Notes from the National Park Vagabond – Pinnacles National Monument (Park)

Pinnacles National Park has something for everyone. It’s a gem. TR knew what he was doing when he protected this place – twice. This was originally posted to the TR Center blog in September 2019.

This year the TR Center is joining with Valerie Naylor, former superintendent of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, to hunt out the TR related collections in parks dedicated by him. “My goal is to get items that are critical but that we haven’t seen before,” Naylor states. We will post updates on her travels and finds.

I love Pinnacles National Park. It’s a unique place in an area south of Hollister that is often called Old California. Although it is within 150 miles of 10 million people in the San Francisco Bay area and beyond, it is tucked away between Salinas Valley to the west and Bear Valley to the east.

Because a close friend worked there for years, I have made many visits. For my project with the Theodore Roosevelt Center, I visited twice… well, I used it as an excuse to visit twice. I camped there over the July 4 weekend in 2017. I had hoped to go through the archives, but the holiday weekend is not a good time to find staff available. I knew that, but I went to enjoy the park anyway. I returned in February of this year to spend a full day sifting through the organized files for anything related to Theodore Roosevelt and the establishment of the monument. The park has a convoluted administrative history; I found 87 pages of interesting documents and correspondence. Biological Technician Valerie Nuttman was kind enough to assist and supervise me for an entire day.

It took a myriad of proclamations, laws, and signatures to make Pinnacles National Park what it is today. Theodore Roosevelt, with Gifford Pinchot, established the Pinnacles Forest Reserve on July 18, 1906. But the Antiquities Act had just been passed on June 8, and it soon became evident that a national monument was in order. On January 16, 1908, TR proclaimed Pinnacles National Monument, 2080 acres in the middle of the forest reserve, which caused some confusion. The forest reserve was abolished in 1910. There were subsequent proclamations, redesignations, boundary changes, and expansions, and finally a name change, from National Monument to National Park in 2013.

The park today includes over 26,000 acres, with a lot of diversity. I love just sitting on a bench near the campground watching rare California condors float in the sky at dusk. I enjoy the fairly strenuous day hikes up to the craggy high peaks, where railings and handholds help you climb to nooks and crannies. I like exploring the caves, home to rare bats. I never get tired of watching acorn woodpeckers hide their nuts in holes in trees. I appreciate the historic structures, still in use, and I do really feel that I am in Old California when I am there.

Pinnacles National Park has something for everyone. It’s a gem. TR knew what he was doing when he protected this place – twice.