Fern Canyon
Interesting facts
- For decades Fern Canyon belonged to the Upper Bluff mining company, yet even the miners left its fern-covered walls untouched.
- The canyon was carved by Home Creek cutting through the soft conglomerate that forms the coastal bluffs.
- Philanthropist James Irvine negotiated to buy the canyon for the park, but he and the owner both died in the 1940s before a deal was reached.
- A 1952 state report singled out the canyon's walls of five-finger fern, yet it took another thirteen years to bring it into the park.
- The canyon itself is only about 30 acres, donated as part of the much larger 1965 land transaction with Pacific Lumber.
- In 1851 promoters claimed the gold at nearby Gold Bluffs could never be exhausted, but the fine gold proved nearly impossible to separate from the black sand.
- Cornish miners later dug a tunnel about 600 feet long to carry water from Prairie Creek to the Gold Bluffs mining works.
- The gold rush of the 1850s brought settlers onto Yurok land, and about three quarters of the Yurok people died in the following years.
- Prairie Creek Redwoods began with a single parcel donated in 1923 by the family of Eureka lumberman Joseph Russ.
Why it is worth it
Fern Canyon is a narrow cleft on California's far north coast whose walls, about fifty feet high, are hung from top to bottom with ferns. Home Creek runs over the gravel floor between them, water seeps and trickles down the faces, and moss drapes the edges, so that walking up the canyon feels like entering a green room with no ceiling. The effect is often described as primeval, and it is the reason the canyon has stood in for a prehistoric world on screen: scenes of The Lost World: Jurassic Park were filmed here, as were parts of the BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs and the IMAX film Dinosaurs Alive!.
Several native species make up the living walls, among them five-finger maidenhair fern, deer fern, California polypody, licorice fern and western sword fern. Seep monkeyflower and redwood sorrel grow alongside them, American dippers feed in the creek, and Roosevelt elk are sometimes seen near the canyon mouth. A half-mile loop trail follows the creek up the canyon floor and links at one end with the James Irvine Trail.
The canyon lies in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, in Humboldt County, close to the open sands of Gold Bluffs Beach, where gold was found in 1851 and a short-lived mining camp once stood. This is the homeland of the Yurok people. The canyon itself passed to the state in 1965, when the Pacific Lumber Company donated it as part of a deal that added 2,125 acres to the park. Prairie Creek is now managed jointly with Redwood National Park and neighbouring state parks as Redwood National and State Parks, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and part of an International Biosphere Reserve.
Getting there
The Fern Canyon trail begins about a quarter mile north of the Fern Canyon day-use area, beyond the Gold Bluffs Beach campground, near the small town of Orick on U.S. Route 101. McKinleyville, the nearest town of size, is about 51 km to the south, and Eureka lies further south along the same highway. The nearest airport in a straight line is Del Norte County Airport–Jack McNamara Field (CEC) at Crescent City, about 44 km to the north.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Fern Canyon is a canyon in the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in Humboldt County, California, United States. The park is managed in cooperation with other nearby redwoods state parks and Redwood National Park. It is named for the ferns growing on the 50-foot (15 m) high walls, through which runs Home Creek. Fern Canyon is an International Biosphere Reserve.
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