48 Fun Facts About Redwood National Park

Since 2022, which giant scavenging bird has soared over Redwood National Park again after more than a century away?

California condor. The species was once down to just 22 individuals; captive breeding saved it, and a tribe-led programme has been releasing young condors in the park since 2022.

Coast redwoods are the world's tallest trees, but which close relative in the Sierra Nevada is the most massive?

Giant sequoia. It is shorter than a tall redwood but far bulkier in the trunk, and the two are different enough that botanists place them in separate genera.

Roughly what share of the original old-growth coast redwood forest is still standing today?

About 5 percent. Nine-tenths had already been cut by the 1960s, barely a century after logging began, and nearly half of what survives stands inside Redwood National and State Parks.

Which president signed the bill creating Redwood National Park?

Lyndon B. Johnson. The compromise he signed was built around three existing state parks and left most of the surrounding watershed open to clear-cutting for another ten years.

Redwood National Park's 1978 expansion took in miles of freshly clear-cut hillside, handing the Park Service which unusual long-term job?

Restoring the forest. The cut-over slopes along Redwood Creek were shedding soil into the stream, so the park has spent decades healing land that arrived already stripped.

With no taproot, what do a coast redwood's shallow roots do to keep it standing?

Interlock with nearby trees. The roots run far out to the sides and intertwine with those of the trees around them, so a grove braces itself against wind and flood.

The Save the Redwoods League, founded in 1918, protected ancient groves mainly by doing what?

Buying the land. With private donations and matching state money it purchased more than 100,000 acres of redwood forest between 1920 and 1960 and turned them over as parks.

Which landscape architect's 1920s survey recommended the redwood areas California should protect as state parks?

Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. Son of the designer of New York's Central Park, he surveyed the whole state, and his shortlist of redwood areas steered the growth of its redwood parks for years afterwards.

What name was given to the world's tallest known living tree, found in Redwood National Park in 2006?

Hyperion. It stands deep in the forest with no trail to it, yet so many fans bushwhacked there, trampling the ground bare, that the park closed the surrounding area in 2022.

The world's tallest tree, a redwood about 380 feet high, would overtop which of these landmarks?

Statue of Liberty. She stands about 305 feet from ground to torch, yet the park calls the record tree a let-down up close: its top cannot be seen from the forest floor.

How did a scientist confirm the record height of the world's tallest tree in 2006?

Climbing it with a tape. Botanist Stephen Sillett fired a line over a high limb with a crossbow, hauled himself to the top and dropped a measuring tape to the ground.

What penalty did Redwood National Park set in 2022 for anyone hiking to the world's tallest tree?

A $5,000 fine and jail. The maximum is six months inside, because visitors bushwhacking to the unmarked tree had trampled every fern around its base and left rubbish behind.

Roughly how old is the world's tallest tree, a coast redwood, estimated to be?

About 700 years. Estimates run from 600 to 800, which is young for a species that can pass 2,000, and it grew up on a slope where most of the old trees around it were cut.

The world's tallest tree, in Redwood National Park, is named after which kind of figure from Greek myth?

A Titan. Its finders kept to the theme, giving two more record-height redwoods they found that same summer names taken from Greek myth as well.

During World War II, an early-warning radar station on the Redwood coast was disguised as what?

A farmhouse and barn. Built when an attack on the Pacific coast seemed possible, the cinderblock buildings had false roofs and windows so they passed for a working farm from the air or the road.

Coast redwoods take in about 40 percent of their yearly moisture from what?

Fog. It condenses on the needles and drips to the ground through the dry summers, and the trees can even absorb it straight through their leaves.

Why are coast redwoods so resistant to fire?

Thick bark with little resin. The bark can be a foot thick and holds little that burns, so a scorched redwood usually survives and can sprout new growth from its trunk.

The oldest coast redwoods are about 2,000 years old, but which western tree can live more than twice as long?

Bristlecone pine. Some in the dry mountains of the West are close to 5,000 years old, so a redwood that sprouted under the Roman Empire is only middle-aged by comparison.

Which seabird flies inland to nest high on old-growth redwood branches in Redwood National and State Parks?

Marbled murrelet. It lays a single egg on a broad limb high in an old tree, and its worst enemy there is the Steller's jay, drawn in greater numbers wherever people leave food.

Which large mammals graze in herds on the prairies and even the beaches of Redwood National and State Parks?

Roosevelt elk. It is the largest elk in North America: bulls can weigh over 1,000 pounds, and during the autumn rut they have been known to charge hikers and even cars.

Which Prairie Creek Redwoods landmark stood in for a dinosaur-era jungle in The Lost World: Jurassic Park?

Fern Canyon. Its 50-foot walls are hung from top to bottom with ferns, a look prehistoric enough that documentary makers have also used it for the age of dinosaurs.

Which natural chemical, abundant in redwood bark and wood, keeps insects and rot at bay?

Tannin. It makes the living tree almost free of disease and insect damage, and it is why redwood timber, slow to rot in any weather, was worth so much to the mills.

Which fur trapper led the first known European-American party through the redwoods in 1828?

Jedediah Smith. He and nineteen companions forced their way through the redwood country to the coast, and a river and a state park there now carry his name.

Which Native nation, with about 55 villages along the Klamath River and the coast, was the Redwood area's most populous?

Yurok. Their language, down at one point to a handful of elderly speakers, is being learned again by a new generation.

