Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park — forest
Chris Rycroft from Madison, Wisconsin, United States · CC BY 2.0

Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

  • 2 min read
  • 41.782° N 124.101° W
  • UNESCO natural beauty

Interesting facts

  • The Grove of Titans, hidden in a side valley of the park, was only recognised by scientists on 11 May 1998, by botanist Stephen Sillett and naturalist Michael Taylor.
  • Its giants carry nicknames rather than official names, several borrowed from Tolkien, such as Aragorn, Beregond and the pair Eärendil and Elwing.
  • The grove's Del Norte Titan is about 307 feet tall and 23.7 feet across, and is estimated to hold some 37,200 cubic feet of wood.
  • Nearby Lost Monarch holds even more wood than Del Norte Titan if the massive sprouts at its base are counted with the trunk.
  • Richard Preston's 2007 book The Wild Trees described the grove but kept its location secret to protect it from crowds.
  • After the coordinates were posted online around 2011, visitors trampled roughly 8,000 square feet of ferns and sorrel, leading to a $3.5 million elevated boardwalk.
  • The Smith River here holds the California record for the largest steelhead trout ever caught, a fish of more than 27 pounds.
  • Archaeological finds show that people, ancestors of the Tolowa who still live in the region, have occupied this river valley for more than 8,000 years.

Why it is worth it

Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, in the far north-west corner of California, holds some of the most untouched old-growth coast redwood forest left on Earth. The park covers roughly 42 square kilometres along the Smith River, and most of it is redwood forest, much of it never logged. Unlike the drier, sunnier groves further south, this is a wet, dim, cathedral-like forest: huge trunks rising out of a green, fern-covered floor, with fallen giants slowly returning to the soil.

The Smith River, which runs through the park, is California's last major undammed river, and its clear green water is part of the beauty here. At the confluence of Mill Creek and the Smith lies Stout Memorial Grove, where an easy loop of under a kilometre winds among trees of enormous girth on a flat river terrace. Deeper in the park, the Grove of Titans, which holds some of the largest coast redwoods known, is reached by an elevated boardwalk opened in 2022.

The most memorable way through the park is Howland Hill Road, a narrow gravel road about six miles long built in 1887 as part of the old route from Crescent City to Grants Pass in Oregon. It threads between the trunks so closely that the forest feels like a corridor, and it was partly the attention this road brought to the Mill Creek redwoods that led to the protection of the area. The park was established in 1929 and is named after Jedediah Smith, the trapper and explorer who in 1826 became the first American to reach California overland from the Mississippi.

Today it is one of the four parks managed together as Redwood National and State Parks, and part of an international biosphere reserve designated in 1983. For a visitor it offers something the more famous redwood groves rarely can: long stretches of silence in a forest that looks much as it did before logging began, with the river never far away.

Getting there

The park lies in Del Norte County, about 9 miles (14 km) east of Crescent City along US Route 199, near the small community of Hiouchi. The nearest airport is Del Norte County Regional Airport, Jack McNamara Field (CEC), about 11 km away. Stout Grove can be reached either from the Hiouchi side or from Crescent City via Howland Hill Road, an unpaved road that is too narrow for buses, motorhomes and trailers.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in California 36The Most Beautiful Places in the United States 228The Most Beautiful Forests 14The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in the United States 25The UNESCO Sites of Exceptional Natural Beauty 77The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests 232

From the encyclopaedia

Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park is a state park of California, United States, preserving old-growth redwoods along the Smith River. It is located along U.S. Route 199 approximately 9 miles (14 km) east of Crescent City. The park is named after explorer Jedediah Smith, and is one of four parks cooperatively managed as Redwood National and State Parks. The other parks include the Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, and Redwood National Park. The 42.2-square-kilometre (16.3 mi2) park was established in 1929 and designated part of the California Coast Ranges International Biosphere Reserve in 1983.

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41.78170, -124.10100per Wikidata