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| Dates Opened | Hours | Location | Phone | Available Facilities |
| All Year (Except Thanksgiving and Christmas Days) |
Memorial Day - Labor Day 8:00 am - 5:00 pm - weekdays 8:00 am - 5:30 pm - weekends Labor Day - Memorial Day 8:30 am - 4:30 pm - weekdays 8:00 am - 5:00 pm - weekends |
1901 Spinnaker Drive, Ventura, CA 93105 | 805-658-5730 | A movie about the park ("A Treasure in the Sea"), tide pool display, native plant garden, bookstore and island exhibits are available. The facility is fully accessible and offers a picnic area overlooking the Ventura Harbor. |
Ranger Activities
Every Saturday and Sunday several scheduled programs are offered. Programs include Tidepool Talk at 11:00 a.m., and Recreating at Channel Islands NP at 2:00 p.m. At 3:00 p.m., rangers offer programs that look in depth at a variety of topics about the park. Programs are free to the public.
Channel Islands National Park is open year round. The park is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, except Christmas Day.
Comprised of five of the eight California Channel Islands, Channel Islands National Park is home to a wide variety of nationally and internationally significant natural and cultural resources. Over 2,000 terrestrial plants and animals can be found within the park. One hundred and forty-five of these are unique to the islands and found nowhere else in the world. Marine life ranges from microscopic plankton to the endangered blue whale, the largest animal to live on earth.
Archeological and cultural resources span a period of more than 10,000 years. The park consists of 249,353 acres, half of which are under the ocean, and include the islands of San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, Anacapa and Santa Barbara. Even though the islands seem tantalizingly close to the densely populated, southern California coast, their isolation has left them relatively undeveloped, making them an exciting place for visitors to explore.
Special Events and Programs
Whale Watching
January through March - whale watching of the gray whales.
June through October - whale watching of the blue and humpback whales.
Anacapa Island
During the summer, park rangers dive into the Landing Cove on East Anacapa with a video camera. Visitors can see, through the eye of the camera, what the diver is seeing by watching video monitors on the dock. Pristine tidepools can be explored. Springtime brings colorful flowers, including the strange tree sunflower, or coreopsis, a plant found only on the Channel Islands and a few isolated areas on the mainland.
Exhibits - Visit the museum on the island, which houses the original crystal and brass Fresnel lens from the lighthouse
Santa Barbara Island Special Programs
There is an abundance of wildlife on Santa Barbara, primarily sea birds and marine mammals. This is a good area to view the underwater life, in the warmer waters of this southernmost island in the park. Snorkeling in the Landing Cove, visitors can see bright sea stars, spiny sea urchins, and brilliant orange garibaldi. Spring rains bring out the flowering plants, such as the tree sunflower, the endemic Santa Barbara Island live forever, shrubby buckwheat, sea blite, and an annual poppy.
Exhibits - There is a visitor contact station/museum on the island, with exhibits, dioramas, and murals of the natural and cultural resources.
Children Activities
Every Tuesday and Thursday from Memorial Day through Labor Day, rangers conduct a live underwater video program from Anacapa Island. This unique program features an interpretive dive through one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world, the kelp forest. Visitors may view this program without ever getting their feet wet, from the landing dock at Anacapa Island or the mainland visitor center. The "Parks as Classrooms" program brings the park to local schools.
Do you know students who would like to take a close look at a sea star, examine a pygmy mammoth bone, learn more about "The Island of the Blue Dolphins," or set foot on one of the Channel Islands? Then the park's education program is for you.
Parks as Classrooms is the education program of the National Park Service in partnership with the National Park Foundation. It encompasses many different kinds of experiential education programs at national parks throughout the country. Each year park rangers at Channel Islands National Park share the park resources with over 10,000 students in classrooms and nearly again that many at the park visitor's center.
In-class programs cover a variety of natural and cultural history topics for grades 2–5 in local schools. Programs at the visitor center meet the needs of classes from preschool through university level. All programs are tied to the curriculum students are studying.
There is no charge for these programs. For more information contact the park's education coordinator by phone, (805) 658-5735, or email, carol_peterson@nps.gov.
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