Discover a remarkable island of wildness in Southern California
Surrounded by cities, highways, and millions of people, Chino Hills State Park protects a remarkable landscape of rolling grasslands, coastal sage scrub, chaparral, oak woodlands, streams, and canyons.
A Natural History of Chino Hills State Park is an inviting, richly illustrated guide to understanding this extraordinary refuge at the edge of one of the largest metropolitan areas in North America. Author, biologist, educator, and conservation photographer Sherry Schmidt draws on a lifetime of exploring these hills to introduce readers to the plants, animals, ecological relationships, and human history that make the park unique.
The result is both a natural history and a companion for exploration—a book for hikers, naturalists, students, educators, photographers, and anyone who wants to look more closely at the wild world of Southern California.
Schmidt describes the park as an “island of wilderness” within an urbanized landscape, a place she has known since hiking these hills as a seventh grader in 1969.
Inside the Book
- History of the Hills — Follow the landscape from its Indigenous history through the Spanish Mission and rancho periods, ranching and oil exploration, and the decades-long effort to create and expand Chino Hills State Park.
- Wildlife Corridors — Discover why connections between wildlands are essential for mountain lions and other wildlife, including the remarkable story of the Coal Canyon Corridor linking the Chino Hills with the Santa Ana Mountains. The book explores how roads and urbanization fragment habitat and why maintaining these connections is critical to Southern California’s biodiversity.
- Fire and a Changing Landscape — Explore the ecology of wildfire, the effects of recent major fires, and the relationship among fire frequency, coastal sage scrub, invasive plants, and a changing Southern California landscape.
- Energy and Ecology — Learn how energy moves through the park’s ecosystems and how plants, herbivores, predators, and other organisms are woven together through food webs and ecological relationships.
- Plants — Discover the park’s plant communities and many of its characteristic trees, shrubs, grasses, and wildflowers, with photographs and information to help identify species encountered along the trail.
- Animals — Meet the mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, spiders, and other creatures that inhabit the park—from butterflies and hummingbirds to coyotes, bobcats, and mountain lions.
- Hikes — Take what you’ve learned into the field with hikes designed to help visitors experience the park’s landscapes, plants, wildlife, and natural history firsthand.
- Conservation — Learn about efforts to protect Chino Hills State Park, wildlife corridors, open space, and wild places for generations to come.
Nature Close to Home
Deep within Chino Hills State Park, it can be hard to believe that cities lie just beyond the ridges. Winter rains turn brown hills green, spring brings wildflowers, and coast live oaks shade canyon bottoms while coyotes, raptors, and mountain lions move through this remarkable refuge. A Natural History of Chino Hills State Park reveals the ecological connections that make this urban wilderness so extraordinary.
Explore. Observe. Participate.
Natural history begins with paying attention.
Throughout the book, Schmidt encourages readers not simply to identify species but to notice relationships: where plants grow, when flowers bloom, how animals use different habitats, how fire changes vegetation, and how the seasons transform the hills.
Readers are encouraged to participate in community science by recording observations through iNaturalist, turning an encounter with a flower, bird, insect, or other organism into a small piece of a much larger record of the park’s biodiversity.
