Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park

An old-growth coast redwood park 10 kilometres north of Santa Cruz in the Coast Range foothills, with trees up to 1,800 years old and 275 feet tall. The Redwood Trail through the Cathedral Redwoods grove is a 30-minute loop through the largest trees, flat enough for anyone and genuinely awe-inspiring on first exposure. The park also has longer trails into the surrounding mixed forest, riparian habitat along the San Lorenzo River, and a popular open meadow area for picnics.

Roaring Camp Railroad, operating historic narrow-gauge steam trains through the redwoods, departs from within the park. The trains are genuinely old (some of the locomotives date from the 1880s) and the journey through the forest is worthwhile. The combination of old-growth redwoods and a Victorian steam railway makes for a full half-day above Santa Cruz.

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The redwoods in Henry Cowell include specimens estimated at 1,400 to 1,800 years old — trees that were already old when the Spaniards arrived, and ancient when the California missions were being built. The River Trail follows the San Lorenzo River through the grove; the trees tower 275 feet above a path wide enough for two people to walk side by side, and the scale is genuinely disorienting in a way that photographs cannot replicate.

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