Santa Rosa Island, California

From Freepedia

Image:Santa-rosa-island-nps-map.gif Santa Rosa Island is the second largest of the Channel Islands of California at 52,794 acres (213.65 km²). It is part of Channel Islands National Park.

Santa Rosa is located about 26 miles (42 km) off the coast of Santa Barbara, California in Santa Barbara County.

It is occupied by rolling hills, deep canyons, a coastal lagoon and beaches adorned with sand dunes and driftwood. The Chumash called the driftwood wima because channel currents brought ashore logs from which they built tomols (plank canoes).

History

During the last ice age it, and the other three northern Channel Islands, were conjoined into Santa Rosae, a single island that was only five miles (8 km) off the coast.

Archeologists have discovered the remains of 13,000 year-old Arlington Springs Woman, among the oldest human remains in the Americas, on Santa Rosa Island. Pygmy mammoths (Mammuthus exilis) have also been excavated there.

Its previous owner, Vail & Vickers of Santa Barbara, had owned the island since 1902 and sold it to the U.S. federal government for $30 million in 1986. The last domestic cattle were shipped off the island in 1998. The National Park Service will permit the former landowners to retain non-native Kaibab Mule Deer and Roosevelt Elk on the island until 2011.

Wildlife

A variety of the Torrey Pine (Pinus torreyana var. insularis) grows exclusively on the island. If it were considered as a separate species, it could have once been one of the rarest pine in the world. However, the population has grown from about 100 trees in the early 20th century to over 2000 trees today. The Island Oak (Quercus tomentella) is native to the island.

Flightless geese, giant mice and pygmy mammoths are extinct, while the island fox, spotted skunk, and munchkin duleya (one of the six endemic plant species on the island) still live there.