A giant tree at Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park. Photo by Will Smith.

Following Hwy. 1 north from Mendocino County leads to Leggett and the junction with Hwy. 101. The big attraction here is the Drive-Thru-Tree Park, as schlocky as it sounds, but for some reason we humans just love driving through trees. They carved this car-sized hole in the Chandelier Tree in the 1930s, and for a fee you can “drive thru” it, or bike or walk (RVs won’t make it).

A couple miles farther north is the 1,000-acre Standish-Hickey State Recreation Area, a forest of second-growth coast redwoods, firs, bigleaf maples, oaks, and alders also thick with ferns and, in spring, water-loving wildflowers. Good camping, and you can also hike to the 225-foot-tallMiles Standish Tree and then continue on to the waterfall. Two miles farther is lovely Smithe Redwoods State Reserve, reached from the west side of the highway though most of the park’s protected trees are to the east. Nearby is Confusion Hill, one of those places where gravity is defied and water runs uphill, etc. Open year-round. You can also take the kids on a train ride through the redwoods (summers only).

Redwood sorrel (redwood clover). Photo by Brian Kurtz.

Richardson Grove State Park is where you’ll find the first serious groves of old-growth redwoods. There’s even a walk-through tree here. It’s an easy stroll to the historic Hartsook Inn, at last report still in need of new purpose. The Richardson Grove Nature Trail is fully accessible. Picnic near the Eel River then choose from three developed campgrounds (Huckleberry/Madrone open all year). The old Richardson Grove Lodge serves as a seasonal visitor center.

Next north is Benbow Lake State Recreation Area, in the midst of open woodlands two miles south of Garberville but aptly named only in the summer, when a temporary dam goes up on the Eel River’s south fork to create Benbow Lake. State budget cuts in recent years, however, mean both the lake and campground are questionable. Even the 20-year-plus run of Shakespeare at Benbow Lake is no more. Find out what is going on when you’ll be around at the historic Benbow Inn. 

A former sheep ranching town, Garberville is not an outlaw enclave paved in $100 bills by pot-growing Mercedes Benz owners, as media mythology would have it. The town was once considered the sinsemilla cultivation capital of the world, an honor most locals are fed up with. Big-time growers have long since gone elsewhere. But this is a good stop for groceries or a meal.

Humboldt Redwoods State Park

This is the redwood heart of Humboldt County, where more than 40 percent of the world’s redwoods remain. The Save-the-Redwoods League and the state have added to the park’s holdings grove by grove. Most of these “dedicated groves,” named in honor of those who gave to save the trees, and many of the park’s developed campgrounds are along the state-park section of the 33-mile Avenue of the Giants parkway.

Humboldt Redwoods State Park is one of the largest state parks in Northern California and the state’s largest redwood park, with more than 51,000 acres of almost unfrequented redwood groves, mixed conifers, and oaks. The park offers 35 miles of hiking and backpacking trails, plus 30 miles of old logging roads—and surprising solitude so close to a freeway. Down on the flats are the deepest and darkest stands of virgin redwoods, including Rockefeller Forest, donated by the John D. Rockefeller family, the world’s largest stand of stately survivors. The rolling uplands include grass-brushed hills and mixed forest. Calypso orchids and lilies are plentiful in spring, and wild blackberries and huckleberries ripen July-September.

A fallen redwood on Jedediah Smith Redwoods Mill Creek Trail. Photo by Miguel Vieira.

Camping is easy at Humboldt Redwoods, which offers hundreds of developed campsites—hot showers, restrooms, tables, the works—some wonderful backpackers’ and environmental camps, group and horse camps, plus four picnic areas.

Worthwhile stops on the way north to Redwood National Park include neat-as-a-pin Scotia, home to generations of Pacific Lumber Company employees and their families but now an LLC. The Scotia Museum and visitor center on Main is a storehouse of local logging history housed in a stylized Greek temple built of redwood, with logs taking the place of fluted columns. (Formerly a bank, the building’s sprouting redwood burl once had to be pruned regularly.) TheScotia Inn is still the town’s social center. With extra time on your hands also take in Del Rioacross the river and much larger Fortuna not far beyond, established in 1875. Come in July for the Redwood Fortuna Rodeo, the oldest rodeo in the West.

Eureka and Vicinity

If you’ll be spending time in and around Eureka, you won’t want to miss the very Victorian town of Ferndale, the kind of place Disney imagineers would create if they needed an old-timey movie set. Ferndale, however, is the real thing, a thriving small town settled by Danish immigrants in 1864. Ferndale also happens to be the final destination every Memorial Day weekend for participants in the annual Cross-Country Kinetic Sculpture Race from Arcata. Stop by the Kinetic Sculpture Museum on Main to appreciate some memorable kinetic-sculpture contenders.

Lost Coast Mutineers during the Kinetic Sculpture Race. Photo by Sandwich Girl.

Then there’s the big city of Eureka, also notable for its neighborhoods of redwood Victorians, vividly painted as if to burn away the fog. When James T. Ryan slogged ashore here from his whaling ship in May of 1850, shouting (so the story goes) Eureka! (“I have found it”), what he found was California’s largest natural bay north of San Francisco. Russian-American Fur Company hunters actually entered Humboldt Bay earlier, in 1806, but the area’s official discovery came in 1849 when a party led by Josiah Gregg came overland that winter seeking the mouth of the Trinity River (once thought to empty into the ocean). Gregg died in unfriendly forests on the return trip to San Francisco, but the reports of his half-starved companions led to Eureka’s establishment as a trading post and port serving the far northern inland gold camps.

