Point Reyes

Protected since 1962, the Point Reyes peninsula sits directly on the San Andreas Fault and shifted almost 6 metres north relative to the rest of California in the catastrophic San Francisco earthquake of 1906 — a movement still visible today on an interpretive trail that shows a fence split by the shift. It is one of the last refuges of the tule elk, a subspecies endemic to California that came to the brink of extinction in the late 19th century with barely a couple of dozen animals left.