to protect the peninsula from development which was proposed at the time for the slopes above Drake's Bay. About half of the national seashore is protected as wilderness.
History
The Native American Coast Miwok lived in the area for thousands of years, in villages of seventy five to several hundred people. The Coast Miwok developed an economy of hunting, gathering, and fishing, utilizing the seashore as a source of year-round food such as crab, clams, and oysters. Drip nets and woven surf nets were used for fishing, while bow and arrows were used for hunting deer, quail, and rabbits.Francis Drake and his crew aboard the Golden Hind were likely the first Europeans to discover what is today Point Reyes National Park, when they likely camped in the area in 1579. Drake claimed the land for Elizabeth I before setting sail to complete his circumnavigation of the world. Spanish ships making the voyage between Manila and Acapulco likely passed by Point Reyes during the late 1500s, including the captain Sebastião Rodrigues Soromenho in 1595, whose ship was wrecked by a storm in Drakes Bay. On January 6, 1603, Captain Sebastián Vizcaíno sighted the headlands and named it Point of the Kings, or la Punta de los Reyes, in honor of Three Kings' Day.
Geography
The Point Reyes peninsula is a well defined area, geologically separated from the rest of Marin County and almost all of the continental United States by a rift zone of the San Andreas Fault. The northern half of the fault is sunk below sea level and forms Tomales Bay and the southern half lies along Olema Creek. The peninsula is part of the Salinian Block which rises as Inverness Ridge before dropping to the fault zone. East of the fault is the Franciscan Complex which has a different soil and flora composition.The small town of Point Reyes Station, while not located on the peninsula, provides most services to it. Some services are also available at Inverness on the west shore of Tomales Bay. The small town of Olema, about south of Point Reyes Station, serves as the gateway to the Seashore and its visitor center.
The peninsula includes wild coastal beaches and headlands, estuaries, and uplands. Parts of the park are private farms and ranches which have commercial cattle grazing. These were leased back when the park was purchased to continue these historic uses. Other parts are under the jurisdiction of other conservation authorities with the National Park Service providing signage and managing visitor impact on the entire peninsula and Tomales Bay. The Seashore also administers the parts of the Golden Gate National Recreation area, such as the Olema Valley, that are adjacent to the Seashore.
Wildlife and ecology
Point Reyes National Seashore lies at the convergence of two marine ecological provinces and harbors 45% of North America's bird species and 18% of California's plant species. The National Seashore's of coastline include estuaries, bays and lagoons which provide rich habitats including subtidal seagrasses, tidal mudflats and marshes that support a rich diversity of wildlife. There are at least 42 rare and endangered plants of the more than 850 plant species identified. Almost 40 species of land mammals plus a dozen marine mammals such as the harbor seal live or migrate through this area. Bird species counts are well over 400.It is part of the Golden Gate Biosphere Network, recognized in the World Network of Biosphere Reserves.
Fauna
Until recently, the northernmost part of the peninsula, Tomales Point, was maintained as a reserve for tule elk, a species historically native to the region. Although they had been completely extirpated from Point Reyes by the nineteenth century, in 1978, ten tule elk were reintroduced to Point Reyes from the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge near Los Banos. By 2009, the population climbed to over 440 elk at Tomales Point's of coastal scrub and grasslands. In 1999, 100 elk from Tomales Point were moved to the Limantour wilderness area of the Seashore and above Drakes Beach to Ranch A, as that ranch's long-term lease expired and was not renewed. The drought in 2012–2015 was also a threat to the elk confined north of the fence on Tomales Point, with nearly half the elk there dying from lack of water. In 2012 there were 540 elk, then only 357 in 2013, and by 2014 only 286. In August and September 2020, drought and wildfires again threaten the Tomales Point elk, leading some conservationists to illegally bring water to the elk north of the fence. The Park Service began a public review and comment period in 2023 on a proposal remove of the tule elk fence with a final decision expected in the summer of 2024. In December, 2024 the Tomales Point fence was breached by the National Park Service, allowing the confined elk herds to roam freely through the park. Then, in January, 2025 a deal brokered by The Nature Conservancy led to a buy-out of most of the peninsula's ranchers, reducing the number of cattle from about 10,000 to 200 over the next 1.5 years, and returning most of the park to wilderness status.The preserve is also very rich in raptors and shorebirds. The western snowy plover that nests here is considered "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act.
The Point Reyes Lighthouse attracts whale-watchers looking for the gray whale migrating south in mid-January and north in mid-March.
File:Elephantsealdrakesbeach.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Elephant seal at Drakes Bay
When Elephant seals established a rookery in 1981, Point Reyes National Seashore became the only park in the world with breeding ungulates and pinnipeds. The first elephant seal breeding colony was established at Chimney Beach, which is protected by cliffs, although the first documented pup was born at Point Reyes in 1976. In January 2019, during the federal government shutdown, park rangers were not working and the seals had pups on Drakes Beach and its parking lot. Small-group tours to view the seals from the edge of the parking lot began the following month after the shutdown ended. Docents help keep the public safe during the winter months as the colony continues to grow each year.
Flora
Point Reyes lies within the California interior chaparral and woodlands ecoregion. The Point Reyes area has more than 50 species of rare, threatened or endangered plants. Perennial wildflowers include the yellow larkspur, federally listed as endangered, and state listed as rare since 1979. It has yellow flowers that bloom from March through May, grows in plant communities of coastal scrub, and is extremely poisonous. Rare grasses include the endemic Sonoma shortawn foxtail in the family Poaceae, federally listed as endangered since 1997. The California Native Plant Society lists this subspecies population as seriously endangered, and that more taxonomic information is needed.In his book The Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula, Jules Evens identifies several plant communities. One of the most prominent is the Coastal Douglas-fir forest, which includes Coast live oak, Tanoak, and California bay and reaches across the southern half of Inverness Ridge toward Bolinas Lagoon. Unlogged parts of this Douglas-fir forest contain trees over 300 years old and up to in diameter. But despite these large, old trees, the forest may nevertheless be a result of European settlement. The Coast Miwok people who once lived in the area set frequent fires to clear brush and increase game animal populations, and early explorers' accounts describe the hills as bare and grassy. But as the Native American settlements were replaced by European ones from the seventeenth century onward, the forests expanded as fire frequency decreased, resulting in the forests we see today.
The Bishop pine forest is found on slopes in the northern half of the park. Many of these trees growing in thick swaths came from seeds released after the 1995 Mt. Vision fire. The bishop pines of the Phillip Burton Wilderness are considered an intermediate between the northern variety and the southern. The Monterey cypress, a closed-cone conifer, is also present.
Salt, brackish, and freshwater marshlands are found adjacent to Drakes Estero and Abbotts Lagoon. The other communities identified by Evens are the coastal strand, dominated by European beach grass, ice plant, sea rocket and other species that thrive on the immediate coast; northern coastal prairie, found on a narrow strip just inland from the coastal strand that includes some native grasses; coastal rangeland, the area still grazed by the cattle from the peninsula's remaining working ranches; northern coastal scrub, dominated by coyote bush ; and the intertidal and subtidal plant communities.
Point Reyes is home to the only known population of the endangered Sonoma spineflower, Chorizanthe valida.