Humboldt Bay was less than ideal as a port, with its treacherous sandbar, and dozens of ships foundered in heavy storms or fog. But it offers attractions for landlubbers, including

Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, established on the edge of the bay’s South Jetty to protect the black brant, a small migratory goose, and more than 200 other bird species. Other harbor life includes sea lions, harbor seals, porpoises, and gray whales, seen offshore here in winter and early spring. Humboldt Bay’s Egret Rookery and other refuge features are best observed from the water. The Humboldt refuge also includes Lanphere Dunes near Arcata.

The Samoa Bridge connects the city of Eureka with the narrow peninsula extending south from Arcata (almost across Humboldt Bay) and the onetime Simpson Lumber Company town of Samoa, the name inspired by the bay’s resemblance to the harbor at Pago Pago. The Samoa Cookhouse, noted rustic restaurant and the last logging camp cookhouse in the West, also offers a fascinating museum.

Detail of the Carson Mansion in Eureka, Calif. Photo by David Berry.

Take in Eureka’s Victorians, especially the geegawed Gothic Carson Mansion, 143 M St. at the foot of Second St. (locals say “Two Street”), once the home of lumber baron William Carson. Those in the know say this is the state’s—perhaps the nation’s—finest surviving example of Victoriana. Now home to the exclusive all-male (how Victorian) Ingomar Club, even unescorted men are not welcome inside or in the club’s palatial gardens. So be happy with a look at the ornate turrets and trim of this three-story money-green mansion built of redwood.

Romano Gabriel Sculpture Garden. Photo by Denise Comiskey, courtesy Eureka Heritage.

Also well worth extended appreciation is the Romano Gabriel Sculpture Garden nearby at 315 Second St., a blooming, blazing, full-color world of delightful plants, people, and social commentary, crafted from packing crates with the help of a handsaw. This is “primitive art” (snobs say “poor taste”) on a massive scale, one of two pieces of California folk art recognized internationally; the other is Watts Towers in Los Angeles. Gabriel worked on this garden, which includes likenesses of Mussolini, the Pope, nosy neighbors, and tourists amid the fantastic flowers and trees, for 30 years. After Gabriel’s death it was restored then transplanted downtown from his front yard on Pine Street. Worth it, too, is a stop at the fine and friendlyClarke Historical Museum, 240 E St. (at Third), where you’ll feel as though you’re stepping into a 19th-century parlor.

“Lumberjacks” at the Kinetic Sculpture Races. Photo by Sandwich Girl.

After poking around in the galleries and shops of Old Town Eureka near the bay—lots of local events happen here—head to Humboldt State University and the city of Arcata nearby, to sample the North Coast college scene. Arcata is Eureka’s alter-ego, no more resigned to the status quo than the sky here is blue. It would be natural to assume that the genesis of this backwoods grass-roots activism is the presence of academia, namely Humboldt State, the only university on the north coast. But the beginnings of the Arcata attitude go back much further. When Arcata was still a frontier trading post known as Union Town, 24-year-old writer Bret Harte set the tone. An unknown underling on The Northern Californian newspaper in Arcata between 1858 and 1860, an outraged Harte—temporarily in charge while his editor was out of town—wrote a scathing editorial about the notorious Indian Island massacre of Wiyot villagers by settlers and was summarily run out of town, shoved along on his way to fame and fortune. Besides activism, general community creativity, and education, farming and fishing are growing concerns. Appropriately enough, the popular semipro baseball team, a proud part of the community since 1944, is called the Humboldt Crabs. The Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Preserve at the foot of I St. was one of the first wildlife preserves in the U.S. to be created from an old landfill dump and “enhanced” by treated sewage water. The aesthetic settling ponds offer pleasant walks and excellent bird-watching.

North From Arcata

In the Mad River Valley just northeast of Arcata on Hwy. 299 is Blue Lake, a tiny town in farm, dairy, and timber country with a fish hatchery, museum, roller rink, and amazingDell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre. One thing not in Blue Lake is a lake, due to the Mad River changing its course some time ago; the original lake is now a marsh. East via Hwy. 299 is Willow Creek, where folks around here go when the summer fog finally becomes unbearable—and where Bigfoot is everywhere, starting at the local museum.

Heading north from Arcata on Hwy. 101, the first wide-spot-in-the-road is fast-growingMcKinleyville. The town lies adjacent to the Azalea State Reserve and offers good whale-watching from McKinleyville Vista Point. Then comes charming Trinidad, once a booming supply town and whaling port complete with lighthouse, museum, great beaches, and Humboldt State marine lab and aquarium. Almost as beloved is Patrick’s Point State Park,where the point itself is one of the finest spots anywhere for whalewatching (not to mention camping, picnicking, and winter mushrooming). The Yurok people who for centuries seasonally inhabited this area believed that the spirit of the porpoises came to live here just before people populated the world—and that the seven offshore sea stacks that stretch north to south like a spine were the last earthly abode of the immortals.

When you arrive in the community of Big Lagoon just off the highway north of Patrick’s Point you’ll know you’re almost arrived at Redwood National Park. Humboldt Lagoons State Parkincludes Big Lagoon itself and the miles-long barrier beach separating it from the sea, along with three other lagoons, a total of 1,500 beachfront acres best for beachcombing, boating, fishing, surfing, and windsurfing (swimming only for the hardy or foolhardy).

