Crescent City

Updated: Feb 19

The world's tallest trees - Redwood National and State Parks 134

What and Why

The Redwood National and State Park is a park in the North California famous of its groves of huge trees. In fact, Redwood is known as the home to the tallest trees on Earth, some of them more 100 m tall and have lived for more than a thousand years. These trees, mainly sequoia or redwood, are the tallest, largest and oldest, and one of the most massive tree species on Earth. The park is also home to other indigenous flora, fauna, grassland prairie along its coastline. Technically the park is a conglomerate of four overlapping Californian state parks, but is now recognised all as one.

Toponymy

Redwood refers to the colloquial name of the tree species it is famous for.

The city where the park is closest to, Crescent City, is named for its crescent-shaped stretch of sandy beach.

See

The park offers a network of excellent hiking trails and together with all the trees, it creates a dramatic theatre of light and shades of green. During dawn and dusk, there is light fog and haze around the forests, and the entire park becomes another landscape of misty beauty.

The most important landmarks of the park are its trees. Some of the trees deserve special mention and here is the list:

Big Tree

This old tree in Redwood has a circumference of 6.6 m and a height close to 100 m!. This tree is located near the Prairie Creek Visitor Center, and is estimated to be 1,500 years old. It is far from the biggest, in spite of its name.

Big Tree description in the Visitor Centre

Giant Tree

Technically again not the biggest tree around, however but this tree is much admired for having the best combination of height, diameter and crown spread, and is nicknamed the 'Big Beauty'.

Big Hollow

Another instagrammable spot is the Big Hollow where the tree trunk looks like a C-shaped shell.

Shrine

There are two or three trees that is so big that a big hole right through the middle of a huge sequoia. Travellers enjoy the idea that a tree could be so big that you could drive through it. One of them in Redwoods is called the Shrine as above and is located in near Humboldt Redwoods State Park Visitor Center, which is actually hollow throughout.

Unfortunately the two trees in Redwoods all require an entry fee.

Dyerville Giant

Once perhaps 100 m high tree, this champion tree crashed to the ground in 1991 CE and created a thunderous roar that could be heard afar. Despite being horizontal, it sports a huge uprooted root cluster with wooden dreadlocks sprouting in all directions, and an enormous crater where it once stood.

Girdled Tree

This tree suffered from an artificial scar more than 100 years ago when almost all of the first 10 m of its bark were removed and stitched together in a San Francisco exibition. Remarkably the tree survived and stands as a bigger exhibit itself.

Star Wars Trees

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi transformed Cheatham Grove of the park into the moon of Endor. This is where Luke Skywalker was pursuing stormtroopers on landspeeders and ducked under a downed tree. A large number of fans come dressed in Jedi robes or stormtroopers armour and take photographs. May the Forest be with you.

Hyperion

Hyperion is considered the world's tallest known living tree, measuring 115.92 m and more than 600 years old as per record. This makes it much taller than the Statue of Liberty! Surprisingly this tree was only discovered 25th August, 2006 CE and was found in a relatively remote area of the park called the Tall Tree Grove near Redwood Creek.

While a lot of people did try to identify its exact location, one would and should give up fairly quickly. The tree simply perches in a dense forest deep within the area where it is just one of the many. So it is impossible to tell from the ground which tree is the tallest even if one is standing next to it. Moreover the location of the Hyperion tree is nominally a secret, although its coordinates can be found from a quick internet search. To protect it from over-tourism, only 50 cars per day were granted permit to access to the trail that must be booked two days in advance. As a matter of fact at the time of writing, it was announced that anyone who got close to the tree proximity would be given a hefty USD $5,000 fine! Does this mean that the tree location is identified?

The park ranger that we met also explained to us that there was no direct hiking trail leading to the tree and you would have to wade through creeks and muds to reach the exact spot. And even if you reached there you would not know exactly which tree would be it, as it was not marked. This is done in purpose again to protect it from people to damaging its roots and surrounding habitat. The jungle there is also devoid of any telecommunication or global positioning system (GPS) signal and if one gets lost, it is extremely difficult to conduct a rescue.

We did however saw one of the trees that could have been Hyperion that we see from afar, as below. We just persuaded ourselves that was it...

One of the trees that might have been Hyperion that we see from afar

Radar Station B-71

The B-71 radar station was an Army Air Force early warning station in World War II. It was constructed as a disguise to look like a farmhouse. To guard against potential invasions, the United States Army built farm buildings with shingled roofs, and fake windows and dormers, and housed an early-warning radar station. From the air, the sea, and even the road, these buildings appeared to be part of a working farm. In fact, they housed a diesel generator, electronic equipment, and two 50-calibre anti-aircraft guns.

Coastal Drive

The entire park is largely connected by one road, State Highway 101, which is one of the most scenic drives.

Along the road, some of the drives across the scenic forest was just breath-taking.

And animals everywhere...

There are three visitor centres which serve as a good museum of the park.

Getting There and Around

We drove, and honestly just like other national parks in the America, you cannot do without your car. Surprisingly there is no entrance fee for Redwood National Park. Redwood is around six hour-drive away from San Francisco. If it is just for a quick glance around the sites, two days are enough to get a picture of the park.