50 Fun Facts About Channel Islands National Park

Channel Islands National Park lies off the coast of which US state?

The islands stretch along the Southern California coast from Point Conception to San Pedro; headquarters and the visitor center are in Ventura.

How many of the eight Channel Islands are in the national park?

Anacapa, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, San Miguel and Santa Rosa; Catalina, San Nicolas and San Clemente are not.

What is the highest point on Santa Cruz Island, the largest island in the park?

It rises 2,429 feet on an island 22 miles long; the 2000 census counted a population of two.

What share of Santa Cruz Island is owned by The Nature Conservancy, not the Park Service?

The Conservancy inherited the ranch lands when Carey Stanton died in 1987 and quickly ended the cattle era.

Which two islands were first protected as a national monument in 1938?

The other three joined them when the national park was created; UNESCO had made all eight islands a biosphere reserve in 1976.

In which year was Channel Islands National Park established?

A marine sanctuary protects the waters six nautical miles around the park.

The endemic island fox, found on six of the Channel Islands, evolved from which larger mainland ancestor?

It is the smallest fox in North America, about the size of a housecat, and probably arrived with people around 7,000 years ago; each island has its own subspecies.

What drove island fox numbers on San Miguel from 450 adults to just 15 between 1994 and 1999?

The eagles moved in after DDT wiped out the fish-eating bald eagles and feral pigs offered prey; four subspecies were listed as endangered in 2004.

Why is there no island fox on Anacapa?

Santa Barbara Island lacks foxes too, being simply too small to feed a viable population.

For roughly how long has the island scrub jay, found only on Santa Cruz Island, been evolving in isolation?

It is the only insular endemic land-bird species in the continental US and Canada, and once lived on the neighbouring islands when they were one landmass.

How many species found in the park exist nowhere else in the world?

More than 2,000 plant and animal species live in the park, but only three land mammals are native, among them the spotted skunk and the fox.

The pygmy mammoth of the northern Channel Islands stood how tall at the shoulder?

That is about 17 percent the size of its Columbian mammoth ancestor, which swam over when sea levels were low; it vanished about 13,000 years ago.

What was the name of the single large island the four northern islands formed during the last ice age?

With sea levels 400 feet lower it lay about 5 miles offshore; there was never a land bridge, so the mammoths swam.

Roughly what share of the pygmy mammoth skeleton found on Santa Rosa Island in 1994 was recovered?

The 50-year-old male lay in life position where it died near Carrington Point; the bones went to a museum on the mainland.

Arlington Springs Man, found on Santa Rosa Island in 1959, is significant as what?

About 13,000 years old, he supports the idea that the first Americans came down the Pacific coast; his remains were reburied by the Chumash in 2022.

Who found the Arlington Springs bones in 1959, reportedly while trying to free a stuck jeep?

The Santa Barbara Museum curator spotted a femur eroding 37 feet down a canyon wall; heiress Kitty Harvey had funded the expedition.

Roughly how many Chumash lived on the northern islands when the Spanish arrived?

They had eleven villages on Santa Cruz, eight on Santa Rosa and two on San Miguel; the last islanders were moved to mainland missions in the 1820s.

The Chumash crossed the channel in a distinctive sewn-plank canoe called what?

It let them catch swordfish in deep water; a modern one, named for the hawk, was launched in 1976 and paddled round the islands.

Which European explorer first recorded the islands in 1542?

He was sailing for Spain, though whether he was Portuguese or Spanish is still argued; his ships spent weeks around the islands.

Which British navigator named San Miguel Island on his 1793 chart, borrowing from a Spanish map?

The 1542 explorer had died on the island and is thought by many to be buried there; sheep ranchers ran it from 1850 to 1948.

What was Anacapa's Chumash name, Anyapax, said to mean?

The island is really three narrow islets six miles long; wave action split it in recent prehistoric times.

What is Arch Rock on East Anacapa?

It is the islet's best-known feature and a favourite for photographers arriving on the ferry.

The East Anacapa Island Light, finished in 1932, holds what distinction?

Coast Guard crews of six served two-year tours from 1939; the station was automated in 1962 and the Park Service moved into the houses in 1970.

Which sidewheel steamer struck the rocks off Middle Anacapa at full speed in December 1853?

Everyone aboard survived and was rescued a week later; divers can still visit the wreck, and its cargo may have brought the first ship rats.

Before rats were eradicated from Anacapa in 2001–02, what share of Scripps's murrelet nests were being attacked?

