Julia Pfeiffer Burns

The short trail here goes under the road to the overlook above McWay Falls, where the creek drops eighty feet straight onto the sand of a cove nobody can reach. The park is named for Julia Pfeiffer Burns, who ranched this country and was, by every account, tougher than the men who wrote about her. I can vouch for the accounts.

There is more here than the overlook. The park runs from the ridges to the sea, and the trail behind the parking lot climbs the creek into redwoods. The overlook path passes the site of Waterfall House, where Lathrop and Helen Brown lived above the falls and then gave the land to the state in Julia's name.

In spring the ditches are full of calla lilies. The beach in the cove was not always there. It arrived with a landslide in 1983, and the falls that used to drop into the sea now drop onto sand.

Two campsites sit on the cliff above the cove, the most sought-after in California, booked the morning they open. Give this park an hour. Take the picture and then walk.