Point Reyes is a prominent cape on the Pacific coast of northern California. It is located in Marin County approximately 30 miles (50 km) WNW of San Francisco. The term is often applied to the Point Reyes Peninsula, the region bounded by Tomales Bay on the northeast and Bolinas Lagoon on the southeast. The headland is protected as part of Point Reyes National Seashore.
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The cape protects Drakes Bay on its southern side. The headland is largely drained by Drakes Estero. Drake's Bay and Drake's Estero are named after English seafarer Sir Francis Drake who possibly hauled his ship, the Golden Hinde, up onto the beach for repairs in June 1579. Inverness Ridge runs along the peninsula's northwest-southeast spine, with forested peaks around 430 meters (1,400 ft). West of the ridge, the land flattens out and the vegetation turns to scrub. The Mount Vision fire in 1995 burned part of Inverness Ridge.
Point Reyes lends its name to the town of Point Reyes Station, California.
The point may once have been known as Lobes Lighthouse by the sailors of clipper ships on the meat trade.[1] (Lobes are ridges of slide material commonly referred in the literature from erosion events and the point is of that shape out to sea).
Point Reyes was originally named Punto de los Reyes ("Kings' Point") by the Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino as his ship, the Capitana anchored in Drake's Bay on the Day of the Three Kings (Epiphany, or the end of the 12 Days of Christmas) on January 6, 1603.[2] Although Sir Francis Drake landed somewhere near the area on June 17, 1579 and proclaimed it Nova Albion (New England), the exact location of his landing remains controversial.[3]
During the Cold War, submarines repaired at Mare Island Naval Shipyard were tested in the shallow waters off Point Reyes following shipyard repairs. Navy safety personnel used a small monitoring and communications hut on the peninsula for monitoring submarines during these sea trials.
In April and May 1979, part of John Carpenter's The Fog was shot at the Point Reyes Lighthouse and the small town of Inverness.
Two large mammalian species, nearly extirpated in the nineteenth century, have made a remarkable recovery at Point Reyes: the Northern elephant seal and the Tule elk.
Beginning in the 18th century Northern elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) were hunted extensively almost to extinction by the end of the 19th century,[4] being prized for oil that could be made from their blubber, and the population may have fallen as low as 20.[4] In 1874 American whaleman Charles Melville Scammon recorded in Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of America, that "the elephant seal...known to the Old Californians as Elefante marino had a geographical distribution from Cape Lazaro (about 1/4 of the way up the Baja peninsula) in the south to Point Reyes in the north".[5] They were thought to be extinct in 1884 until a remnant population of eight individuals was discovered on Guadalupe Island in 1892 by a Smithsonian expedition, who promptly killed seven of the eight for their collections.[6] The elephant seals managed to survive, and were finally protected by the Mexican government in 1922. Subsequently the U.S. protection was strengthened after passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, and numbers have now recovered to over 100,000. The first breeding pair was discovered on a sheltered beach below Point Reyes' Chimney Rock in 1981 and has multiplied at a remarkable 16% per year to the present population of 1,500 to 2,000 individuals each winter.[7]
In 1978, ten Tule Elk (Cervus canadensis ssp. nannodes) were re-introduced to Point Reyes from the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge near Los Banos. By 2009, over 440 elk were counted at Tomales Point's 2,600 acres of coastal scrub and grasslands. In 1999, one hundred of the Tomales Point elk were moved to roam free in the Limantour wilderness area of the Seashore and above Drakes Beach.[8]
Vegetation native to Point Reyes includes Bishop pine, Douglas-fir, coyote brush, monkeyflower, poison oak, California blackberry, salal and coast redwood, among others.
Nearly 490 avian species have been observed in the park and on adjacent waters.
The entire Point Reyes Peninsula is a piece of the Salinian Block transported northward by the San Andreas Fault. Its core is granite, unlike the terrain east of Tomales Bay. The San Andreas Fault runs directly under Tomales Bay.
Point Reyes is bounded to the east by the San Andreas Fault and is structurally dominated by the Point Reyes Syncline. The Point Reyes Peninsula is on the Pacific Plate, while the rest of Marin County land is on the North American Plate.[9] The peninsula is a member of the Salinian Terrane, a segment of the southernmost Sierra Nevada range transported north from Southern California by movement along the San Andreas fault.[10] Simply speaking the peninsula consists of three major members: the Salinian Cretaceous crystalline basement, the overlying Pliocene sedimentary rocks, and the late Pleistocene marine terrace deposits of the southern peninsula.[11]
The U.S. Weather Bureau (now the National Weather Service) maintained a cooperative weather station in the Point Reyes lighthouse from 1914 to 1943. Based on those records, average January temperatures ranged from 45.1 °F (7.3 °C) to 54.1 °F (12.3 °C) and average September temperatures ranged from 51.7 °F (10.9 °C) to 61.0 °F (16.1 °C). The highest temperature recorded was 90 °F (32 °C) on October 3, 1917, and the lowest temperature recorded was 31 °F (-1 °C) on January 19, 1922. Annual precipitation averaged 17.05 inches (433 mm). The wettest year on record was 1941 with 31.37 inches (797 mm) and the driest year was 1923 was 7.32 inches (186 mm). The most precipitation in one month was 9.51 inches (242 mm) in December 1916. The maximum 24-hour precipitation was 2.65 inches (67 mm) on December 15, 1929.[12] Automated weather observations are now taken at the lighthouse. Weather observations are also taken in nearby Point Reyes Station and published in local newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle.
It can get very foggy and windy during certain parts of the year at the lighthouse, where visibility is so slim that one cannot even view the lighthouse from the top of the approximately 300 steps necessary to walk down to reach it.
The lighthouse serves a great purpose in such a foggy area, as there is no beach to wash up on; it is on a rocky cliff. Day or night, the light may be the only thing visible to ships.
The peninsula is a popular recreational destination for the nearby San Francisco Bay Area, especially for hiking on its many trails and sea kayaking the shores of Tomales Bay and the coast. Point Reyes National Seashore offers some of the finest birdwatching in the United States, It is also one of the best places to watch Northern Elephant Seals in the winter months. More than 70,000 acres (300 km2) of habitat harbor an incredible variety of bird life.
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