Redwood National and State Parks - General Park Information

Stand at the base of a coast redwood and the huckleberry bushes tower over you. Watch statuesque Roosevelt elk grazing in the prairies. Observe the tail of a female Chinook salmon heave skyward as she makes a nest for her eggs. Whether a morning or night person, you can hear the endangered marbled murrelets' keer across the treetops as they fly from sea to mossy nest.

An amazing diversity of life exists at Redwood National and State Parks (RNSP). The ancient coast redwood ecosystem preserved in the parks contains some of the planet's most majestic forests. Here, banana slugs, gray whales, Douglas-fir, black bears, and sea anemones are equally at home with redwoods.

Park staff work to maintain and restore the area's biological diversity through a wide range of resource management and educational activities. Preserving both natural processes and the region's species and genetic diversity helps ensure that countless generations can experience the beauty and complexity of an old-growth redwood forest.
This is your personal classroom whose wonders wait to be explored.

When western expansion met the redwoods in the 1800s, the trees began to fall under saw and axe. The massive redwoods offered early settlers a seemingly inexhaustible lumber supply. However, within a hundred year span the vast forests were reduced to a fraction of their former range. By the early 1900s, it was apparent that the future of the old-growth redwood forest was in doubt.

Thanks to the visionary actions of the Save-the-Redwoods League, the redwoods received the protection they needed. Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park, and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park were created by the State of California in the 1920s to protect some of the finest remaining examples of coast redwoods.