Redwood National Park & Vicinity

Pointing north to Oregon like a broken finger is Redwood National Park, California’s finest temple to tree hugging. Well-traveled Hwy. 101 passes through the park, but much of the temple is remote and empty of worshippers. Visitors just passing through to the Trees of Mystery are likely unaware that they’re witnessing a miracle—forests being raised (albeit slowly) from the dead.

Redwood National Park is complete, yet unfinished. Standing in the shadow and sunlight of an old-growth redwood grove is like stepping up to an altar mindful only of the fullness of life. But elsewhere in the park—out back toward the alley, looking like remnants of some satanic rite—are shameful scars of sticks and scabbed-over earth, the result of opportunistic clearcutting during the political wrangling that accompanied the park’s formation. Today, these areas are still in the early stages of healing.

Yet Redwood National Park features some magnificent groves of virgin old-growth redwood. Three of the world’s 10 tallest trees grow here—one of the reasons for UNESCO’s 1982 declaration of the area as a World Heritage Site, the first on the Pacific coast. Redwood National Park is also an international Man in the Biosphere Reserve.

Driving through the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park on the Howland Hill Road is a blast. The one lane dirt road winds around the huge trees for about 8 miles offering a unique way to experience the redwoods. Photo by Brian Hoffman.

But other people call it other things. When the sawdust finally settled after the struggle to establish this national park—the costliest of them all, with a total nonadministrative pricetag of $1.4 billion—no one was happy. Despite the park’s acquisitions to date, purists protest that not enough additional acres of old-growth redwoods have been preserved. Philistines are dismayed that there is so little commercial development here, so few gift shops and souvenir stands. And some locals are still unhappy that prime timber stands are now out of the loggers’ reach, and that the prosperity promised somewhere just down the skid roads of Redwood National Park never arrived—or, more accurately, never matched expectations.

Federal and state lands within the boundaries of Redwood National Park are technically under separate jurisdictions, but as a practical matter the national and its three associated state parks—the Prairie Creek, Del Norte Coast, and Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Parks—are cooperatively managed. In general, the visiting weather is best in late spring and early autumn. August and September are the busiest times here (the salmon fishing rush), but September after Labor Day offers fewer crowds and usually less fog.

Some of the lush terrain included within the borders of Redwood National Park is so strange that filmmaker George Lucas convinced much of the world it was extraterrestrial in his Return of the Jedi. The park’s dominant redwood forests host more than 1,000 species of other plants and animals. Roosevelt elk, or wapiti, survive only here and in Washington’s Olympic National Park, though they once roamed from the San Joaquin Valley north to Mt. Shasta. The park is also home to 300 species of birds, including Pacific Flyway migrants, gulls, cormorants, rare brown pelicans, raptors, and songbirds.

The rehabilitation of clearcut lands remains a top park priority—more important than recreational development. Because of the immensity of the task and the slow healing process, Redwood National Park will probably not be “finished” for decades.

That said, the main thing to do in Redwood National Park is simply be here. “Being here” to many area visitors means little more than pulling into the parking lot near the 49-foot-tall Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox at Klamath’s Trees of Mystery, buying big-trees trinkets, or stopping for a slab or two at roadside redwood burl stands in Orick. Though fishing, kayaking, surfing, and rafting are increasingly popular, nature study and hiking are the park’s main recreational offerings.

Parenting. Photo by Michael Mees.

For those seeking views with the least amount of effort, take a drive along Howland Hill Rd. (one-lane dirt road) through some of the finest trees in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. (Howland Hill Rd. transects the park and can be reached via South Fork Rd. off Hwy. 199 just east of the park, or via Elk Valley Rd. south of Crescent City.) Or try a sunny picnic on the upland prairie overlooking the redwoods and ocean, reached via one-lane Bald Hills Rd., eight miles or more inland from Hwy. 101.

Hiking here is not to be missed. The together-but-separate nature of the park’s interwoven state and federal jurisdictions makes everything confusing, including figuring out the park’s trail system. Pick up a copy of the local trails at park information centers. Among must-do walks is the easy and short self-guided nature trail on the old logging road to Lady Bird Johnson Grove. Nearby at the overlook is an educational logging rehabilitation display comprised of acres of visual aids—devastated redwood land clearcut in 1965 and 1970 next to a forest selectively logged at the end of World War II. The traditional route for true tree huggers, though, is the long (but also easy) 11.5-mile roundtrip hike (at least five hours one-way, overnight camping possible with permit) along Redwood Creek Trail to the famous Tall Trees Grove. The longest and most memorable trek in Redwood National Park is the 30-mile-long Coastal Trail, which runs almost the park’s entire length (hikable in sections) from near Endert’s Beach south of Crescent City through Del Norte Redwoods State Park, inland around the mouth of the Klamath River, then south along Flint Ridge, Gold Bluffs Beach, and Fern Canyon in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. A summers-only spur continues south along the beach to the information center.

Roosevelt Elk at Redwood National Park. Photo by Steve Dunleavy.

Beyond Orick and the park’s excellent Thomas H. Kuchel Visitor Center is 14,000-acrePrairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Heavy winter rainfall and thick summer fog produce rainforest lushness. Redwoods rub elbows with 200-foot-tall Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, and Western hemlock above an amazing array of shrubs, ferns, and groundcover, not to mention 800 varieties of flowers and 500 different kinds of mushrooms. Fern Canyon is unforgettable. Also particularly worthwhile at Prairie Creek: beachcombing, surf fishing, nature walks and photography, picnicking, and camping. Prairie Creek’s Revelation Trail loop, which includes a rope guide for the blind, has been put forth as the national standard for trail accessibility.

