Point Reyes National Seashore

The great 1906 earthquake that leveled San Francisco tore along the San Andreas right through Point Reyes, and here the land jumped astonishingly far. Near the Bear Valley trailhead, a fence that ran straight before the quake was left offset by about twenty feet in an instant, and you can still walk the short Earthquake Trail to stand where the ground leapt.

That fault is why the peninsula is granite while the mainland across the bay is not, and why Tomales Bay is a long, ruler-straight trench. Point Reyes is one of the best places anywhere to see a living fault line in the landscape, the seam where two plates slide past each other a few centimeters a year.

The Coast Miwok have lived on this peninsula for thousands of years, in villages around the sheltered esteros and along the bay, harvesting shellfish, fish, acorns, and elk. Kule Loklo, a re-created Coast Miwok village near the Bear Valley visitor center, honors that long presence.

In 1579 the English privateer Francis Drake is widely thought to have careened his ship in a bay here, meeting the Coast Miwok, an encounter recorded in his crew's accounts, though the exact spot is debated. The Coast Miwok today are part of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, and their history on Point Reyes is ongoing, not finished.

At the peninsula's northern tip, a reserve protects a herd of tule elk, a subspecies once nearly extinct in California and brought back here. In the fall rut, bulls with heavy antlers bugle and spar across the grassland above the sea, one of the great wildlife spectacles in the state.

Out near the lighthouse, a colony of northern elephant seals hauls out each winter to breed, the huge bulls battling on the sand. That same season, gray whales pass close offshore on their long migration, and the exposed headland is one of the best places on the coast to watch for their spouts.

The Point Reyes Lighthouse clings to the cliffs at the very tip of the peninsula, reached by descending more than three hundred steps toward the water. It was built in the 1870s to warn ships off one of the deadliest stretches of coast in the country, where fog can smother the point for weeks on end.

This is one of the windiest and foggiest places on the Pacific coast, and standing at the lighthouse in a gale, with the sea booming below, is the essence of Point Reyes. On the rare clear day the views run for miles, but the fog is the point's true character, the reason the light was needed at all.

The peninsula holds a remarkable variety in a small space: the long straight surf of the Great Beach, the sheltered sand of Limantour and Drakes Beach, forested ridges of bishop pine and Douglas fir, and open cattle range rolling to the sea. The Bear Valley Trail is an easy walk to a coastal waterfall at Arch Rock.

Fall brings the elk rut and clearer skies; winter the whales, elephant seals, and green hills; spring a burst of wildflowers on the grasslands. Summer is the foggiest season out at the point, though the eastern side near Olema often sits in the sun. Whenever you come, plan for wind and give the peninsula a full day.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.