Ano Nuevo Island State Park

About Ano Nuevo Island State Park

This is an attempt to preserve and protect the natural and cultural heritage of Ano Nuvo Island State Park in San Diego County, California. The property includes cultural resources, including a museum, historic buildings, an amphitheater and an outdoor recreation area. Four perennial streams support salmon, trout and coconuts; there is a wetland; and plant communities include grasses, shrubs, ferns, wildflowers, cacti and other native plants and animals.

This unit will allow the protection of an important regional ecological corridor and the preservation of the natural and cultural heritage of Ano Nuvo Island State Park.

The Spanish sailor Sebastian Vizcaino sailed past this point on January 3, 1603, and today it is still the only place where he has seen his passing ship.

On the sand dunes and beaches in front of the island, the sun, moon and stars of the Milky Way and many other stars come ashore and rest, mate, give birth or mate with their partners, rest and mate.

This is a unique and unforgettable natural spectacle that hundreds of thousands of people experience every year. Ano Nuevo State Park is home to the largest seal breeding program in the United States, which has generated growing interest in seals during the winter for the past 19 years.

Males fight with their partners on the beach, females give birth to their young on dunes. Anyone who wants to see seals during this breeding season or this winter is strongly asked to register early.

Daily access to the park is only possible with guided hikes, and elephant seals can be observed at any time through the permit system. Most adult seals disappear in winter, so the young are weaned until April. After laying off their skin in spring, the seals return to the beaches of Ano Nuevo for the rest of the year.

Ano Nuevo Point was named by the chaplain on January 3, 1603, as the site of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, the first Catholic church in the United States.

A few days earlier, the ship company had encountered wood and water in Monterey, but if it had not landed somewhere near Ano Nuevo, they would have discovered that the Quosts, a group of Ohlone Indians, had occupied the area, living on the beach, fishing and gathering abalone and other seafood.

The high quality beach was also valuable for trade and ended up in the hands of the US Coast Guard.

Jellyfish collected sand from the beaches to turn jellyfish into jellyfish, which are an important food source for the local population.

Conversely, obsidian spearheads from the eastern Sierra were found in the middle of Ano Nuevo.

The only contact with the Europeans was in 1769, when they led an overland expedition northward over San Francisco Bay. At the foundation of the Mission Santa Cruz (1791), hundreds of Ohlon, including the Quosts, were baptized and taken to the mission, where they were infected with various European diseases, lost contact with their native culture and died in large numbers. The missionaries had already used Anos Nutevo as pasture land before the arrival of the first US missionaries in 1804.

When Governor Alvarado officially handed the land over to the governor, it became a private rancho, and in 1851 Castro's heirs sold the 1,753-acre rancho. In 1861, the future owners sold land next to Ano Nuevo to the Steele brothers, who developed a very successful dairy business that lasted for about 80 years. The Steele brothers' dairy relic is located in San Francisco State Park on the west side of Anos Nutevo Island.

After World War II, the intensive cultivation of row and crop crops put the Ano Nuevo area at the top of the list of California's ten most productive agricultural areas.

In the 1950s, agricultural activity and sand mining left scars during the state's reconstruction, but repopulation slowly removed Interstate 1 and the area was purchased by the state of California in 1971. A straight line of Brussels sprouts is planted in an area east of Ano Nuevo Point, an irrigation pond is created and a windshield of Monterey cypress is planted. Since shipping traffic along the California coast has increased since the early 1800 "s, this stretch of coastline is littered with often foggy and rocky stretches of coastline. Only a small part of the original coastline is still preserved, and the repopulation is slowly removing the highways one to two.

To warn the sailors, the federal government installed a mist pipe on the island in 1872, a five-story lighthouse in 1890, and an automatic buoy station in 1948, which was replaced by automatic buoys.

Sailors knew about the extremely dangerous shipping; two new clipper ships were lost and later in the year, more ship tragedies occurred.

Food and drinks are not sold in the park, toilets, drinking water and picnic tables are only available in the visitor centre.