Santa Rosa Island is today part of Channel Islands National Park, established in 1980 and encompassing the five northern and southern Channel Islands.

The park encompasses one of the richest natural and cultural landscapes on the California coast, with ecosystems that include nesting seabird colonies, marine mammal populations, kelp forests, and the unique terrestrial biota that evolved in island isolation.

The cultural landscape of the park extends, as the Arlington Springs find demonstrates, back to the terminal Pleistocene.

The park’s archaeological resources include not just the Arlington Springs site but dozens of other prehistoric sites spanning the full range of Island human history: early Holocene middens, Archaic-period village sites, and the late prehistoric and early historic sites associated with the Chumash and their predecessors.

The National Park Service manages the archaeological resources of the park in collaboration with the affiliated tribes — including the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Mission Indians — through ongoing consultation processes required by federal law.