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Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve

The Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve is a California wildlife reserve located in Los Angeles County. Constitutionally, it is a state park.

Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve

This 1,745 acre State Reserve, nestled in the Antelope Buttes 15 miles west of Lancaster, California, is located on California's most consistent poppy-bearing land. Other wildflowers include owl's clover, lupine, goldfield, cream cups and coreopsis, to name a few. They share the desert grassland to produce a mosaic of color and fragrance each spring. As unpredictable as nature - the intensity and duration of the wildflower bloom varies yearly.

Seven miles of trails, including a paved section for wheelchair access, wind gently through the wildflower fields. The broad views of this landscape provide eyefuls of brilliant wildflower colors. Whether you most enjoy expansive fields of wildflower colors and fragrance or the close-up study of a single flower, this is the place to visit.

Location - Directions

The reserve is located 15 miles west of California Highway 14 near the city of Lancaster. The visitor center is located on Lancaster Road.

Latitude/Longitude: 34.7502 / -118.3816

More about the Reserve

The reserve is located in the western Antelope Valley at an elevation ranging from 2600 - 000 feet. It is the high desert. The reserve is a natural area, where only day use (hiking and picnicking) is allowed.

California State Parks does not water to stimulate the flowers. Park management has excluded sheep from grazing the hillsides. Until the early 1970s sheep once grazed the buttes in the western Antelope Valley. Pronghorn antelope grazed long before then, until the railroad of the 1880s.

California Poppies grow best where there is some disturbance. This can be man made by various means: such as disking by farming practices or natural means, such as sheep or pronghorn grazing/walking or fire.

California State Parks has a prescribed burn program that uses fire as a natural tool to manage grassland vegetation.

Fire has been a part of the management practices for the Poppy Reserve since 1994. Prescribed burning has decreased the exotic species, reduced the ground cover and litter, permitted the native species of wildflowers to grow and bloom better.