The purpose of the Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park is to preserve the important links to California’s history as well as the fragile connections between ever-diminishing wildlife habitats.

The park provides visitors with quality recreational and educational experiences along its historic trails. Framed by sculptural sandstone escarpments, the park’s boulder-strewn landscape contains significant natural and cultural resources. Among these are segments of a historic Overland Stagecoach route -- a trail listed as a Los Angeles City Historical Cultural Monument, a State of California Point of Interest, and that is on the National Register of Historic Places. Evidence of early human occupation and human activity dates back to prehistoric times.

The Santa Susana Mountains and Simi Hills are expected to become a part of the Rim of the Valley Trail Corridor and eventually part of a Rim of the Valley National Recreation Area. Protection is needed for a great diversity of natural and cultural resources, including a narrow wildlife corridor and choke points -- critical to the survival of animal species -- that link the Santa Monica Mountains with the Los Padres National Forest and the Angeles National Forest.

The park contains the rare Santa Susana Tarplant and the locally-common but elsewhere-unusual Red Sticky Monkey Flower and provides a beautiful landscape of other wildflowers as well as a preserve for the local native Chaparral plant community.

Since 1970, the members of the Santa Susana Mountain Park Association, a non-profit organization founded by Janice Hinkston, have been working to preserve the Santa Susana Mountains and the Simi Hills for present and future generations.

After 28 years of work, in January of 1998 hard-working volunteers proudly witnessed the dedication of the Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park. Its open space is a valuable cultural and biological resource as well as a comforting sanctuary, a place of re-creation for today’s harried city-dwellers.