Tall Trees Grove

In 1963 Paul Zahl, a senior scientist at the National Geographic Society, followed loggers' talk of great timber into this bend of Redwood Creek and found a grove of giants on land owned by the Arcata Redwood Company. One of them, measured that year at about 368 feet, was the tallest tree then known anywhere. The stand had been called the Arco Grove of Giants, and the record tree was named for the company's president, Howard Libbey.

The find landed in the middle of a long argument over where a national redwood park should go, and a world record standing in a working timber forest made the case for Redwood Creek hard to set aside. When Congress created the park in 1968, the grove was inside it.

Records do not last in redwoods. The Libbey Tree's top later broke, others passed it, and in 2006 two naturalists measured Hyperion, elsewhere in the park, at more than 379 feet. Its location spread online, visitors trampled the ground bare around it, and in 2022 the park closed the area, with a fine of up to $5,000 and six months in jail. The Park Service would rather you came here: the Libbey Tree still stands on the loop, and the grove holds trees nearly as tall.

The trail drops about 800 feet over two miles to the creek, and the climb back is all of it. Access is by permit, to limit numbers.