VENTURA VISITORS & CONVENTION BUREAU. THE REAL CALIFORNIA.

 

Anacapa Island

Twelve miles from the mainland a five-mile-long spine of rock emerges from the ocean, breaks into three islets, and offers itself as home to 265 species of plants and a bevy of seabirds - with the largest brown pelican rookery on the Pacific Coast. On charts the island of 737 acres appears as East, Middle, and West Anapaca. The Chumash called it Anyapakh or "mirage". It was anything but a mirage on the night of December 2, 1853, when the sidewheel steamer Winfield Scottrunning at full speed crashed into rocks off Middle Anacapa and sank. The Coast Guard built a light beacon in 1912 and a light station in 1932.

Island Features: birk rookeries; Chumash middens; giant coreopsis, tidepools; kelp forests; sea caves; arches.