You’ve arrived in traditional Yurok country when you get to Klamath. The 263-mile-long Klamath River—California’s second-largest—drains 8,000 square miles and is fed by more than 300 tributaries, including the Salmon, Scott, and Trinity Rivers. Despite the shocking die-off of 33,000 salmon along the river’s lower reaches in 2002, due to excess water use upstream (a long and ongoing story), the Klamath is still one of the world’s finest fishing streams. Anglers line the Klamath and the lagoon from late fall through winter for the salmon run, though fishing for cutthroat trout downstream from town is good year-round.

Just south of Klamath is the Tour-Thru-Tree, in case you haven’t toured-thru one yet. (To tour thru, take the Terwer Valley/Klamath Glen exit off Hwy. 101 and go east a quarter mile.) “New Klamath” (the old town washed away in massive floods) is dominated by theTrees of Mystery on the highway,  made famous by Robert Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Most notable in tiny Requa is the historic Requa Inn, a Yurok-owned bed-and-breakfast with good restaurant.

Next north is Del Norte Redwoods State Park, a dense and foggy coastal rainforest comprised of 6,400 acres of redwoods, meadows, beaches, and tidepools. It’s so wet here in winter that the developed campgrounds close.

Stout Grove Redwoods. Photo by Ray Bouknight.

Though the competition is certainly stiff even close by, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park farther north is one of the most beautiful places on earth—and almost unvisited. Few people come inland even a few miles from Hwy. 101 near Crescent City. The Smith River, which flows through the park, was crossed by mountain man Jedediah Smith on June 20, 1828, after his grueling cross-country effort to reach the Pacific. Despite subsequent incursions this 10,000-acre stand of old-growth redwoods, Douglas fir, pines, maples, and meadows seems almost unscathed.

If so much verdant natural beauty cries out for balance—as in the comforts of civilization—head back to Eureka and environs or try nearby Crescent City, the only incorporated city in Del Norte County. See the Battery Point Lighthouse near town, originally known as the Crescent City Lighthouse and first lit in December of 1856. Weather and tides permitting you can walk out to it on a path more than 100 years old and visit the island museum.

King Range National Conservation Area. Photo by Bob Wick, US Bureau of Land Management.

Dust off the backpack, get new laces for those hiking boots. This is the place. California’s isolated “Lost Coast”—virtually uninhabited and more remote than any other stretch of coastline in the Lower 48—has been found. Here steep mountains soar like bald eagles, their domes tufted with chaparral, a few redwoods tucked behind the ears, and sink their rock-knuckled, grassy talons into surf that surges onto black-sand beaches. Local people, of course, snort over the very idea that this splendid stretch of unfriendly coast was ever lost in the first place, even if area highways were intentionally routed away from it. They knew it was here. And others have known, too, for at least 3,000 years. 

Much of the Lost Coast is included in two major public preserves. Some 35 miles of coastline connect Sinkyone Wilderness State Park in Mendocino County with 65,000-acre King Range National Conservation Area in Humboldt County. Central to the long battle over expanding the Sinkyone Wilderness was the fate of 75-acre Sally Bell Grove along Little Jackass Creek. The prolonged political skirmish between former property owner Georgia-Pacific (which planned to clearcut the area) and various private and public agencies focused first on the value of these thousand-year-old trees to posterity. But the war was also over preserving reminders of a lost culture.

Whale Gulch. Photo by Michael Mees/ CC BY 2.0.

Archaeologists believe proto-Yukian people occupied a site in the middle of Sally Bell 3,000 to 8,000 years ago. Chipped-stone tools, stonecutting implements, milling tools, the remains of two houses, and charcoal from long-ago campfires have been discovered. Since at least 2,500 years up until a century ago, the Sinkyone and Mattole peoples lived permanently along this vast seaside stretch, though other groups came here seasonally when the valleys inland roasted in 100-degree heat. The living was easy, with abundant seafood a dietary staple.

The beaches fringing the King Range were sacred to the Mattole. Descendants talk about the legendary wreck of a Spanish ship along the coast from which the locals retrieved triangular gold coins for their children to play with. The coins were lost, however, when their caves along the coast collapsed after the 1906 earthquake.

Getting Here (and Not Getting Lost)

Visiting the Lost Coast requires first getting there, something of a challenge. Roads here are not for the faint of heart nor anyone with an unreliable vehicle. Unpaved roads are rough and rugged even under the best weather conditions; some wags refer to driving the area as “car hiking.” Though Lost Coast road signs usually disappear as fast as they go up (the locals’ way of sending a message), existing signs that state Steep Grade—Narrow Road: Campers and Trailers Not Advised roughly translate as “Prepare to drive off the end of the earth, then dive blindly into a fogbank.”

King Range. Photo by Bob Wick for the Bureau of Land Management/ CC BY 2.0.

From Humboldt Redwoods State Park, take Bull Creek Rd. west through the park and over the rugged mountains down to Honeydew. There turn north on Mattole Rd. and continue north to Petrolia, near the north end of the King Range National Conservation Area. Lost Coast hikers “going the distance” south along the King Range beaches to Shelter Cove often start outside Petrolia, near the squat old lighthouse (reached via Lighthouse Road). Arrange a shuttle system, with pickup at Shelter Cove, to keep it a one-way trip (paid shuttle services are available).