The seabird's largest breeding colony is on tiny Santa Barbara Island; the ship rats had been on Anacapa since at least 1907.

Santa Barbara Island, the smallest and southernmost of the eight, covers roughly how much area?

Its high point, Signal Hill, is 634 feet; it hosts a big sea lion rookery and the largest Scripps's murrelet colony.

The 14-mile ranger-led hike to Point Bennett on San Miguel rewards walkers with what?

Except for the trail from Cuyler Harbor to the campground, hiking on San Miguel is limited to ranger outings; the island's caliche forest is another draw.

Santa Rosa Island is one of only two places in the world where which rare tree grows wild?

About 1,000 of the island variety survive; the only other stand is near San Diego.

Vail & Vickers sold Santa Rosa Island to the government in 1986 for roughly how much?

They had objected to inclusion in the park; a 1996 settlement ended hunting and ranching, and only one steer remained by 1998.

Justinian Caire's 1880s Santa Cruz Island ranch included what unusual asset?

He also planted a 200-acre vineyard whose winery was maturing 86,000 gallons by 1895, and ran a post office from 1895 to 1903.

Which Los Angeles oilman bought most of Santa Cruz Island and switched it from sheep to cattle?

His son Carey died at the ranch in 1987 and the land passed to The Nature Conservancy under a prior agreement.

What is Painted Cave on Santa Cruz Island?

More than a hundred big sea caves are cut into the island's fractured volcanic rock, and kayaking through them is a park favourite.

The 1969 oil-rig blow-out that coated the islands' beaches was, at the time, what?

About 200,000 gallons made an 800-square-mile slick and killed some 3,600 seabirds; it helped bring about the Environmental Protection Agency.

Which oil company's rig blew out six miles off the coast in January 1969?

It took about 11 days to plug the rupture with cement; the spill now ranks third in US history behind Deepwater Horizon and Exxon Valdez.

What did the Chumash use the tar from the channel's natural oil seeps for?

Father Pedro Font recorded the seeps in 1776; the state has counted 29 between Point Conception and Rincon Point.

Which official concessionaire ferries visitors to the islands?

Boats leave from Ventura and Oxnard; Scorpion Anchorage on Santa Cruz is the most visited landing.

Which native mammal of the islands is known to carry the sin nombre hantavirus?

It is one of only three native land mammals; the western spotted skunk is another.

Roughly what fraction of the park's 249,000 acres lies under the ocean?

Marine life runs from plankton to the endangered blue whale, and the park is famous for scuba diving and its sea caves.

How many visitors actually travel out to the islands each year?

Another 60,000 or so sail within park waters, and the mainland visitor center in Ventura draws over 300,000.

During World War II, San Miguel Island was used for what?

All the islands went under military control; Santa Barbara Island became an early-warning post against a feared Japanese attack.

Which two Channel Islands outside the park are used by the US Navy for training and weapons tests?

San Nicolas has launched research rockets since 1957 and was home to the 'Lone Woman' Juana Maria until 1853.

Which vessel, wrecked off Anacapa, can divers visit alongside a Grumman TBF Avenger aircraft?

Both lie in the Anacapa State Marine Reserve on the island's north coast.

Ancient Paleocoastal sites on the northern islands date back how far?

They may record a coastal migration around the North Pacific Rim from Asia; a burned mammoth bone with a stone chopper dates to about 9,800 BC.

Reburial of the 10,000-year-old 'Tuqan Man' from San Miguel Island awaited which precedent-setting Washington case?

University of Oregon archaeologists found the bones exposed by beach erosion in 2005; the Chumash reburied them on the island in 2018.

In which year did all eight Channel Islands become a UNESCO biosphere reserve?

Five of them were made a national park on March 5, 1980.

In which mainland city are the park's headquarters and Robert J. Lagomarsino Visitor Center located?

The visitor center in Ventura Harbor drew about 311,000 people a year from 2009 to 2018.

How many days did crews take to seal the ruptured Union Oil well after the January 1969 blow-out?

Roughly 200,000 US gallons of crude spilled, creating a slick of about 800 square miles.

How many land mammals are native to the park's islands?

They are the deer mouse, the western spotted skunk and the endemic island fox.

Which landing on Santa Cruz Island is the park's most visited spot for day trips and camping?

A new island visitor center opened at Scorpion Ranch in April 2009.

Which of the five park islands lies in a different county from the other four?

The Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary extends six nautical miles around the park.