The following morning (12-6) I went
back to the Visitor Center at 8:30 since my boat to the island didn’t leave until
11:00. I got my National Parks passport
stamped, spent some time talking with Sandy Kopsick, one of the volunteers at the park,
and then watched the film that serves as an introduction to the park. When I came back out after watching the film,
Sandy caught up with me and invited me to dinner with her and husband Jerry. I readily accepted. She said they had some interest in cross-country
bicycling and would like a chance to talk with me about it.
I then headed south about five miles to
Oxnard harbor to find the Steamship Sunfish. It
turned out to be a nice 35’ motorboat that could accommodate about 25 passengers. My trip was to be an hour boat ride to Anacapa
Island, the nearest of the Channel Islands, with about three hours on the island before
returning to Oxnard. Anacapa is actually made
up of three small islets (East-Middle-West) that are inaccessible from each other except
by boat. We were headed for East Anacapa,
home of a lighthouse, ranger station and the beautiful arch rock that is the symbol of
this National Park.
Channel Islands National Park actually consists of five
islands – Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel and Santa Barbara – and
one mile of ocean surrounding each. There are
three other Channel Islands that are not a part of the National Park. The U.S. Navy controls San Clemente and San
Nicolas, and Santa Catalina is privately owned by a number of enterprises. Of those within the National Park, Anacapa and
Santa Barbara are the two very small ones – each about one square mile in size. Anacapa is long (about five miles) and very
narrow. Mostly, it is just home to seals and
birds. The western end of the island is
“off limits” to all visitors as it is the primary breeding ground for the
endangered California
Brown Pelican.
The two large islands are Santa Cruz
and Santa Rosa (about 96 and 84 square miles, respectively). They have abundant fresh water and have been
inhabited by mankind for thousands of years. First
were the Chumash
Indians who lived here for more than 6000 years.
They were sailors and traders and readily crossed the fifteen or so miles to
the mainland to trade with other Indian tribes. The
Spanish arrived here in 1542 and co-existed with the Chumash on the islands for a long
number of years. In the early 1800s, however,
the Spanish relocated the Indians to mainland missions to open the islands for ranching. From 1839 to the 1980s, these islands served as
ranch and farm land (cattle, sheep, olives and grapes).
The National Park service is now in the process of removing “introduced”
animal species from these islands in order to return them to their natural state.
San Miguel, the westernmost island, is
more windswept and harsh than the other islands. It
served as an animal range (sheep, cattle and horses) from the 1850s to the early 1940s,
and then as a bombing range from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s.
The first protection and preservation
of these islands came in 1938 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed Anacapa and
Santa Barbara as Channel Islands National Monument. In
1976, the U.S. Navy and the National Park Service reached an agreement allowing supervised
visitation to San Miguel. In 1978, a
partnership between the Nature Conservancy and the Santa Cruz Island Company provided for
the continued protection of that island. Finally,
in 1980, Congress designated the four northern islands, Santa Barbara, and the waters for
one nautical mile around each as our 40th National Park. Later that same year, the waters for six nautical
miles around each island were designated as a National Marine Sanctuary.
One very interesting aspect of these
islands is how some animal species have evolved a little bit differently than their
mainland cousins. The northern islands were
certainly all linked during the last ice age, and may have been connected to the mainland
at that time. If not during the most recent
ice age, then the link is from an even older time. In
any event, fox, mice and other land animals became isolated from the mainland species, and
have developed slightly different characteristics over these past several thousand years. The Island Fox, for example, is very similar to
the mainland’s Gray Fox, but is smaller – about the size of a house cat. The foxes prey upon Deer Mice that are slightly
larger than their mainland relatives. Hmm,
if this trend continues for a few more millennia, maybe the Deer Mice will be preying on
the Island Foxes.
(Great
Adventures to Scenic Places)
