Pinnacles National Park

Pinnacles National Park preserves a striking volcanic landscape in central California, where jagged spires, cliffs, and talus caves are the eroded remains of an extinct volcano shifted along the San Andreas Fault. Its wilderness, divided into east and west sections linked only by trails, supports bats, prairie falcons, and released California condors. The area was long used by the Chalon and Mutsun Ohlone, whose presence declined after Spanish colonization and Mission Soledad. In the late nineteenth century Schuyler Hain championed protection of the formations, helping lead to designation as Pinnacles National Monument in 1908 and redesignation as a national park in 2013.

California · United States