This Blessed Plot, This Earth, This Realm, This . . . Santa Rosa Island

Bill Ehorn leaned on his Jeep admiring the spectacular view as he stood on a bluff overlooking the stand of 200 rare Torrey pines native only to this island and La Jolla.

Three hundred feet below, a gentle surf lapped at a curving white sand beach on this 15-mile long, 10-mile wide mountain in the sea, second largest of Southern California’s eight Channel Islands.

A squadron of Navy A7s streaked low across the waters of the Pacific Ocean, dropping mock mines into the sea.

Shaped like a giant stingray, wind-swept Santa Rosa Island lies off the coast of Southern California 30 miles out from Santa Barbara, the newest edition to the Channel Islands National Park.

Man is no stranger to Santa Rosa Island. The earliest known Californian lived here. Carbon 14 tests dated the remains of a prehistoric islander to 5700 BC. Carbon 14 tests of charred dwarf mammoth bones found in a pit indicated man’s presence on the island centuries earlier--29,650 years ago.

4 Islands in Park

Ehorn, 48, is superintendent of the park, which includes four islands: Anacapa, San Miguel, Santa Barbara and Santa Rosa. This newest part of the park was a 53,600-acre cattle ranch purchased for $29.5 million in December, 1986, from Vail & Vickers ranch company.

Santa Barbara and Anacapa islands were set aside as a national monument in 1938. San Miguel, previously a Navy-owned island, became part of the national monument in 1976. The monument became a national park in 1980.

Channel Islands National Park is the least visited of the 38 national parks in the continental United States because the only way to get there is by boat through often choppy waters. Air strips on the islands are restricted to park service use.

Anacapa, the closet to the mainland, 11 miles Southwest of Oxnard, had 55,000 visitors last year; Santa Barbara island, 38 miles off San Pedro, 10,000; San Miguel, 65 miles west of Ventura, 700, and Santa Rosa, 500. Not many more are expected to visit Santa Rosa Island this year.

1-Day Trips

Last summer was the first time the public was allowed to step ashore on Santa Rosa Island. They arrived by private boat or on one-day trips by Island Packers, a concessionaire operating out of Ventura. Overnight stays are not permitted.

Island Packers trips to Santa Rosa Island are set July 9, 23 and 30, Aug. 5 and 31, Sept. 10 and 24 and Oct. 9. The cost is $60 per person and reservations are required. The boat leaves Ventura at 7 a.m. and returns at 7 p.m. It takes 3 1/2 hours to make the 50-mile voyage each way.

“No one is allowed to wander around the island on their own. Everyone who comes here, by private boat or on the Island Packers’ trips is escorted on a ranger-guided hike,” Ehorn said.

Visitors making the day trips out of Ventura land at Bechers Bay, headquarters of the Vail & Vickers ranch. They hike to the ranch complex, which includes an 1878 New England-style ranch house, a century-old barn, corrals and bunkhouse. Rangers give an interpretive talk about the ranch history.

Population of 17

Santa Rosa Island’s population is 17--all National Park employees, ranch cowboys and their families.

Under the purchase agreement, Vail & Vickers, which has operated the island ranch since 1902, will continue to run cattle here for as long as 25 years. About 6,000 head of cattle now graze the rugged terrain.

Devoid of trees except for the Torrey pines and a few stands of island oak, Santa Rosa is covered with wild oats and wild grass.

In 1929, ranch owners stocked the island with Roosevelt elk and mule deer. Today about 800 of the big elk, 1,500 deer and 1,500 wild pigs run free on the island. The ranch owners have permission to conduct annual hunts of a limited number of the animals each fall. Hundreds of bushy-tailed, reddish-brown island fox indigenous to the Channel Islands also roam the hills, valleys and canyons.

“This is an Old West, turn-of-the-century type ranch operation,” said Craig Johnson, 49, resident ranger. “When Vail & Vickers finally leave the island, the National Park Service will continue operating a living history ranch out here with 400 to 500 head of animals.”

Johnson and the three rangers on the island, Lynn Erickson, 29, Mary Valentine, 29, and Al Fieldson, 32, are converting a building at an abandoned Air Force radar station on the island into a visitor center.

“In time we anticipate opening the air strip to the public, enabling folks to fly over and spend the day hiking trails or taking four-wheel-drives through the interior of the island,” Ehorn said.

“Plans are for limited camping for overnight stay. Because of its isolation, however, this island will be managed strictly on a low use entry base. Santa Rosa Island will never become another Yosemite.”