Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site

Your vacation plans may have changed over the summer but that doesn't mean you have to miss out on the enjoyment of a visit to Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site! We're collaborating with America's National Parks to offer virtual experiences that count toward your "Passport To Your National Parks" and Junior Ranger cancellations and commemorate the travel that we've been doing from home. Their website (https://americasnationalparks.org/virtual-passport-cancell/) has lin...ks to a ranger-led hike on YouTube and instructions for downloading your passport stamp, but here are a few more online activities for your remote visit: Take our virtual hike from Danville to Tao House posted here on August 27th Watch a recording of this year's productions from the Eugene O'Neill Foundation and their follow-up scholar's talks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCnaZmQPVoQ) Download and decorate our coloring pages of O'Neill's dog Blemie in the comments of our August 11th post for your Junior Ranger activity Tag your thoughts @PassportToYourNationalParks and feel free to share your virtual visit in the comments below!

Born this day in 1888, happy 132nd Birthday to Eugene O'Neill! Enjoy a moment of mirth with "America's Greatest Dramatist" courtesy of Eric Fraisher Hayes, Artistic Director with our friends at the Eugene O'Neill Foundation.

In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15th October 15th), Eugene O’Neill NHS would like to recognize the role of director José Quintero in the O’Neill story. Born in Panama City in 1924, Quintero made clear at a young age his intentions to pursue theater, a choice which led to seven years of total estrangement from his family who wanted him to become a physician. At just 27 years old, he co-founded the Circle in the Square Theater in Greenwich Village, NYC..., an event widely regarded as the birth of the Off-Broadway movement. Such an uncompromising personality was a natural fit to interpret the works of O’Neillwho in his own early life declared a desire to be an artist or nothingand it was with Quintero’s landmark direction of the Tao House plays The Iceman Cometh and Long Days Journey into Night that dwindling theatrical interest in the playwright’s power and influence was reversed and revitalized. Quintero would go on to helm over seventy productions of plays by Truman Capote, Thorton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, and many others which launched the careers of such notable actors as Geraldine Page and Jason Robards. But, O’Neill’s work drew him in again and again. These plays (are) friends, he wrote, who have been unyielding, demanding, exacting, and uncompromising to such a degree that there were times during the friendship when I, filled with sweaty panic, wanted to cry out, ‘Enough. I don’t know enough. I can stretch no further.’ But these friends were conceived and matured with immense care and precision. They had to be. They were meant to carry a great forcethe capacity to feel. (Photos from the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, 1958.)

Did you know this Saturday, Sept. 26th, is not only National Public Lands Day, but also #BikeYourPark day? Even better, if you're up for the adventure, you can ride through East Bay Regional Park District's Las Trampas Regional Wilderness to explore the grounds of Tao House, Eugene O'Neill's historic home in the Danville hills. Follow the bike trails marked on the map, and remember to #RecreateResponsibly! https://www.ebparks.org/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx (Image description: a trail past the shade of a large tree leads into hills under a sunny blue sky. NPS photo: Altman Studeny.)

In Carlotta O'Neill's diaries from mid-September 1937, we learn that it was then she and Eugene began referring to their property in California's San Ramon Valley as "Tao Hill." These photos from the same month and year show the partially-constructed home that by November 2nd they were calling Tao House, the name by which we call it still.

Though there have been fewer human visitors to Eugene O'Neill NHS over these last months, the wild things that call this place their home have been showing themselves regularly. In the past week alone, we've spotted coyotes, deer, wild turkeys, turkey vultures, red-tailed and Cooper's hawks, and this curious little California quail perched in the bushes right outside Headquarters! While we're waiting to be able to offer tours of Tao House-- keep checking this page for updates!-- our grounds are still open to hiking and picnicking. Why not walk up and see what you can see for yourself? (Image description: a California quail seen through binoculars in green vegetation with trees in the background. NPS photo by Altman Studeny.)

