Visit the Dana Point Headlands Website.

Where are the Headlands?

The 121-acre Dana Point Headlands property is on the southern coast of Orange County, within the City of Dana Point. Locally called "the Headlands," the site encompasses a rolling mesa above sea cliffs and a stretch of sloping bluff above a County beach, "the Strands." The cliffs and beach form the landward boundaries of the State-established Dana Point and Niguel Marine Life Refuges. The cliffs also form the namesake promontory that Richard Henry Dana called "the only romantic spot on the California coast" in his classic 'Two Years Before the Mast'.

Why are the Headlands important? The Headlands is one of the last undeveloped coastal promontories in Southern California. Despite being isolated from other native habitats and partially disturbed, the site still contains well-developed coastal bluff scrub, coastal sage scrub, and native grassland habitats. These in turn support an amazingly wide variety of plant and animal life, including the endangered Pacific pocket mouse, the threatened California gnatcatcher, and thirteen rare plant species. The Headlands is special not only for its remarkable diversity of rare plants and animals, but also because so little of these native habitats remain elsewhere on southern California's immediate coast.

How are the Headlands threatened? The Headlands site has been privately owned since Spanish land grant days. A number of development plans have been proposed for the property, but through a combination of circumstances it still remains as mostly natural open space. The current proposal, the Headlands Development and Conservation Plan, is considerably less dense than previous plans but still offers too much development and not enough conservation. The plan calls for significant landform alteration that will remove Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area; both these actions are inconsistent with the Coastal Act. The grading will produce 125 custom residential lots, a move that is inconsistent with Coastal Act policy that says residential development must be a lower priority in the Coastal Zone. To protect most of the new lots, the plan calls for a large protective revetment which is also inconsistent with the Coastal Act.

Contact info. For Dana Pt. Headlands: dphc@cox.net, PO Box 3514, Dana Point CA 92629.