Pitch Lake

The Pitch Lake at La Brea is the largest natural deposit of asphalt in the world, a forty hectare surface of grey bitumen that looks like a car park and behaves like extremely slow liquid. It refills itself from below as it is dug, and it has been mined for more than a century for road surfacing exported worldwide. Walter Raleigh caulked his ships here in 1595. Visitors walk on the crust with a guide, past sulphur pools warm enough to bathe in and pockets where prehistoric bones and trees have surfaced. The visit takes about an hour and needs closed shoes.