The Klamath River meeting the Pacific, seen south from the Klamath River Overlook: a long sand spit closing across the river mouth below a forested headland, sea stacks offshore and green scrub on the slope in the foreground.
Zandcee / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
California · Region

The Redwood Coast

The redwood coast from Leggett to Oregon — the Avenue of the Giants, Humboldt Bay, Trinidad, Redwood National and State Parks and Crescent City, in Wiyot, Yurok and Tolowa Dee-ni' country, with the roadless Lost Coast to the west.

9 places to explore

In 1850 old-growth redwood stood on some two million acres of the northern California coast. By the time Congress created Redwood National Park in 1968, roughly nine in ten of those trees had been cut, and the 1978 expansion bought mostly clear-cuts to heal rather than groves to keep. The four parks between Orick and the Smith River, managed jointly by the state and the Park Service, now hold close to half of the old growth that is left.

The peoples of this coast were here long before the logging and are here after it. The Sinkyone and Mattole held the shore the highway never reached; the Wiyot, Humboldt Bay; the Yurok, the lower Klamath and the coast from Trinidad north; the Tolowa Dee-ni', the Smith River country. In February 1860 men from around the bay killed Wiyot families at Tuluwat, on an island in the bay, during the World Renewal Ceremony. In 2019 the city of Eureka deeded the island back. In 2024 the last of four dams came off the Klamath — the largest dam removal in the country's history, after two decades of pressure from the Yurok and their upriver neighbours.

US-101 picks up where Highway 1 gives out, at Leggett, and follows the Eel River north. The Avenue of the Giants keeps to the old highway through Humboldt Redwoods; then come Humboldt Bay's two towns, Eureka and Arcata, Trinidad on its headland, the elk meadows at Orick, Klamath and Crescent City, and the Oregon line. West of the road lies the Lost Coast. The state drew a coastal highway through it in the 1930s and never built it; in 1984 it moved the end of Highway 1 to Leggett for good, and Shelter Cove and Petrolia are still reached by winding mountain roads.

What to See in The Redwood Coast

9 places across the region, grouped by what they are.

Natural Areas

Still water at the southern end of Arcata Marsh mirroring a grey sky, a low line of hills on the far shore and arching grass stems along the near bank.

Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary

Arcata

A wildlife sanctuary that is also the town's sewage works, because Arcata turned down the state's plan.

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Fern Canyon in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park: sheer walls covered in five-finger and sword ferns on either side of a flat gravel creek bed, a fallen log lying across it.

Gold Bluffs Beach and Fern Canyon

Orick

A beach that set off a gold stampede in 1850, and the fern-walled slot a creek has cut through the same bluffs.

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Old-growth redwoods in Rockefeller Forest standing in mist, massive trunks receding into haze, fallen logs lying across the flat forest floor in front.

Rockefeller Forest

Weott

Generally counted the largest old-growth redwood forest left, bought in 1931 and nearly lost anyway to logging on the slopes above it.

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A trail through Stout Memorial Grove on the Smith River flat, straight redwood trunks rising from an open floor of sword ferns, a fallen log lying beyond the path.

Stout Memorial Grove

Hiouchi

A lumberman's memorial made of the kind of forest his company cut, kept open underneath by the river's floods.

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Looking straight up the trunks of redwoods in Tall Trees Grove, the furrowed bark converging toward a green canopy far overhead.

Tall Trees Grove

Orick

Where a 1963 measurement found the world's tallest known tree on timber company land, and helped decide where a national park would go.

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Historic Sites

The Carson Mansion in Eureka under a clear blue sky: a green Queen Anne house of towers, gables and turned porches rising behind clipped shrubs and lawn, with an ornate iron fence along the brick sidewalk in front.

Carson Mansion

Eureka

The house Eureka's biggest lumberman began in 1884 on the bluff above his own mill, and the story told about why.

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Aerial view north-northwest over Crescent City harbor: a long breakwater curling out from a rocky point, the boat basin and docks inside it at right, the curve of the bay and the town grid behind.

Crescent City Harbor

Crescent City

The harbor the Pacific aims its tsunamis at, rebuilt after 2011 to ride the next one out.

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A dirt path winding between tall redwood trunks in Founders Grove, Humboldt Redwoods State Park, with ferns and sorrel low on the forest floor and light coming through the high canopy.

Founders Grove

Weott

A grove named for three men who saved redwoods and preached race science, and the trailside sign that now says both.

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A steep rock headland at Sue-meg State Park topped with trees, falling to boulders and white surf at its foot, with the ocean running north under a clear sky.

Sue-meg State Park

Trinidad

A Yurok place that carried a settler's name for ninety years and took its own back in 2021.

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Scenic Drives through The Redwood Coast

Scenic Byway

U.S. 101: The Wild Rivers Crossing

From Crescent City north across the Oregon line, through the Boardman corridor and over the Rogue at Gold Beach, to Port Orford, Cape Blanco and Bandon.

109 mi · 2.5 hrs
Scenic Byway

US-101: The Redwood Coast

One hundred and ninety-six miles from Leggett to the Oregon line — the Avenue of the Giants, Humboldt Bay's two towns, Sue-meg and the Orick elk country, Tall Trees Grove, Fern Canyon, and Crescent City on the Smith River.

196 mi · 4.5 hrs

Stories from The Redwood Coast

History

The Debt on the Forest

For decades Pacific Lumber cut its redwoods slowly enough to keep cutting them. In 1986 a Houston company bought it with borrowed money and roughly doubled the cut to carry the debt, and the fight over what was left ended with the public paying $480 million for Headwaters.

3 min read

The Redwood Coast rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.

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