Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park preserves a striking stretch of the Big Sur coast, including McWay Falls dropping into the Pacific, ancient coast redwoods, and protected offshore waters. The land’s modern history began with the McWay homestead in the late 1870s, then expanded under Lathrop and Hélène Brown, who built notable homes there and developed early electric power for the area through a generator on McWay Creek. Named for pioneer rancher Julia Pfeiffer Burns, a close friend of Hélène Brown, the property was donated to California in 1961 and established as a state park in 1962, becoming one of Big Sur’s best-known landscapes.