No particular landmarks or monuments mark the islands. But each one has its own subtle, and unique, characteristics. Plants exclusive to this island include the Santa Barbara Island live-forever, shrubby buckwheat, chicory and creamcups. Endemic birds nest on Santa Barbara, including the horned lark, orange-crowned warbler and house finch. The Santa Rosa subspecies of Torrey Pine is one of the rarest pines in the world, the last vestige of a once-huge Pleistocene forest.
Sites contain some of the oldest evidence of human presence in North America.
By Robert Cross, Tribune Staff Writer.