The rugged 20 square kilometer (5,000 acre) reserve includes a section of the Eel River and a portion of Elder Creek, a National Natural Landmarks.

Major research projects such as the Eel River Critical Zone Observatory have been hosted by the reserve.

Heath and Marjorie Angelo bought the property in 1931 and sold the land to The Nature Conservancy in 1959.

[1] The reserve is administered by the Vice Chancellor for Research Office at University of California, Berkeley.

[2] Habitats in the reserve include mixed forests (including mixed evergreen, California bay, tanoak, madrone, upland redwood, upland Douglas-fir, Pacific yew, and knobcone pine); woodlands (including Oregon oak, black oak, interior live oak, and mixed north-slope cismontane); mixed chaparral (including chamise, montane manzanita, whitethorn, ceanothus, buck brush, interior live oak, and north-slope chaparral); bald hills prairie; grassland; mainstem and tributary river channels draining from 0.4 to 327 square kilometers (0.15 - 126 square miles).