The Monarch Butterfly Grove

Each autumn a small forest of eucalyptus and Monterey cypress just south of downtown fills with monarch butterflies, thousands upon thousands of them, clustering so thickly on the branches that the boughs seem to be draped in folded orange leaves. They come to escape the cold, gathering in this sheltered grove to wait out the winter before scattering inland in spring. People noticed them long ago.

In earlier decades, service members from a nearby recreation facility would visit the butterflies, and a small fire in the grove, quickly put out, brought a burst of publicity that made the wider world aware of a spectacle the townsfolk had always known. At times, naturalists and the press deliberately kept quiet about the exact spot, hoping secrecy would protect it. Access came slowly and carefully.

Guided talks and a wooden footbridge across Meadow Creek came later. The Pismo State Beach grove is now one of the largest monarch overwintering sites in the country, drawing large crowds of visitors each winter. Their numbers rise and fall sharply from winter to winter, a living gauge of the monarch's uncertain future.