The easiest path to the sea is steep, narrow, and serpentine Shelter Cove Rd., which ends up at the hamlet of Shelter Cove, roughly midway down the Lost Coast; from Garberville, take Frontage Rd. one mile to Redway, and go west 26 miles on Briceland/Shelter Cove Road. Off of this road, you can turn north on wild Wilder Ridge Rd., which connects with Mattole Rd. near Honeydew, or turn south on either Briceland Rd. or Chemise Mountain Rd. to reach Sinkyone Wilderness (the last nine miles are unpaved, 4WD-only in winter and never suitable for RVs or trailers). At Four Corners junction, you can take Bear Harbor Rd. down to the ocean at Needle Rock and Bear Harbor, or head south on Usal Rd., which eventually joins Hwy. 1.

If you’re coming north from the Mendocino area vua Hwy. 1, get to Sinkyone Wilderness via Usal Rd., which turns north off Hwy. 1 a few miles north of Rockport (watch carefully—it’s easy to miss).

The King Range

The northern reaches of the Lost Coast take in the King Range Conservation Area, and stretch 35 miles from south of the Mattole River to Whale Gulch. Most people come here to “beach backpack,” hiking north to south in deference to prevailing winds. The trailhead begins near the mouth of the Mattole River. Get there from Mattole Rd. near Petrolia via Lighthouse Rd., then head south on foot. After about three miles, you’ll come to the relict Punta Gorda light station; the rocks nearby harbor a seabird colony and a rookery for Steller’s sea lions. You can hike all the way south to Shelter Cove, a two- or three-day trip one-way (five days roundtrip), but a longer trek if you head on to Sinkyone.

Shelter Cove. Photo by Rene Rivers/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The trail saunters along miles of sandy beaches, around some tremendous tidepools, and up onto headlands to bypass craggy coves. In wintry weather it’s quite the wild walk (check conditions before setting out); in any season, watch for rattlesnakes on rocks or draped over driftwood. Between self-protective downward glances, look around to appreciate some of the impressive shipwrecks scattered along the way. Also just offshore in proper season are gray whales, killer whales, porpoises, and harbor seals. Inland, forming an almost animate wall of resistance, are the mountains, their severity thinly disguised by redwoods and Douglas fir, forest meadows, chaparral scrub, and spring wildflowers. Make camp on high ground well back from the restless ocean, and always adhere to the backpacker’s credo: if you pack it in, pack it out.

Sinkyone Wilderness

Sinking into Sinkyone is like blinking away all known life in order to finally see. Named for the Sinkyone people, who refused to abandon their traditional culture and hire on elsewhere as day laborers, this place somehow still honors that indomitable spirit.

Visitor Center, Sinkyone Wilderness. Photo by Rene Rivers/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

At Sinkyone Wilderness State Park jagged peaks plunge into untouched tidepools where sea lions and seals play. Unafraid here, wildlife sputters, flutters, or leaps forth at every opportunity. The land seems lusher, greener, with dark virgin forests of redwoods and mixed conifers, rich grassland meadows, waterfalls, fern grottos. The one thing trekkers won’t find (yet) among these 7,367 wild acres is a vast trail system. Many miles of the coast are accessible to hikers, though, and the trail system includes a north/south trail and some logging roads. Sinkyone Wilderness State Park is always open for day use, and also offers scattered primitive campsites.

It’s not as if there are no redwoods before you get to Humboldt and Del Norte Counties. Stranded stands of coast redwoods can be found along the Central Coast, in protected, wetter areas as far as the southernmost reaches of Big Sur. But here, along the North Coast, is where the tribe truly thrives. They once numbered an estimated two million, but even here the native population of coastal redwood trees has been reduced through logging and agricultural clearing to isolated groves of virgin trees. The tallest trees in the state but only the fourth oldest, survivors of the species Sequoia sempervirens are nonetheless ancient. Well established here when dinosaurs roamed the earth, redwood predecessors flourished throughout the Northern Hemisphere 60 million years ago. Redwoods made their last stand in California, isolated from the rest of their kind by thick ice sheets a million years ago. Here in northeastern California is where they still stand.

The Trees That Live Forever

Elders among today’s coastal redwoods are at least 2,200 years old. These trees thrive in low, foggy areas protected from fierce offshore winds. Vulnerable both to wind and soil erosion, shallow-rooted redwoods tend to topple over during severe storms. These giants have no need for deep taproots. During dry seasons fog collects on their needle-like leaves, then drips down the trunk or directly onto the ground, where the fog-equivalent of up to 50 inches of rainfall annually is absorbed by hundreds of square feet of surface roots. That’s in addition to seasonal rainfall, which can be substantial.

Unlike the stately, individualistic Sierra big trees or Sequoiadendron giganteum, comparatively scrawny coastal redwoods (still, some are truly huge) reach up to the sky in dense, dark-green clusters—creating living, breathing cathedrals lit by filtered flames of sun or shrouded in fog. The north coast’s native peoples religiously avoided inner forest areas, the abode of spirits (some ancestral). But in the modern world, the sacred has become profane. A single coast redwood provides enough lumber for hundreds of hot tubs, patio decks, and wine vats, or a couple of dozen family cabins, or a hefty school complex. Aside from its attractive reddish color, pungent fragrance, and water- and fire-resistance, redwood is also decay-, insect-, and fungus-resistant—making it all the more attractive for human purposes.

On the Boy Scout Tree Trail, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. Photo by Miguel Vieira/ CC BY 2.0.

Trees may be “harvested” and then trucked off to sawmills, but coast redwoods never really die. Left to their own devices, redwoods are capable of regenerating themselves without seeds. New young trees shoot up from stumps or from roots around the base of the old tree, forming gigantic woodland fairy rings in second- or third-growth forests. And each of these trees, when mature, can generate its own genetically identical offspring. Sometimes a large, straight limb from a fallen tree will sprout, sending up a straight line of trees. In heavily logged or otherwise traumatized forest areas, tiny winged redwood seeds find room to take root, sprout, and eventually flourish, blending into a forest with stump-regenerated trees.

Head to Humboldt Redwoods State Park and Redwood National Park to learn more about California’s amazing coast redwoods.

Surviving on Shaky Ground

Even survivors as ingenious as coast redwoods can be brought down by unexpected trouble, of course—just like north coast settlements, which also tend to sprout up in valleys and other inland areas protected from the gale-force storms that pound the western edge of the continent.

But some of these areas, including those near the Eel, Garcia, and Mad Rivers, parallel major northwesterly earthquake fault zones. As it turns out, even the redwoods, those gentle giants of the North Coast, stand on shaky ground. The seismically active San Andreas Fault (responsible for San Francisco’s devastating earthquake and fire in 1906 and again in 1989) runs north from the Bay Area on the seaward side of the mountains before veering back out to sea at Point Arena. Other faults related to the 1992 Eureka-area quake cluster farther north.

According to recent geologic speculations, a massive earthquake is likely somewhere along the Pacific Northwest’s offshore Cascadia subduction zone within the next 50-150 years. Such a quake, expected to register as high as 9.5 on the “energy magnitude” scale (considered more accurate than the Richter scale for major quakes), could occur anywhere from Vancouver Island in British Columbia to Mendocino in California. This event would be more powerful than any earthquake the San Andreas Fault could generate, much more powerful than any quake ever measured in the mainland U.S., and roughly equal in destructive force to Chile’s 1960 earthquake (the 20th century’s most devastating).

The James Irvine Trail. Photo by Justin Kern/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Before arriving at this ominous conclusion, Humboldt State University geologists studied the Little Salmon Fault near Eureka. Their preliminary findings, announced in 1987 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, suggest that the fault slipped 30-33 feet in separate earthquakes occurring roughly every 500 years during the past half-million years—facts pointing to quakes of “awesome, incomprehensible” power.

Hwy 1 just North of Elk, South of Mendocino. Photo by Jack French/ CC BY-NC 2.0.

The Gualala River forms the boundary between Sonoma and Mendocino Counties. Travelers heading north will find that most Bay Area weekenders have by now tailed off, leaving this stretch of coast highway for the locals and long-haul travelers. It’s a little greener (and wetter) here than in Sonoma County, but the crescent coves and pocket beaches you appreciated along the wild Sonoma Coast continue north across the county line, one after the next, like a string of pearls. 

Though people in the area generally say whatever they please, Gualala is supposedly pronounced Wah-LAH-lah, the word itself Spanish for the Pomos’ wala’li or “meeting place of the waters.” The Gualala area is also known as the north coast’s “banana belt,” due to its relatively temperate, fog-free climate. At its heart is secluded Anchor Bay, just north of Gualala, enormously popular with rumrunners during Prohibition. If you’re not just blasting through town, check out the Gualala Arts Center galleries and studios on the old state highway (follow the signs), to see what’s up. Since 1961 Gualala Arts has served up a year-round menu of art, music, and theater. The center’s Dolphin Gallery downtown is open daily 10-4 and also serves as the Gualala Visitors’ Center. Also notable in the area is onion-domed St. Orres.

Mendocino Coast. Photo by Abe Kleinfeld/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Farther north is remote Point Arena, now an official city, but “discovered” by Capt. George Vancouver in 1792. Another good spot for whale-watching—and the first mainland outpost of the very new California Coastal National Monument, created in March 2014 by President Obama under the Antiquities Act. Point Arena was the busiest port between San Francisco and Eureka in the 1870s. When the local pier was wiped out by rogue waves in 1983, the already depressed local fishing and logging economy took yet another dive. But today Point Arena has a new pier—folks can fish here without a license—and a new economic boon: the sea urchin harvest, to satisfy the Japanese taste for uni.

The 1908 Point Arena Lighthouse, a monument to the area’s historically impressive ship graveyard, is open to visitors (museum, tours) and also offers accommodations year-round in fully furnished former U.S. Coast Guard houses onsite. Adjacent to Point Arena is the southern part of 5,272-acre Manchester State Park, with its five miles of beaches and sand dunes plus lagoon, salmon fishing, and camping, though due to budget constraints some facilities may be closed. Things are molre excitying around here than they seem, by the way, because right here is where the San Andreas Fault leaves the mainland and plunges into the sea. Next north is tiny Elk, once a lumber-loading port known as Greenwood, hence Greenwood Creek Beach State Park across from the store, with good picnicking among the bluff pines. This is also a popular push-off point for sea kayakers.

