Family reluctantly gives up its hold on Santa Rosa Island

[ellisonz]

The Vails' former ranch, now part of Channel Islands National Park, is no longer a home for cattle, cowboys or adventurous children. And now the family's last link to the place is being severed.

By Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times

November 28, 2011, 5:58 p.m.
Reporting from Santa Rosa Island, Calif.—
For the family that once owned Santa Rosa Island, it was part Zane Grey, part "Robinson Crusoe."

Generations of Vail cousins would arrive from the mainland and take refuge for months at a time. They would explore places with pirate-map names: Skull Gulch, Abalone Rocks, China Camp. They were city kids, but they rode with the island's cowboys and knew the island lore — stories about ghosts, about shipwrecks, about a mythical temptress named Rita who supposedly awaited new cowboys.

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The island became part of Channel Islands National Park in 1986, and the storied Vail & Vickers ranch — a spread that spanned the island's 84 square miles of rolling grasslands and rugged coastline — shut down 12 years later. But the family continued to run a big-game operation, guiding hunters to the trophy deer and elk transplanted to the island nearly a century ago.

Under an agreement with the National Park Service and an environmental group, the sport hunting ended last month. Now, professional marksmen are tracking the remaining dozens of deer and elk from canyon to canyon, sometimes targeting them from helicopters.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-santa-rosa-20111129,0,3043295.story?page=1&utm_medium=feed&track=rss&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20latimes%2Fmostviewed%20%28L.A.%20Times%20-%20Most%20Viewed%20Stories%29&utm_source=feedburner

[Journeyman]

1. Excellent article . . .

Nice to know the island will be available to the public in the years ahead.

[ellisonz]

2. I've been fascinated by the Channel Islands...

...ever since I read Island of the Blue Dolphins as a child in elementary school.

[Gold Metal Flake]

3. To see it in a hundred years.

I will be magnificent.

[KamaAina]

4. Sarah? Is that you?

Now, professional marksmen are tracking the remaining dozens of deer and elk from canyon to canyon, sometimes targeting them from helicopters.

:scared: