Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park

On August 20, 1924, George F. Schwarz of New York purchased 157 acres of redwoods and deeded them to the State of California. This tract was dedicated in honor of Henry S. Graves, former Chief Forester of the United States ...

Kelsey Trail

East of Crescent City in the Little Bald Hills is Murphy’s Ranch and outlying barn site, which dates circa 1884 to the 1920s. The ranch was established along the historic Kelsey Trail, a pack route linking Crescent City with the ...

Union Gold Bluffs Placer Mine

In 1881 John Chapman and one other party owned and operated the Gold Bluff mines. Chapman and his men watched the beaches closely, and when the "gray sands" began to go out, it constituted a signal to commence operations.

Meanwhile, ...

Prairie Creek Visitor Center

The most impressive achievement of the CCC was the construction of the "concession and recreation building" which is now the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park Visitor Center. With the exception of the window lights, plumbing, and chimney flue, all the ...

Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park

Ranchers and homesteaders pre-empted most of the lands bordering on Prairie Creek, north of Orick, in the 1880s and 1890s, with the rest of the area now included in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park being staked out as mining and ...

Bald Hills

The Chilula allied with the Hupa against the coastal Yurok. "Chilula" was English for the Yurok "Tsulu-la," people of Tsulu, the Bald Hills. Locally they were known as the Bald Hills Indians. Their villages were located on or adjacent to ...

Battery Point Lighthouse

In 1855, the year after Crescent City was incorporated, the California legislature urged the state's delegation in Congress to pass an act to erect lighthouses at “Trinidad and Crescent City." On March 3, 1855, Congress appropriated $15,000 for the construction ...

Crystal Caves

By some accounts Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks could have been set aside solely to protect the amazing caves found in this area of the Southern Sierra Nevada. The two parks protect half of the caves more than a ...

Mineral King

The winter passed quickly, and eager prospectors pushed their way up the East Fork canyon well before the snows melted in the spring of 1874. During the warm weather of July and August, the subalpine valley the miners optimistically called ...

Tharps Log

Tharp also noted the substantial Native American population, which to its later dismay, welcomed him graciously:I first located my ranch where I now live in the summer of 1856. There were about 2,000 Indians then living along the Kaweah Rivers ...