I don’t have time to wax poet­ic­ally about how the red­woods are beau­ti­ful and majestic (they are both), or to elab­or­ate on the history of the region, from the First Nations who lived within this rich eco­sys­tem to the clear-cutting loggers who dev­ast­ated it—or even the first-round con­ser­va­tion­ists who worked to protect what remains.

Wikipedia can help us though:

In 1850, old-growth redwood forest covered more than 2,000,000 acres (8,100 km²) of the California coast. The north­ern portion of that area, ori­gin­ally inhab­ited by Native Americans, attrac­ted many lum­ber­men and others turned gold miners when a minor gold rush brought them to the region. Failing in efforts to strike it rich in gold, these men turned toward har­vest­ing the giant trees^[4] for booming devel­op­ment in San Francisco and other places on the West Coast. After many decades of unob­struc­ted clear-cut logging, serious efforts toward con­ser­va­tion began. By the 1920s the work of the Save-the-Redwoods League, founded in 1918 to pre­serve remain­ing old-growth red­woods, res­ul­ted in the estab­lish­ment of Prairie Creek, Del Norte Coast, and Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Parks among others. Redwood National Park was created in 1968, by which time nearly 90% of the ori­ginal redwood trees had been logged. The National Park Service (NPS) and the California Department of Parks and Recreation (CDPR) admin­is­trat­ively com­bined Redwood National Park with the three abut­ting Redwood State Parks in 1994 for the purpose of cooper­at­ive forest man­age­ment and sta­bil­iz­a­tion of forests and water­sheds as a single unit.^[5]

I also don’t have the know­ledge to describe the myriad species that live within this pro­tec­ted area (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), but that info is out there for our nerdiest friends to find.

We only spent a morning walking and driving through the forest, so I’m no expert. But what I can say is that it was great.

- Chris

Biggest clovers I’ve ever seen. No four-leafers though...

Some park workers were repla­cing the plat­form around Big Tree. I’m pretty sure the big fella was mad at them for tor­tur­ing it’s brethren.