[9] Four sites make up National Monument #139: Glencolmcille was home to the Dublin-born artist Kenneth King, whose works depict naval and merchant shipping, coastline and lighthouses.

He describes the district and its villages, and the life of its inhabitants, in his autobiography Farewell My Youth: At one end of the little Glen Bay was a wilderness of tumbled black rocks, for some reason named Romantia (a particularly "gentle" – or fairy-haunted place, I was told in Dooey opposite), and upon this grim escarpment the breakers thundered and crashed, flinging up, as from a volcano, towering clouds of dazzling foam which would be hurled inland by the gale to put out the fires in the cottage hearths of Beefan and Garbhros.

I have seen a continuous volume of foam sucked, as in a funnel, up the whole six-hundred-foot face of Glen Head, whilst with the wind north-west a like marvel would be visible on the opposite cliff.

—Arnold Bax, Farewell My YouthThere are a number of natural sites nearby, such as the Slieve League (Sliabh Liag) cliffs, The Silver Strand (An Tráigh Bhán) at Malin Beg (Málainn Bhig), and Glen Head (Cionn Ghlinne) itself.

At the centre of one of the largest Gaeltacht areas, the district is known as the home of Oideas Gael, an Irish-language learning institute established in 1984 to promote the Irish language and culture.