Redwood National and State Parks

In 1918 paleontologists wanting to save the Coast Redwoods as a living link to our evolutionary past campaigned nationally to protect the trees. Three California redwoods state parks resulted: Prairie Creek (1923), Del Norte (1925), and Jedediah Smith (1929). To preserve the trees’ natural Coast Range setting and associated plants and animals, Redwood National Park was created in 1968 and expanded in 1978. The national park boundary encircled the three state parks to better protect superlative ancient redwood forests. In 1994 the National Park Service and California Department of Parks and Recreation began managing the parklands cooperatively, aiming to manage the parks the same.

Redwood National and State Parks holds 130,000 acres of forests, rivers, prairies, and rugged coastline, including 40,000 acres of old-growth redwood forests. Today, the Parks’ boundary extends from Crescent City, CA to just south of Orick, CA.

We visited Redwood National and State Parks in October 2024 while staying at the Rambling Redwoods RV Park in Crescent City, California at its northernmost end. We made a couple of visits to the park during our stay. The first visit was to Jedediah Smith State Park near Crescent City. During the second visit we drove most of the length of the park from north to south on the CA-101 with a detour along the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway.

Our visit to Jedediah Smith State Park started at the Hiouchi Visitor Center, a short drive from the RV park and just outside Crescent City. At the visitor center we were given printed directions to get to Howland Hill Road, a 10-mile narrow scenic drive which winds through the giant Redwoods and includes numerous pull-outs to allow vehicles to pass, and trailheads along the way, including the Boy Scout Tree Trail , Stout Grove, and Grove of the Titans Trail. Portions of Howland Hill Road were unpaved, but the road was readily passable by any passenger vehicle, although it was so winding and narrow that we rarely exceeded 15 mph along the road. The drive was spectacular, with giant redwoods literally inches from the road on each side, and shafts of light shining dramatically through the tree canopy.

We decided to take the Grove of the Titans Trail about half-way along Howland Hill Road. This trail was completed in summer 2022 to allow sustainable access to a group of ancient redwood trees named for their remarkable shape and size. The grove contains many tall and wide redwoods with complex features and fascinating adaptations. The trail was a 1.5-mile out and back trail with a small loop at the end. There were many awe-inspiring giant trees along this trail and some of the fallen trees were just as spectacular and interesting as the living ones. After our visit to the Grove of Titans, we completed the Howland Hill Road drive back to Crescent City.

For our second trip into the park, we drove the CA-101 most of the length of the park from north to south with a detour along the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway. The Scenic Parkway is a 10-mile section of two lane highway that bypasses a section of CA-101 through the heart of the old-growth redwood forest in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. North to south, features include numerous trailheads, Big Tree Wayside, Prairie Creek Visitor Center, and Elk Prairie Campground.

As we continued along the Scenic Parkway, we stopped at the Big Tree Wayside area. This is an easy walk to stunning old-growth redwood trees. A viewing platform and interpretive signage was located around the “Big Tree”, said to be one of the oldest in the park with a height estimated to be 286-feet and a diameter of 25-feet. We took a short circle trail next to the big tree that took us through even more spectacular Giant Redwood specimens.

One of the highlights of this visit were the herds of Roosevelt Elk that live around the Elk Prairie area. We were able to watch the Elk as we picnicked at the Elk Meadow picnic area, and then again at the Elk Prairie area a short distance along the scenic parkway. These large Elk were quite majestic as they relaxed in the meadows.

We ended our trip at the Thomas H. Kuchel Visitor Center, located on the Pacific Coast. Exiting the back-door of the visitor center directly onto a sandy beach covered in driftwood, we were met with spectacular views up and down the coast, accompanied by the white breakers reflecting the low afternoon sun.

We really enjoyed our time in the Redwoods. There was a real sense of timelessness amongst trees that have been here for up to 2000 years, and gratitude for the work that has been put-in by the Park Services and others to protect the ancient forests and surrounding areas.

Photos of our visit are provided below. Click on the thumbnails to view the photos.