California’s Great Beyond

Valentine Eastern Sierra Reserve

  • 1016 Mt. Morrison Road
  • Mammoth Lakes, CA 93546
  • Phone: (760) 935-4334

Valentine Eastern Sierra Reserve (VESR) is a field research station of the University of California, a unit in the University's Natural Reserve System (NRS). The Reserve consists of two sites, Valentine Camp and the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory (SNARL), located 15 miles apart. Administered by UC Santa Barbara, the Reserve provides protected wild lands, on-site experimental facilities, as well as the support facilities for conducting studies of natural systems over a large part of central, eastern California and western Nevada. The reserve offers a summer school program. The reserve conducts one- and two-week summer classes for approximately 120 students (10 students per class) in grades 1-9. Younger students study habitats, insects, bats, or trees, while the older students may study life skills of early man, natural history, forest ecology, or art in nature. We employ up to 9 teachers for the program with a wide variety of specialties. SNARL offers 6-8 evening lectures by scientists conducting research in the region. The talks are targeted toward the layperson and are open to the public. Tours of Valentine Camp or SNARL are offered on an intermittent basis in the summer and fall months. Frequently, the tours are thematic (i.e. fall color tour or history walk). The tours are limited to 10-15 people and are advertised in the local newspaper and on the SNARL website. A modest donation is requested to help support our outreach program.