Nick+R+Santa+Cruz

The island, located off the coast of California, is 22 miles (35 km) long and from 2 to 6 miles (3.2 to 9.7 km) wide. **Santa Cruz Island** was the largest privately owned island off the, but is **Continental United States,** currently part-owned by the National Park service (NPS owns 24%, and the Nature conservancy owns 76%. It is part of the northern group of the Channel Islands of California, and at 61,764.6 acres (249.952 km2) or 96.507 sq mi) is the largest of the eight islands in the chain. Santa Cruz Island is located within Santa Barbara County, California. The coastline has steep cliffs, gigantic sea caves, coves, and sandy beaches.



Santa Cruz looks like a sword fish when it is upside down. Santa Cruz Island is the largest privately owned island off the Continental United States. The island encompasses 96 square miles or about 62,000 acres and is approximately 22 miles long. For comparison, it is over four times the size of Manhattan (22 square miles) or Bermuda (19 square miles), and is larger that the District of Columbia (61 square miles). It lies about 22-25 miles off the adjacent mainland coast of Santa Barbara, California.



Santa Cruz Island has lots of life living on it. The **Island Fox** (//Urocyon littoralis//) is a small fox that is native to six of the eight Channel Islands of California. There are six subspecies of the fox, each unique to the island it lives on, reflecting its evolutionary history. Other names for the Island Fox include **Coast Fox**, **Short-Tailed Fox**, **Island Gray Fox**, **Channel Islands Fox**, **Channel Islands Gray Fox**, **California Channel Island Fox** and **Insular Gray Fox**.



**Northern island bush poppy (//Dendromecon harfordii//) **is in the poppy family. This plant grows only on Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa Islands. Unlike the "California Poppy" this plant is a perennial shrub. The **Northern island bush poppy looks like: it has four leaf peddles and in the middle it has something that is hairy and yellow.**