Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park

On September 11, 1929, the family of the late Frank D. Stout, a former president of the Del Norte Company, Ltd., gave to the State of California 44 acres of redwoods at the confluence of Mill Creek with Smith River. ...

Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park

On August 20, 1924, George F. Schwarz of New York purchased 157 acres of redwoods and deeded them to the State of California. This tract was dedicated in honor of Henry S. Graves, former Chief Forester of the United States ...

Union Gold Bluffs Placer Mine

In 1881 John Chapman and one other party owned and operated the Gold Bluff mines. Chapman and his men watched the beaches closely, and when the "gray sands" began to go out, it constituted a signal to commence operations.

Meanwhile, ...

Prairie Creek Visitor Center

The most impressive achievement of the CCC was the construction of the "concession and recreation building" which is now the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park Visitor Center. With the exception of the window lights, plumbing, and chimney flue, all the ...

Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park

Ranchers and homesteaders pre-empted most of the lands bordering on Prairie Creek, north of Orick, in the 1880s and 1890s, with the rest of the area now included in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park being staked out as mining and ...

Battery Point Lighthouse

In 1855, the year after Crescent City was incorporated, the California legislature urged the state's delegation in Congress to pass an act to erect lighthouses at “Trinidad and Crescent City." On March 3, 1855, Congress appropriated $15,000 for the construction ...

Point Reyes Lighthouse

The ancient home of the Coast Miwok people, the dramatic landscape of the Point Reyes peninsula with its wave battered cliffs, remained undiscovered by European explorers until the late 1500's. Sir Francis Drake probably first sighted and mapped the fog-shrouded ...

Tharps Log

Tharp also noted the substantial Native American population, which to its later dismay, welcomed him graciously:I first located my ranch where I now live in the summer of 1856. There were about 2,000 Indians then living along the Kaweah Rivers ...

Bearpaw Meadow

In his anti-backcountry-roads campaign Colonel White prevented a full third of Sequoia Park's later formal wilderness from being lost. Yet, he was not opposed to appropriate, low-level development, even in the backcountry. We have already documented his trail-building efforts, ...

Hospital Rock

Many Native American impacts on the landscape were localized. Hale Tharp, apparently the first white man to visit the Monache village at Hospital Rock, reported in 1858 that he found several hundred Indians living at the site, that the camp ...