Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus) perched on cypress tree.  Photograph: Yuval Helfman

Description of how restoring the habitat will allow native species to repopulate.

"Wilderness can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope." Wallace Stegner, The Sound of Mountain Water.

Since the mill closure, Fort Bragg has worked to find a new identity. No longer a lumber town. Unable to identify as a fishing town. Is it content to be known as a just a tourist town? Whatever future Fort Bragg recreates for itself, it is dependent on decisions it is making today on the repurposing of the 400+ acres between Main St. and the Pacific Ocean. 

The recently completed Coastal Trail is a good start. The trail gives the local community access to its own Pacific Ocean bluffs for the first time in decades. ​​The trail 

The Noyo Center for Marine Science is changing the face of Fort Bragg with its new Downtown Center and environmental science education programs while it pursues its vision of a Science Center & Museum on the 11 acres it owns on Headlands. ​

The 400+ acre ocean bluff property affords Fort Bragg a unique opportunity to build for its community a place that does for it what Golden Gate Park does for San Francisco and Central Park does for New York. The histories of both those parks are very different--almost polar opposites, but the happy results are a significant benefit ecologically and economically to both cities. Golden Gate Park enjoys 13 million visitors a year. 

San Francisco's treasured Golden Gate Park (pictured above) is only slightly more than twice the size of the Fort Bragg Headlands.