February 2026: A Message from the CEO
February 13, 2026
None of this was inevitable.
Not the way children now arrive here and learn from tidepools and kelp forests and old cottages and working landscapes. Not the way students who have rarely been welcomed into outdoor classrooms are finding their place in them. Not the way young people are beginning to imagine themselves as scientists, caretakers, historians, and stewards of a coast that will need all of them.
It could have gone another way — many times over.
It still can.
What makes Crystal Cove what it is today is not a master plan or a straight line of progress. It is a long series of human choices. Quiet ones. Persistent ones. Often invisible ones. People deciding — again and again — that access matters, that learning should be hands-on and real, that belonging is something we build on purpose, not something we assume will happen on its own.
Every student who steps onto this shoreline to learn, every young person who finds confidence in doing real work here, every moment when science becomes something you can touch and see and question — those moments exist because someone chose to help bend the story in a better direction.
You are part of that choice.
Thank you for standing with us in the work of keeping this place open, alive, and meaningful — not just as a beautiful park, but as a place where the next generation can begin to care for the world that will soon be theirs to lead.
With gratitude,
Kate Wheeler
President & CEO