Moss covers a twisted tree near Redwood Creek.
Redwood trees once grew all over the Northern Hemisphere. They have lived on the California coast for the last 20 million years, providing a link to the Age of Dinosaurs. As recently as 1850, more than two million acres of old-growth covered this coastline where fog supplies up to one third of their annual water. Today, Redwood National and State Parks protect less than 39,000 acres of old-growth forest, representing 45% of all remaining coastal redwoods. They are some of the oldest trees in the world, many of which have been growing here for more than 2,000 years. If they could speak they’d tell stories of times long before Christopher Columbus discovered America. These are the tallest trees in the world. Some appear to scratch the sky, towering more than 370 feet into the air; at 379-feet, Hyperion is the tallest of them all. Credit bark more than 12 inches thick infused with tannin, providing protection from disease, insects, and fire. Roots, no deeper than 10 – 13 feet but up to 80-feet long, support these monsters more than 22-feet in diameter at their base and weighing up to 500 tons. Until prospectors and loggers arrived on the scene the only threat to the mighty redwood was itself. They simply grew too big and too tall for their shallow roots, planted in wet soil to support themselves against the winds off the Pacific Ocean.
By the 1850s strong winds weren’t the only threat these majestic giants faced. Jedediah Smith, trapper and explorer, was the first non-Native to reach California’s northern coast by land in 1828. More than two decades later gold was found along the Trinity River. In 1850, settlers established the boom town of Eureka and miners steadily displaced Native Americans who had lived there for the past 3,000 years, longer than the oldest trees of the redwood forests. The Yurok, Tolowa, Karok, Chilula, and Wiyot Indian tribes all resided in the region. They used fallen redwoods for boats, houses, and small villages. Deer, elk, fish, nuts, berries, and seeds provided more than enough food to sustain tribes as large as 55 villages and 2,500 people. After two minor gold booms went bust, settlers who had forced the Natives out searching for gold now had to seek something else, a new way to earn wages.
Gold fever became redwood fever, and more settlers were drawn to the area to exploit a seemingly endless supply of colossal trees. Harvested trees helped boost the rapid development of West Coast cities like San Francisco. In 1918, conservationists, appalled by the swaths of clear-cut coastal lands, formed the Save-the-Redwoods League. They drummed up support, which ultimately led to establishment of Prairie Creek, Del Norte Coast, and Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Parks. At the same time US-101, which would provide unprecedented access to untouched stands of coastal redwoods, was under construction. Conservationists spent the next four decades requesting the creation of Redwood National Park. Demand for lumber during WWII delayed the park’s creation, but finally, in the 1960s, the Save-the-Redwoods League, Sierra Club, and National Geographic Society made one last push for a national park. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. At the time more than 90% of old-growth forests had been logged.
Some of the trees have been saved. Indians still live among nature’s sacred giants, even though treaties establishing reservations for the displaced Natives were never ratified. They perform traditional ceremonies, hunt and fish, and speak their native language. Guests are left awestruck by the soaring timber, sharing the same spiritual connection between nature and man. Hollywood has helped create a more tangible connection between man, nature, and the Age of Dinosaurs. Redwood Forest served as backdrop for Steven Spielberg’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park. Another Spielberg flick, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi—a movie set “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away”—was also filmed here. Let’s hope Redwood National Park goes back to the future, looking more like it did in 1850 than 1950.