MENDOCINO & FORT BRAGG

People just love Mendocino. They love it for a variety of reasons. Some are smitten by the town’s Cape Cod architecture, admittedly a bit odd on the California side of the continent. The seaside saltbox look of the 19th-century wood-frame homes here, explained by the fact that the original settlers were predominantly lumbermen from Maine, is one reason the entire town is included on the National Register of Historic Places. Others love Mendocino for its openly artistic attitude. Of course, almost everyone loves the town’s spectacular setting at the mouth of Big River—and at the edge of one of the most sublime coastlines in California.

Begonia season at Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens. Photo by Jinx McCombs/ CC BY-ND 2.0.

In the 1950s, when nearby forests had been logged over and the lumbermill was gone, and the once bad and bawdy doghole port of Mendocino City was fading fast, the artists arrived. Living out the idea of making this coastal backwater home were prominent San Francisco painters like Dorr Bothwell, Emmy Lou Packard, and Bill Zacha, who in 1959 founded the still-strongMendocino Art Center. Soon all the arts were in full bloom on these blustery bluffs, and the town had come alive.

But in recent years the costs of living and doing business in Mendocino have gotten so high that most of Mendocino’s artists live and work elsewhere, including nearby Fort Bragg, which is where you need to go anyway for hardware and groceries and other practical day-to-day items. Though many fine artists, craftspeople, performers, and writers work throughout Mendocino County, most art, crafts, and consumables sold in Mendocino shops are imported from elsewhere. (There are exceptions.) During peak tourist season even finding a local place to park is nearly impossible in Mendocino, a town too beautiful for its own good. But once you parked, leave your car; you can get around fine without it. Well worth it in Mendocino is taking at look at local historic buildings; start at the Ford House interpretive center, near the public restrooms on the seaward side of Main. Another don’t-miss: a stroll out on theMendocino Headlands, one of many wonderful natural areas protected as state parks.

Not counting Garberville, Fort Bragg north of Mendocino is the last community of any size before you get to Eureka. Mendocino’s working-class sister city to the north was named after a fort built there in 1855 for protection against hostile natives. Fort Bragg is now unpretentious home to working (and unemployed) loggers and millworkers, an active fishing fleet, and many of Mendocino’s working artists and much of their work. This friendly town offers an array of relatively urban services and amenities not found in smaller Mendocino.

Those in the know head for Fort Bragg’s Glass Beach. Photo by Matthew Lee High/ CC BY-NC 2.0.

Here is some of the colorful glass and sand and pebbles on Glass Beach. Photo by Matthew Lee High/CC BY-NC 2.0.

Everyone loves Fort Bragg’s Skunk Train train trip to Willits and back. For the local version of redwood logging history, as told through photos, artifacts, and tree-mining memorabilia, be sure to stop by the 1892 redwood Guest House Museum on Main, an attractive mansion once used as a guest house for friends and customers of local Union Pacific Lumber execs. The only remaining fort building from the original Fort Bragg stands a block east of the Guest House on Franklin Street. Beyond the downtown galleries and shops—don’t miss the Northcoast Artists Gallery on Main—worth a visit here are the nonprofit 47-acre Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens on the highway just south of town. In addition to inspiring coastal views here you’ll find native plant communities as well as formal plantings of rhododendrons, azaleas, fuchsias, and other regional favorites. Closer in, at the south end of Fort Bragg proper, is Noyo Harbor, with its surviving fishing fleet and fun fish restaurants. Just north of Fort Bragg is Glass Beach, where if you’re lucky you might find a Japanese fishing float or an occasional something from a shipwreck.

MENDOCINO AREA STATE PARKS

If you like getting out and about outdoors, Mendocino and vicinity will inspire you, offering kayaking, hiking, and biking possibilities as well as beachcombing and other contemplative options. The local state parks are a great place to start appreciating this place.

Mendocino Headlands State Park in Mendocino proper is a gift from William Penn Mott, the state’s former director of Parks and Recreation, who quietly acquired Mendocino’s entire coastal frontage by trading Boise Cascade some equally valuable timberlands in nearby Jackson State Forest. The impressive sea stacks here and elsewhere along this coast are all that remain of sandstone headlands after eons of ocean erosion. Curving seaward around the town from Big River to the northern end of Heeser Drive, the park includes a three-mile hiking trail, a small beach along the mouth of Big River (trailheads and parking on Hwy. 1, just north of the bridge), sandstone bluffs, the area’s notorious wave tunnels, offshore islands and narrows, and good tidepools. Great whale-watching in winter.

Fern Canyon, Van Damme State Park in Little River. Photo by David McSpadden/ CC BY 2.0.

Small Van Damme State Park just south of Mendocino is one of the finer things about this stretch of the coast, offering excellent and convenient and a five-mile-long preserve around Little River’s watershed. Squeezed into a lush ravine of second-growth mixed redwood forest, Van Damme’s pride is its Fern Canyon Trail.

Russian Gulch State Park just north of Mendocino (good camping here too) locates another days-past doghole port. Russian Gulch is 1,200 acres of diverse redwood forests in a canyon thick with rhododendrons, azaleas, berry bushes, and ferns; coastal headlands painted in spring with wildflowers; and a broad bay with tidepools and sandy beach, perfect for scuba diving. Great bird and whale-watching, some good long hikes. Especially fabulous during a strong spring storm is the flower-lined cauldron of Devil’s Punch Bowl in the middle of a meadow on the northern headlands. A portion of this 200-foot wave tunnel collapsed, forming an inland blowhole, but the devil’s brew won’t blast through unless the sea bubbles and boils.

