50 Fun Facts About Redwood National Park

Redwood National Park is on the coast of which U.S. state?

It sits about 325 miles north of San Francisco in Del Norte and Humboldt counties.

Which species of tree is the park named for and built around?

Its scientific name, Sequoia sempervirens, means roughly 'everlasting'; the giant sequoia of the Sierra is a different genus.

Roughly what share of remaining old-growth coast redwood do the Redwood parks protect?

About 96 percent of the original old growth was logged; only around 3 percent could ever be saved, Olmsted concluded in 1927.

Which president signed the bill creating Redwood National Park in October 1968?

Five logging companies had formally objected in 1965, and the final bill was largely framed on the loggers' terms.

Which president signed the 1978 expansion that added 48,000 acres, much of it already logged?

At hundreds of millions of dollars it was the most expensive land purchase Congress had ever approved.

How many state parks are jointly managed with the national park under the 1994 agreement?

Del Norte Coast, Prairie Creek and a third named for a fur trapper; the state never handed them over as the NPS once assumed it would.

Which organisation, founded in 1918 by John Merriam and Boone and Crockett Club members, bought redwood groves?

By 1979 it had preserved 150,000 acres, nearly twice what the federal government managed to save by legislation.

Which landscape architect's 1927 survey picked the sites that became the three redwoods state parks?

He concluded only three percent of the state's redwoods could be preserved and recommended four areas for parks.

What is the name of the tallest known living tree on Earth, a coast redwood found in the park in 2006?

Helios, Icarus and Daedalus, all in the same park, are the second-, fourth- and fifth-tallest known trees.

Roughly how tall is the world's tallest tree, in the park?

It is still growing: measured at 379.1 feet in 2006 and 381.3 feet in 2026.

Who discovered the world's tallest tree on August 25, 2006?

Stephen Sillett of Cal Poly Humboldt then verified its height with a laser range finder and a fibreglass tape.

What penalty did the NPS announce in 2022 for anyone who approaches the tallest tree?

Trampling by visitors had killed the ferns around its base, so the whole area was closed.

Roughly how old is the tallest tree estimated to be?

It sprouted while the valley's original Athabaskan-speaking people still lived along Redwood Creek.

Which Greek mythological figure is the tallest tree named after?

Its neighbours keep the theme: Helios, Icarus and Daedalus.

What was 'Tall Tree' in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, long thought the tallest before its top died?

So many visitors stood on its base that the soil packed hard, and its top 10 feet died in the 1970s and fell in the 1990s.

Roughly what portion of a coast redwood's annual water comes from fog?

Summer fog matters more to the trees' health than rainfall, which is why they never grow more than 50 miles from the sea.

Why are coast redwoods so resistant to fire?

Bark on the trunk can be a foot thick, though near the crown it may be less than an inch.

How old is the oldest known coast redwood?

Claims of older redwoods are wrong; the bristlecone pine holds the age record among trees.

Which endangered seabird nests high on redwood branches in the parks?

It is one of 28 federally listed or candidate species that use the parks.

Which large mammals, restored from near extinction, are the parks' most easily seen big animals?

Herds graze at Elk Prairie and on Gold Bluffs Beach, and rutting bulls in the fall are worth keeping a distance from.

Which greenery-carpeted ravine in Prairie Creek Redwoods was a location for The Lost World: Jurassic Park?

Its 50-foot walls are draped in five kinds of fern whose ancestors date to the Carboniferous.

Which stream runs through the floor of the park's famous fern-walled ravine?

The half-mile loop starts near Gold Bluffs Beach and connects to the James Irvine Trail.

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

He and nineteen companions traced the Trinity, Smith and Klamath rivers to the coast near Requa; a state park now bears his name.

Which Native American nation, with about 55 villages, was the park area's most populous in 1852?

The NPS still manages about 1,400 acres of park land inside the Yurok Indian Reservation.

Which people, who saw the redwoods as gifts from a creator, lived along Redwood Creek until the 1860s?

By 1919 virtually all Chilula had died or been absorbed into other tribes.

Native peoples split redwood into planks to build houses and what else?

Yurok dugout canoes were carved from single redwood logs.

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

Gold on the Trinity River in 1850 pulled the crowds north, and most mining companies soon became lumber companies.

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 what year did UNESCO name the parks a World Heritage Site?

They were made an International Biosphere Reserve in 1983, a status the U.S. withdrew from in 2017.

How long is the stretch of coastline the parks preserve?

Redwoods stay a mile or two back from the surf to avoid salt air; Sitka spruce takes the front row.

Which three tectonic plates meet at the Mendocino triple junction about 100 miles southwest of the parks?

The area is the most seismically active in the country and the most tsunami-prone in the continental U.S.

Visitors to the park's beaches are told to do what immediately after any significant earthquake?

A 6.4 quake with an offshore hypocenter killed two people in the region in 2022; the parks stayed open.

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

Some campgrounds and day-use areas in the state parks do charge fees.

Which river in the parks, popular with kayakers, is the longest undammed one left in the state?

It also gives its name to the northernmost of the three state parks.

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

When the park opened in 1969 it had six permanent employees; by 2023 the combined parks had 96.

Roughly how many bird species have been recorded in the parks, about a third of all US species?

Brown pelicans and three cormorant species crowd the seastacks, while ospreys and mergansers work the rivers.

Which two well-known detritivores of the redwood forest floor are named for a fruit and a colour pattern?

The millipede oozes cyanide when threatened and smells faintly of almonds.

Which small endangered fish vanished from the parks in 1968 when shoreline changes altered salinity?

The candlefish followed it out in the 1970s, and sea otters had already gone at the turn of the century.

Which people, arriving around 1300, set low-intensity ground fires that shaped the redwood region until the 1850s?

Their fires protected tanoak acorns, improved hunting and kept bigger blazes at bay; park managers now burn the prairies on purpose again.

Which group, cofounded by John Muir in 1892, argued in the 1960s for the largest possible redwood park?

It and the more cautious league feuded through the 1960s before the league joined the club in the late 1970s.

Which organisation paid for an NPS survey of the redwoods in 1963 when the agency had no funds?

The next year the NPS floated three different park sizes and Congress created the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Roughly how many annual visitors did the combined parks record in 2021?

There are no hotels inside the parks since the DeMartin hostel closed in 2019, so most stay in the towns along Highway 101.

Which compromise did the league win in 1923 that let Sacramento condemn private land for parks?

A 1928 bond issue then matched private donations dollar for dollar for state land purchases.

Who built the road that lumberman Willard Pratt said proved 'opposition is local while support is national'?

Pratt was explaining why the club won by taking the fight to Washington rather than Sacramento.

Coast redwoods have grown along this coast for at least how long?

Their relatives go back 160 million years to the Jurassic, and redwood bark turns up in the La Brea Tar Pits.

In what year did the IUCN list the coast redwood as an endangered species?

The parks protect 38,982 acres of old growth, split almost evenly between federal and state hands.

What is the name of the second-tallest known living tree, a 377-foot redwood in the park?

Icarus, at 371 feet, is third; all three record-holders stand in Redwood National Park at undisclosed locations.

In which year were the parks designated an International Biosphere Reserve?

The UNESCO World Heritage listing had come three years earlier, in 1980.

Roughly how much of the California coast did redwood forest originally cover?

The region of today's parks stayed largely wild until after 1850, when the Gold Rush and timber trade arrived.

From which California city did Jedediah Smith and his nineteen companions set out on their 1828 journey?

They explored the Trinity, Smith and Klamath rivers and reached the coast near Requa, trading with Native groups along the way.