Islets in the Sun : Ventura City Council Meets on Anacapa Island to Seek Ways to Boost Tourism

The Ventura City Council convened a special meeting Tuesday, but it didn’t get much work done.

Instead, five council members trekked across Anacapa Island, marveling at California sea lions basking in the sun and then lunched on turkey sandwiches provided by Friends of the Channel Islands.

“This will never rival Yellowstone or Yosemite,” Mayor Tom Buford said, making his way to the 63-year-old lighthouse at the far end of East Anacapa Island. “But there’s enough here to keep people coming.”

Accepting an invitation from Mack Shaver, superintendent of Channel Islands National Park, five of the seven-member council toured the slivers of three islets totaling about a square mile just east of Santa Cruz Island.

The daylong visit was designed to give the council members a firsthand perspective of the offshore national park--actually three small bits of land called East, West and Middle Anacapa--and help them develop better ways to market the destination to tourists.

They came away with an appreciation of Anacapa’s natural beauty--sweeping vistas of undeveloped habitat, clear, blue tide pools teeming with marine life and sea gulls nesting squarely atop freshly laid eggs.

But less clear were specific ways to entice visitors from Southern California and beyond to stay in Ventura and make overnight or day trips to the Channel Islands.

Three of the council members had never set foot on Anacapa, which rises in spectacular jagged peaks about 14 miles from Ventura Harbor. But Councilmen Gary Tuttle and Jim Monahan said they had each visited once before.

“I would have liked to have seen some things change, but it looks pretty much the same,” said Monahan, who toured the island in 1988 with a previous City Council on an identical mission. He said he had hoped to see improvements to the park, such as better campgrounds.

“The buildings are looking nicer, though,” he said.

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Council members Gregory L. Carson and Rose Lee Measures joined the venture, which began with a 50-minute ocean crossing aboard a 41-foot federal yacht called the Sea Ranger.

After the hike, the lunch and a tour of the island’s lighthouse, the group boarded the vessel again for a cruise around Arch Rock just east of the lighthouse and a quick trip to Smuggler’s Cove, a deserted sandy beach on the east end of Santa Cruz Island.

“Get people out here one time, and they’ll start coming back,” Buford said.

Those who visited Anacapa for the first time Tuesday were impressed. The visit was officially a continuation of Monday’s regular council meeting.

“This is an incredible sight,” said Measures, gazing out at the Middle and West islands from a vista called Inspiration Point. “It’s worth the whole trip.”

Buford was one of the first to climb to the top of the 63-year-old lighthouse at the east end of the island. “Wow,” he said, regarding the 360-degree panorama. “A million-dollar view.”

Shaver said he arranged the trip with Buford to help publicize the islands, which draw fewer than 400,000 visitors a year and is among the least-attended of the more than 300 national parks.

“We just need to raise our profile a little bit,” Shaver said. “It takes a little bit of planning to get out here because you can’t drive to it. So we need to get the word out.”

More visitors to the islands would translate to increased tourism dollars for Ventura, Shaver said.

“The city could highlight the park more in their promotional efforts,” Shaver said. “It’s not that they ignore it, but the city could become more of a gateway to Channel Islands National Park than it is.”

To help lure more visitors, Shaver said he is working on a plan to offer season passes or series of tickets that would allow people to tour the islands more than once during a particular year.

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Some other promotional ideas that came out of Tuesday’s visit --which was actually a continuation of Monday’s regular council meeting included posting more visible signs along Ventura County freeways to alert motorists to the islands, launching a radio advertising campaign and completing an educational program that would transmit live video from the islands to area classrooms.

“We have to show the people in Ventura what they have 14 miles from shore,” Monahan said. “It’s a whole new world.”

Bill Clawson, executive director of the Ventura Visitors & Convention Bureau, who accompanied the delegation to Anacapa, said the day tour demonstrated the challenge of promoting the islands.

“They’re not the easiest to get to,” Clawson said. “But the council can better understand our tourism efforts if they look at the town as tourists once in a while.”