Every year as part of the Eugene O’Neill Festival, we co-host a hike with East Bay Regional Park District and the Eugene O’Neill Foundation. This year, with the particulars of COVID-19 making an in-person ranger-led hike impractical, we have created a virtual hike to accompany the Virtual Gene event which will be on-going throughout this summer and fall. All of the content in this album can also be accessed using the Interactive Google Map found at: https://www.google.com/m...aps/d/edit Grab a mask, get with your social bubble, and come with us to Tao House: approximately four miles one way with an elevation gain of 337 feet (See map below). Rangers will be sharing the cultural and environmental history along our route through a variety of thought-provoking facts and questions, beautiful photos, and engaging videos all contained in this guide. "Happiness hates the timid!" said O'Neill, so why not go on an adventure? See you at the top! National Park Service thanks Robert Rothgery for filming and editing our video. https://www.youtube.com/playlist

As historic sites across the country illuminate their landmarks in honor of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site would like to use this opportunity to recognize those women who were instrumental in getting Tao House recognized as an Historic Landmark deserving of Federal protection. Thalia Brewer, Ann Cavanagh, and Deidre Katz were the first officers of the Eugene O’Neill National Monument Association which in 1971 took the initia...l steps to get Tao House and all 158.6 acres of surrounding land once owned by the O'Neills recognized as a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1974, Lois Sizoo and Darlene Blair co-founded the Eugene O’Neill Foundation with just twenty-five members and lobbied Congress to put the site under the protection of the National Park Service. After eighteen months of the Foundation’s tireless fundraising efforts, letter-writing campaigns, and collaborations formed with East Bay Regional Park District, local Members of Congress, and the California Legislature, President Gerald Ford signed Senate Bill 2398 into law in 1976, designating Tao House and 13 acres of the surrounding property as a National Historic Site. Women in the slideshow projected on Tao House include: Lois Sizoo, Darlene Blair, Thalia Brewer, Dorita Chaney, Helen Hayes, Linda Best, Helen Kelly, Karlyn Fralik, Virginia Rei, Dawn Perry, Barbara Pulley, Wendy Cooper, and Carole Wynstra. Thanks to the indomitable dedication of these and many others, Eugene O'Neill NHS can be enjoyed as a part of your public lands now and for years to come. For more information, please visit the Eugene O'Neill Foundation Website @ www.eugeneoneill.org

On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the act creating the National Park Service, a new federal bureau in the Department of the Interior responsib...le for protecting the 35 national parks and monuments. Today, 104 years later, the National Park Service comprises 419 park sites covering more than 84 million acres in 50 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Saipan, and the Virgin Islands. These parks preserve our nation’s pristine scenery, natural wonders, cultural and historical monuments, places of deep meaning, and moments of great change. Share your favorite park adventure, memory, or story! https://www.nps.gov/subjects/npscelebrates/nps-birthday.htm Image: Bison group on the move at sunrise in Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park NPS / Jacob W. Frank #NPSBirthday #FoundersDay

In honor of the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment, we wanted to share the story of a woman significant to the playwright’s Tao House years: Gene’s third wife Carlotta Monterey: Carlotta was thirty-one when the 19th Amendment was ratified. At the time, she was making her own way in the world as an actress. As a young woman, she traveled to London to study with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and, in 1922, would perform in the first Broadway production of O’Neill’s The Hairy A...pe. In the years the O'Neills lived at Tao House, Carlotta was a secret motor behind the work of the playwright. Though her name does not appear on the front of the Tao House plays, the seemingly endless drafts and revisions of those works written here were all typed by her patient hands. We find Eugene’s recognition of her efforts, more often than not, between the book covers such as in the inscription that he made To Carlotta- with our production birth pangs still upon usthis OUR childwith my love forever! on her copy of Ah! Wilderness. As the executor of O’Neill’s will, Carlotta saw the value of having Long Days Journey Into Night released, and as O’Neill’s star began to fade toward the end of his career and after his death, it was through the persistence of Carlotta that their work would receive its later critical reevaluation and not be in vain. Photo Courtesy of Eugene O'Neill NHS EUON2356