Sue-meg State Park

This forested headland north of Trinidad has always been Sue-meg to the Yurok people, many of whom have family ties to the village here reaching back beyond memory. For most of a century the state called it something else. When it acquired the land in 1930 it kept the name already in use, Patrick's Point, after Patrick Beegan, an Irish immigrant who briefly claimed the point in the nineteenth century and who, according to the state parks department, was accused of murdering Native people.

In 1990 Yurok craftspeople and the park built Sumêg Village together: redwood plank family houses, sweathouses, a dance house and changing houses. It is not a stage set. Yurok families have held Brush Dances here, and the village is used for ceremony and for teaching.

In January 2021 the Yurok Tribe asked the state to restore the name, and on September 30, 2021, the State Park and Recreation Commission voted unanimously to rename the park Sue-meg. It was the first park renamed under California's effort to re-examine the names on its public places.

The village is a working cultural site; follow the guidance posted there. The rest of the park is rock headlands, Agate Beach below the bluffs, and short forest trails.