Point Cabrillo Light Station, fog beacon. Photo by Howard Ignatius/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The Caspar Headlands and Point Cabrillo Light Station a couple miles north of Russian Gulch are hemmed in by housing. Miles of state beaches are open to the public, though, from sunrise to sunset—perfect for whale-watching. The headlands are accessible only by permit (free, available at Russian Gulch). The historic 300-acre Point Cabrillo Light Station and Preserve are open daily to pedestrians (no dogs) and even offers accommodations.

For serious naturalists, the “ecological staircase” hike at Jug Handle State Reserve just north of Caspar is well worth a few hours of wandering. The staircase itself is a series of uplifted marine terraces, each 100 feet higher than the last, crafted by nature. The fascination here is the change associated with each step up the earth ladder, expressed by distinctive plants that also slowly change the environment, starting with what was once a sand and gravel beach in its infancy, some 100,000 years ago, now home to salt-tolerant and wind-resistant wildflowers. (Underwater just offshore is an embryonic new terrace in the very slow process of being born from the sea.) A conifer forest of Sitka spruce, Bishop pine, fir, and hemlock dominates the second terrace, redwoods and Douglas fir the third. Jug Handle is an example of Mendocino’s amazing ecological place in the scheme of things, since the area is essentially a biological borderline for many tree species. Metaphorically speaking, Alaska meets Mexico when Sitka spruce and Bishop pine grow side by side. The phenomenon of the hardpan-hamperedMendocino pygmy forest starts on the third step, transitioning back into old-dune pine forests, then more pygmy forest on the fourth step. At the top of the stairs on the final half-million-year-old step, are more pygmy trees, these giving ground to redwoods.

Bordering Jug Handle on the east is Jackson State Forest, a 46,000-acre demonstration forest named after Jacob Green Jackson, founder of the Caspar Lumber Company. Extending east along the South Fork of the Noyo River and Hwy. 20, the Jackson Forest (logged since the 1850s) offers picnic and camping areas and almost unlimited trails for biking, hiking, and horseback riding. The Mendocino Woodlands State Park and Outdoor Center is entwined with Jackson State Forest. This woodsy 1930s-vintage camp facility—group camping only—is actually three separate facilities and some 200 buildings constructed of wood and stone by federal Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps workers. For more information about this National Historic Landmark, contact the nonprofit Mendocino Woodlands Camp Association. Directly south of Jackson State Forest and Mendocino Woodlands is the region’s newest reserve, Big River State Park, a work in progress.

MacKerricher State Park is a gorgeous stretch of ocean and forested coastal prairie that starts three miles north of Fort Bragg and continues northward for seven miles. Down on the beach, you can stroll for hours past white-sand beaches, black-sand beaches, remote dunes, sheer cliffs and headlands, offshore islands, pounding surf, rocky outcroppings, and abundant tidepools. Or you can stay up atop the low bluff paralleling the shore, where you’ll revel in great ocean views and, in spring, an abundance of delicate, butterfly-speckled wildflowers—baby blue eyes, sea pinks, buttercups, and wild iris.

The park’s usage is de facto separated into two areas: the tourist area (crowded) and the locals’ areas (desolate). Tourist usage centers around the park’s little Lake Cleone, a fishable freshwater lagoon near the campground and picnic area with a wheelchair-accessible boardwalk; waterfowl from Mono Lake often winter at the lake. Nearby are a picturesque crescent beach pounded by a thundering shore break, and the Laguna Point>day-use area (wheelchair accessible), a popular place for watching whales offshore and harbor seals onshore. (Another great local spot for whale-watching is Todd’s Point south of the Noyo Bridge, then west on Ocean View). That’s the tourist’s MacKerricher. Not bad. And most visitors to the park don’t venture far from it.

Mendocino Sunset, north of Fort Bragg. Photo by Joe Parks/ CC BY-NC 2.0.

Locals and savvy passersby enjoy in blissful, meditative solitude in extensive areas to the south and north, which are connected to the lake/campground area by the walkable, bikable eight-mile-long Old Haul Road. Once used by logging trucks, the now-abandoned haul road parallels the shore from Pudding Creek Beach in the south to Ten Mile River in the north. The fine campgrounds at MacKerricher are woven into open woods of beach, Monterey, and Bishop pines.

BEYOND MENDOCINO & FORT BRAGG: GREATER MENDOCINO

Given Mendocino’s proximity to, and dependence on, a number of nearby coastal communities, any visit to Mendocino also includes the coastline for about 10 miles in either direction. The Mendocino Coast business, arts, and entertainment communities are so intertwined that they share a single visitors bureau.

Approximately halfway between Mendocino and Fort Bragg lies the little hamlet of Caspar,which makes Mendocino look like the big city. Just north of Fort Bragg is tiny Cleone. Just a few miles south of Mendocino, near Van Damme State Park, is Little River, a burg boasting its own post office but most famous for the long-running Little River Inn that stands tall by the highway. A bit farther south is Albion, a miniscule coastal hamlet straddling the mouth of the Albion River—a natural harbor supporting a small fishing fleet. From just south of Albion and inland via Hwy. 128 is the inviting Anderson Valley and tiny town of Boonville, once known for its sleepy rural attractions and Boontling dialect, now a destination for fine wines and craft beer.

For more information about Mendocino, Fort Bragg and environs, contact Visit Mendocino County.