Set on a craggy bluff above the Pacific Ocean, Shore Acres is a public park born from a private estate. In the early 1900s, lumber magnate and shipbuilder Louis Simpson built a mansion and elaborate gardens on the site. A devastating fire and the Great Depression eventually forced him to sell. The state bought the property and restored the gardens. Walkways lead visitors through a formal garden of rhododendrons, azaleas, dahlias and other flowering plants. Bordering the formal garden are a sizeable rose garden and a Japanese-style garden fashioned around a 100ft-long lily pond.