topanga nature center

you're invited to drop by

The Nature Center is open on Sundays, January through June from 11 until 3 pm. See our comprehensive collection of preserved native animals and birds. The collection, which has been gathered over the last 30 years and is made up of stuffed accidentally-killed specimens, includes almost all the local mammals and most of the hawks and owls. We also have bones, nests, pelts and artifacts your children can touch. The Center is staffed by docents who can answer your questions about the exhibits and the park. The nature center is free of charge. There are restrooms and drinking fountains near the parking lot, but not in the Center.

The nature center is located in the "skeet lodge" of historic Trippet Ranch. After a devastating wildfire in 1938, Oscar Trippet, Jr. rebuilt the structures on the property and added the lodge. These buildings are scheduled for restoration by California Department of Parks & Recreation.

what is skeet?

don't expect to see shooting at Trippet Ranch now

No guns are allowed in the park. Skeet is a competitive shooting sport where participants attempt to hit clay disks flung into the air. Skeet was used by the military during World War II to teach gunners how to lead and time flying targets. The sport enjoyed renewed popularity after the war, and Oscar Trippet, Jr. enjoyed it enough to have shooting features in his new lodge - a built-in gun cabinet, semi-circular lawn and trap houses. Topanga was remote enough to make it a perfect place to enjoy this noisy sport with friends, mostly overnight guests because of the time it took to get here before the freeways. The lodge had bunk beds and a special door so they could drag mattresses out onto the covered porch to sleep on hot summer nights.

Skeet was invented by a grouse hunter to simulate the action of bird hunting. A squad of shooters take turns at each of 8 positions. Several targets are fired at each position in a complex sequence of highs, lows, and pairs spelled out in the rules for that position. Two houses at the corners of the semi-circular course hold mechanical devices called "traps" that fling the targets (also called clay pigeons) a distance of 60 feet. The trap in the “high” house launches from 10 feet off the ground, the "low" house from 3 feet off the ground. The clay pigeons are just over 4 inches in diameter, and 25 are fired for each shooter. A “perfect” score of 25 is difficult but not impossible to achieve with practice. Although the traps are long gone, the high and low houses built for them by Oscar Trippet, Jr. still stand at the edge of the Nature Center lawn. The trees have grown up since Trippet used the lawn for skeet in the 1940s and 50s.

native animal specimens

a good reason to visit

They might look alive, but we don't keep any live animals, and of course we didn't kill them for this collection. Every one was already dead when we found it, most killed by automobiles. Each was prepared by a professional taxidermist for display in cases in the Nature Center. The specimens were temporarily removed and posed for most of these photographs, except one photograph is a live animal...  Can you guess which one?

grey fox
	coyote
	ringtail
badger
racoon
mountain lion
bobcat
great-horned owl	california thrasher
red-shouldered hawk
cooper's hawk	mockingbird