Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area
Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is in California, close to one of the largest cities in the country.
The landscape is of rolling hills, rugged mountains and open meadows dotted with coast live oaks. It feels remote, and yet just beyond these hills lies Los Angeles.
Long before it became protected land, this land was home to the Chumash people, followed by Spanish land grants, racing and later developmental pressures as the city expanded. Preserving this landscape required intention.
The Santa Monica Mountains were established as a National Recreation Area in 1978, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter. Unlike many national parks set aside for remote wilderness, this was a deliberate effort to protect open space, history, and habitat within reach of a major urban population.
This landscape was preserved not because it was distant, but because it was worth keeping close.
Read More From Nancy
Pearl Harbor National Memorial
Standing at Pearl Harbor is unlike almost any other historic site in America. The harbor is beautiful but beneath those waters rests on of the defining moments of the twentieth century. I remember how history suddenly feels very personal here. ON the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked the United States Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl […]
Chiricahua National Monument
This photo brings back memories of one of the most unique landscapes we explored as a family: Chiricahua National Monument. Hidden in the mountains of southeastern Arizona, this park feels almost like another world, filled with towering rock spires, balancing stones and narrow formations that seemed carved by imagination rather than nature. Often called the “Wonderland of […]
Puʻukoholā Heiau National Historic Site
On the northwestern coast of the Island of Hawaiʻi, near the small community of Kawaihae, we visited Puʻukoholā Heiau National Historic Site. The massive stone structure in this photograph is one of the last major traditional Hawaiian temples built before Western influence dramatically changed life on the islands. Remarkably, these walls are original, not a […]
