Pinnacles is a real national park, with the same legal status as Yosemite or Yellowstone, but it spent most of its history as something lesser: a national monument, a designation that can be created by presidential order alone, without an act of Congress.
Protected in 1908, Overlooked for Decades
President Theodore Roosevelt established Pinnacles National Monument in 1908, using the Antiquities Act, the same 1906 law that let him protect dozens of other sites by proclamation rather than waiting on Congress. That made Pinnacles federally protected land more than a century before it became a national park, but a national monument doesn't carry the same weight in the public imagination, or always the same level of funding and staffing, as a park does.
For over a hundred years, Pinnacles sat in that in-between status: legally protected, genuinely spectacular, and largely overlooked by visitors who associate "national park" with the handful of famous names and skip past "national monument" on a map without a second thought.
Plan Your Pinnacles Visit
No road connects the park's east and west entrances. Decide which side you're visiting before you drive.
Open the Trip PlannerA 2013 Upgrade, Signed by President Obama
Congress passed the legislation redesignating Pinnacles as a national park, and President Obama signed it in January 2013, making Pinnacles the 59th national park in the United States and, at the time, widely reported as the newest addition to that list. The move gave Pinnacles the higher public profile, stronger legal protections, and greater name recognition that come with full national park status, all for land that had already been protected, quietly, since 1908.
It's a slower path than most people realize a park can take: over a century of legal protection under one designation, then a deliberate act of Congress to formally upgrade it, rather than the single presidential signature that started the whole thing.
- National monument established 1908, BY T. ROOSEVELT
- Redesignated national park JANUARY 2013
- Signed by PRESIDENT OBAMA
- National park number 59TH
The 1908 monument establishment date, the January 2013 park redesignation, and the 59th-national-park figure checked against National Park Service materials and the Department of the Interior's own 2013 announcement of the redesignation.
Most visitors who drive out to Pinnacles today have no idea they're standing on land that predates most of the National Park System's famous names by decades, just under a different label. The rock hasn't changed since 1908. Only the sign at the entrance has, and it took over a hundred years to get there.