The coast redwood, the tallest tree on Earth, grows from a seed about the size of which of these?

A tomato seed. The tree does not even depend on it: a redwood can also clone itself, sending up new trunks from its own stump or roots.

Which 1848 event brought the settlers and loggers who transformed the redwood coast?

The California Gold Rush. Gold found on the Trinity River in 1850 drew thousands to the redwood coast, and the newcomers' hunger for lumber set off the logging of the redwoods.

The 1881 invention of what logging machine spawned the practice of clearcutting in the redwoods?

Before that, teams of six or twelve oxen dragged logs out, and two men with a crosscut saw got through about a foot of trunk an hour.

In 1980 the United Nations gave the Redwood parks which status?

World Heritage Site. The listing recognised the largest unbroken stretch of ancient redwood forest left in the world, home to the tallest living things on Earth.

Which three tectonic plates meet at the Mendocino triple junction off the Redwood coast?

North American, Pacific and Gorda. The small Gorda plate is squeezed by its two big neighbours as it slides beneath the continent, which is why this corner of the coast shakes so often.

Visitors on the beaches of Redwood National and State Parks are told to do what straight after a strong earthquake?

Seek higher ground. The parks tell beachgoers to know their quickest route to land 50 feet above the sea, because this is the most tsunami-prone coast in the lower 48 states.

As of 2025, what did Redwood National Park charge for admission?

Nothing. There are no entrance stations or gates at all; the one kiosk that does collect a fee stands on the state-run road to Gold Bluffs Beach.

Which whales swim past the Redwood coast each year on a round trip of over 10,000 miles between Alaska and Mexico?

Gray whales. They travel close enough to shore that the headland above the Klamath River's mouth is one of the best places in the parks to watch them pass.

Which town houses the National Park Service office that manages Redwood National Park?

Crescent City. Its low harbour catches tsunamis: waves from the 1964 Alaska earthquake destroyed much of the town, which had to be rebuilt.

About 280 species of what, nearly a third of all those in the United States, have been recorded in the Redwood parks?

Birds. The mix of habitats explains it: ocean cliffs and sea stacks, river mouths, prairies and ancient forest all lie within a few miles of one another.

Which slug, growing up to 10 inches long, is the best-known recycler of the redwood forest floor?

Banana slug. It is the second-largest land slug in the world, and by eating dead leaves, droppings and fungi it turns the forest's litter back into soil.

Which roadside novelty do visitors to the Redwood parks often ask about, only to learn it lies outside them on private land?

A drive-through tree. Three tunnelled redwoods survive as private attractions outside the parks, and the tunnel tree of the famous old photographs stood in Yosemite and fell in 1969.

Native peoples of the redwood coast long managed the land with which tool, now readopted by the parks' rangers?

Controlled fire. Regular low burns protected the acorn crop and kept hunting grounds open; decades of putting every fire out let fuel pile up and made the big blazes worse.

Which conservation group pressed Congress in the 1960s for the largest possible redwood national park, against a more cautious rival?

Sierra Club. It wanted a big federal park while the Save the Redwoods League backed a different site, and the bill that finally passed in 1968 was a compromise struck with the timber firms.

Which organisation paid for a Park Service study of the redwoods in 1963?

National Geographic Society. Its grant paid for a survey of how much redwood forest was left and whether more should be saved, and the society then backed the campaign for a national park.

Thieves have sawn which knobbly growths off ancient trees in the Redwood parks to sell as decorative wood?

Burls. A burl is a mass of dormant buds that lets a damaged redwood sprout again, so hacking one off wounds the tree and takes away its means of recovery.

Drenched by Pacific storms every winter, the Redwood parks belong to which type of forest?

Temperate rainforest. The ocean keeps this coast mild all year, between the mid-40s and low 60s whatever the season, so the winter drenching never comes with real cold.

Which amphibians, more often found under logs, live in fern mats high in the redwood canopy?

Salamanders. Soil gathers on the giant limbs, ferns root in it, and the wandering salamander lives in those hanging gardens, even gliding to safety when it leaps from a branch.

For roughly how long have redwoods grown along the northern California coast?

About 20 million years. Redwoods as a group are far older and once grew across much of the Northern Hemisphere, before coast redwoods shrank back to this one narrow strip of coast.

Which category does the IUCN Red List place the coast redwood in?

Endangered. Most of the ancient forest has been cut, though younger second-growth redwood is still widespread and commercially logged.

What name was given to the second-tallest known living tree, a 377-foot redwood in Redwood National Park?

Helios. Found in the same summer of 2006 as the record-holder, it also overtopped Stratosphere Giant, the redwood in another park that had held the title until then.

Which sudden surges of water, running hundreds of feet up a beach in seconds, are a deadly hazard on the Redwood coast?

Sneaker waves. They arrive without warning among smaller waves and have drowned several visitors, which is why the parks' rule for beach walkers is never to turn your back on the ocean.

Roughly how much old-growth redwood forest lined the California coast when logging began in the 1850s?

About 2 million acres. The speed of the cutting so alarmed three conservationists that in 1918 they founded a league to save what was left.

Which shrub bursts into pink and purple bloom beneath the redwoods each May and June?

Rhododendron. It is the showiest plant of the redwood understory, and visitors ask about it so often that 'When do rhododendrons bloom?' has its own entry in the parks' list of common questions.