Tomales Point

Tomales Point is the last narrow finger of the Point Reyes peninsula, open ocean on one side and Tomales Bay on the other. The trail leaves from the old Pierce Point Ranch, a nineteenth-century dairy the Park Service keeps standing, and runs north along the ridge toward the point.

Tule elk grazed this peninsula for thousands of years before hunters and ranchers all but wiped them out across California. In 1978 the Park Service brought ten back to Tomales Point and closed them in behind an eight-foot fence, about two miles long, across the neck of the peninsula, to keep them off the leased cattle and dairy ranches to the south. The herd grew, and in dry years it paid for the fence: there was not enough water or forage inside it, and in 2020 and 2021, 293 elk died there. Elk moved out of the reserve in 1998 to roam free elsewhere in the park suffered no such die-offs.

After years of lawsuits the Park Service adopted a plan to take the fence down and began cutting it in December 2024. The next month a settlement retired twelve of the seashore's ranches — six dairies and six beef operations — with buyouts funded by The Nature Conservancy, and the park committed to managing its elk as free-roaming animals.

The trail is open, windy and exposed, close to ten miles out and back to the point.