Redwood National Park – California TourDay 3 of our California Tour takes us to Redwood National Park. Most people know Redwood as home to the tallest trees on Earth. But the Parks also protect vast prairies, oak woodlands, wild rivers, and 40 miles of rugged coastline.
The Redwood National and State Parks are a complex of one national park and three state parks, cooperatively managed, located along the coast of northern California. Comprising Redwood National Park (established 1968) and California’s State Parks: Del Norte Coast, Jedediah Smith and Prairie Creek (dating from the 1920s), the combined parks contain 139,000 acres and feature old-growth temperate rainforests.
When western expansion met the redwoods in the 1800s, the trees began to fall under saw and axe. The massive redwoods offered early settlers a seemingly inexhaustible lumber supply. However, within a hundred-year span, the vast forests were reduced to a fraction of their former range. By the early 1900s, it was apparent that the future of the old-growth redwood forest was in doubt.
Thanks to the visionary actions of the Save-the-Redwoods League, the redwoods received the protection they needed. Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park were created by the State of California in the 1920s to protect some of the finest remaining examples of coastal redwoods.
