It's like Stairway to Heaven for people who love travel, art, nature, music, and getting outside for sweet adventures. Not much is better than an epic roadtrip and we've got just the ticket to get you ready.
Top 5 Hits for Family Adventures
- Climb the main rock formation
- Check out the Interpretive Center
- Find the pictographs
- Take a picture with The Witch Hat formation on your head
- Climb and scramble on all the rocks you see
Pro Tips
- Season: Fall, Winter, and Spring (Summer gets really hot)
- Difficulty: easy
- Time Needed: 2-3 hours
- Cost: Free
- Bathrooms and Drinking fountains are Located in the Interpretive Center
- The Interpretive center has maps of the area
- When you are exploring Vasquez Rocks, have fun hiking, climbing and searching for your scavenger hunt items. Take time to talk about the items as you find them!
- There are more areas of the park to explore if you take the Horse Trail that leads up the hill just off of the Nature trail. It will take you to more large rocks and across the ridge for incredible views.
- Have fun exploring, this is a great place to say YES you can climb that! The rocks aren't as high or steep as you may think.
- Watch the Flintstones Movie before or after you go, and look for Vasquez Rocks in the background. It's the backdrop for Fred Flinstones House and some of the driving scenes.
The area of Vasquez Rocks is uniquely alive with movement, since the earth’s tectonic plates have consistently reshaped, uplifted, and exposed areas of buried sandstone here. Rain, landslides, flooding and earthquakes brought vast amounts of soil, rocks, sand, and organic materials from the San Gabriel and Sierra Pelona Mountains down into the Solebad Basin over the past 25 million years. Over time, many layers of these sediments would form in the basin - creating lots of pressure and turning the deeper layers into sandstone.
Vasquez Rocks is located on the Elkhorn Fault (an offshoot of the San Andreas fault). Millions of years of earthquakes have caused the land to slide, causing the sandstone rock formations within Vasquez Rocks to lift out of the ground at 40–52-degree angles! Even more amazing is the fact that most of the rock formation is still underground.
Vasquez Rocks is the perfect place for rock explorers and fossil hunters of all ages. The constant moving and shifting of the earth has created lots of climbable and walkable rocks for families to explore. Many animal fossils have been excavated from the upper layers of rock and soil, including the remains of camels, horses, and rodents – revealing the interesting history of the area. Vasquez Rocks Natural Area Park is famous for other reasons as well: the unique location has inspired Hollywood for many years. Over 62 movies and 112 television shows have featured the landscape of Vasquez Rocks! You have seen it in popular movies such as Planet of the Apes and The Flintstones and probably never even realized it. It’s also an excellent place to hike part of the Pacific Crest Trail which passes through the Natural Area.