Turtle Bay Exploration Park
Turtle Bay Exploration Park is a diverse 300-acre cultural complex and environmental education center. Its indoor and outdoor spaces contain entertaining and inspiring educational exhibits and activities that interpret the human-nature connection with specific reference to the cultural, historical and natural resources of the Sacramento River region. Straddling the beautiful Sacramento River as it meanders through Redding, the Park is crowned by the Sundial Bridge, the capstone of the experience that the park strives for in all its programming. Turtle Bay is the visionary result of efforts that began in the 1980s to merge Redding's small local museums into the Alliance of Redding Museums. In the mid-1990s, the vision began to become a reality on 20 acres of Sacramento River riparian property provided by the City of Redding. The McConnell Foundation began with a pledge of $10 million that eventually grew to $23 million. Turtle Bay opened its Paul Bunyan's Forest Camp in 1997, its Visitor Center in 2000, and its Museum (the heart of the campus) in 2002.
