Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

The closest redwood old-growth forest to Crescent City, Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park is about nine miles northeast of town. The Stout Grove is the most photographed section — a flat, easily walkable grove of massive trees at the bend of the Smith River, where the forest floor is open and the scale of the trees is immediately apparent. The Hiouchi Trail and Boy Scout Trail offer longer hikes through even larger specimens.

The park is part of Redwood National and State Parks and shares a joint visitor center in Hiouchi. The drive into the park along Howland Hill Road through the old-growth forest is one of the better drives on the California coast. Allow at least two hours; a full day is better.

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Jedediah Smith contains some of the tallest and most intact old-growth redwood forest in the world — trees over 300 feet tall and 2,000 years old, standing in groves so dense that midday light never reaches the forest floor. The park is named for mountain man Jedediah Smith, the first non-Native American to cross the Sierra Nevada and travel overland to California.

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