page_title: Isla Nublar
section_title: In Jurassic Park (1993)
hierarchical_section_title: Isla Nublar / In Jurassic Park (1993)
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a photo of Waimea Canyon on the island of Kauai.
context_page_description: Isla Nublar is a fictional Central American island in the Jurassic Park franchise, first depicted in Michael Crichton's eponymous 1990 novel. It is the primary setting of the 1993 film Jurassic Park, Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Both the novel and film versions of the Jurassic Park theme park are located on Isla Nublar off the west coast of Costa Rica, which has leased the island to John Hammond, the CEO of fictional bio-engineering firm InGen.
  The Las Cinco Muertes Archipelago is a chain of five islands 200 miles southwest of Costa Rica. They are named Isla Matanceros, Isla Muerta, Isla Pena, Isla Sorna and Isla Tacaño. The name comes from a Native American myth about a brave warrior facing a different execution on each of the five islands: burning, drowning, crushing, hanging and beheading. InGen did not own these islands. They only had a 99-year lease of Isla Nublar from the Costa Rican Government, and owned Isla Sorna, the only island populated with dinosaurs aside from Isla Nublar.
context_section_description: Isla Nublar as depicted in Jurassic Park is a large, mountainous island covered by lush tropical rainforest, 120 miles (190 km) west of mainland Costa Rica. It was leased to John Hammond's InGen Corporation and construction of Jurassic Park is nearing completion after five years of building when the events in the movie take place.
  Maps of the island used in the movie, and promotional material for the film, depict it in the same teardrop shape described in the novel. According to this model, high mountains occupy the northern and western ends of the island, while the Park itself is built in the north-eastern sector surrounded by a 50-mile long perimeter fence. As in the novel there is both a North and East Dock, although the East Dock is the only one referenced in the film when Dennis Nedry tries to reach it in order to smuggle his stolen dinosaur embryos to the mainland. The Visitor Center and its support buildings are located within a self-contained sector in the center of the island, nestled at the base of the northern mountains and surrounded by an electrified perimeter fence.
  The Visitor Center, in the style of a rustic African lodge, features a two-storey rotunda at its center with incomplete exhibit space across both levels. The fossilized remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex and an Alamosaurus hang from the ceiling as the centerpiece of the room. The operations room, laboratory, garage and viewing theater are all located within the complex. There is also a large restaurant with outdoor terrace and gift-shop. The restaurant is served by an industrial kitchen overseen by a gourmet chef. The Velociraptors are held in a specially built containment unit near to the Visitor Center with a viewing platform and guard tower. There is also a shelter for emergencies and a maintenance shed where the generator that controls the power grid on the island is housed. In the film the visitors reach the island by helicopter and fly through a verdant mountain valley before landing on the helipad at the base of a waterfall. As in the novel InGen has constructed an infrastructure of electrified fences, concrete moats and electrified roadway by which the visitor vehicles are guided on their tours of the various dinosaur paddocks. There are 12 species of dinosaur with their own paddocks, as compared to the 15 in the novel.
  During the luncheon scene in the Visitor Center, slides in the background show future attractions under construction in the park. These include a "Jungle River Ride", an aviary, and a separate restaurant facility.
  The northernmost Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi, known as the "Garden Isle", was used extensively to film exteriors that depicted Isla Nublar. In the movie, the helicopter carrying John Hammond and his guests approach the island along the Nā Pali Coast, then enters the Hanaepepe Valley before landing at the helipad at the base of a waterfall, in actuality Manawaiopuna Falls. Other Kauai locations used were the Valley House Plantation Estate, where the Visitors Center façade and emergency bunker were constructed, and Allerton Garden, used for both the maintenance shed exterior and the scene where Grant and the children discover newly-hatched dinosaur eggs.
  The island of Oʻahu was also used to film the Gallimimus valley scenes in the Kualoa Ranch, as were the islands of Maui and Niʻihau. The suspenseful perimeter fence scene, which Dr. Grant and the children must scale, was built in the Waimea Valley on Kauai.
caption: Waimea Canyon, Kauai was used as a stand-in for Isla Nublar
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