Limekiln State Park covers 711 acres (288 ha) on the Big Sur coast at Rockland Landing, about 31 miles (50 km) northwest of San Simeon and two miles (3.2 km) south of Lucia, California. Established in 1994, the park contains the ruins of four historic limekilns, Limekiln Creek and Hare Creek, and an ancient redwood forest and Limekiln Falls, which drops 100 feet (30 m). Limekiln Creek rises on the southern flank of Cone Peak, the second-highest summit in the Santa Lucia Range, at 5,155 feet (1,571 m). It flows south-southwest for about four miles (6 km) to a beach at the historic dog-hole port of Rockland Landing. Most of the watershed is underlain by Mesozoic granitic and pre-Cretaceous metamorphic rocks of the Salinian Block, which are thought to have formed in the same batholith as the cores of the Sierra Nevada and the Peninsular Ranges of Baja California. Bedrock at Rockland Landing is mostly Franciscan Complex, including graywacke sandstones, limestone, shales and conglomerates that have undergone low-grade metamorphism.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the ancestors of today’s Salinan, Esselen and Ohlone peoples lived on the Big Sur coast for thousands of years, adapting their ways of life to changing climate and environment. Groups moved seasonally between the coast and interior valleys, following marine and terrestrial resources. They gathered fish, shellfish, grasses and seeds, hunted small and large game and birds, and traded for goods they could not produce. The arrival of Spanish explorers, Mexican ranchers and American settlers drastically changed Indigenous lives. Many were conscripted as laborers and taken into the mission system, where introduced diseases, against which they had no immunity, took a heavy toll. Within a few generations, settlers had taken over their lands. By the end of the mission era, most surviving Indigenous people had been absorbed into ranches and worked in agriculture, fishing and other industries.

From 1887 to 1890, the Rockland Lime and Lumber Company quarried limestone and smelted it in four large wood-fired kilns, where long exposure to intense heat extracted lime. The powdered lime was packed into barrels made from local timber. Thousands of barrels were hauled by wagon to Rockland Landing, then attached to an aerial cable and loaded onto ships. The lime was a key ingredient in making cement used for constructing buildings in Monterey and San Francisco. After only 3 years, the company had exhausted most of the limestone as well as the redwood used to fire the kilns. Today, Limekiln State Park has a small but popular campground with 29 sites, 12 near the ocean and 17 among the redwoods along Limekiln Creek. The park was closed for more than a year when landslides on Highway 1 limited access and staffing. It reopened to overnight camping on April 1, 2026. The Limekiln Trail and an ocean-view overlook are open, while the Hare Creek and Limekiln Falls trails remain closed. Read more here and here. Explore more of Limekiln State Park and Rockland Landing here: