Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park

The park protects roughly ten thousand acres, most of it unlogged old-growth coast redwood, one of the densest concentrations of these trees anywhere. Coast redwoods are the tallest living things on the planet, drinking the coastal fog and growing to well over three hundred feet, and here they stand shoulder to shoulder in a way few other places can match. Rhododendrons, azaleas, ferns, and sorrel fill the green shade beneath them.

The famous heart of it is Stout Grove, a forty-odd-acre floodplain grove reached by an easy loop trail. Because the Smith River periodically floods across it and scours away the usual understory, the grove has an open, clean floor that lets you take in the full height of the trees, best of all in the slanting light of late afternoon. It was the Stout family's gift of this grove in the 1920s that founded the park in 1929.

The best way to feel the scale of this forest is to drive Howland Hill Road, an unpaved gravel lane that winds about seven miles through the old growth between US-199 and the edge of Crescent City. It is narrow and slow, closed to RVs and trailers, and that is exactly the point: you creep along at walking pace with ancient trunks pressing in on both sides, stopping to crane your neck and wander a trail whenever the mood strikes.

Off that road lies the Grove of Titans, home to some of the largest coast redwoods on earth, trees twenty feet and more across. For years their location was kept quiet to protect them, but so many visitors found them that the tramping of feet began to compact and kill the shallow roots. In 2022 a raised boardwalk opened along a rerouted trail so people could finally see the giants up close without harming them, a good lesson in how these forests are loved and looked after at the same time.

Elsewhere off Howland Hill Road, the Boy Scout Tree Trail runs a few miles through deep, quiet old growth along a creek to a small waterfall, and the short Simpson-Reed loop off the highway offers an easy, interpretive walk among ferns, nurse logs, and towering trees.

The Smith River is the co-star of the park and, in a real sense, its maker. It is the last major undammed river in California, protected as wild and scenic, and it runs an astonishing clear jade-green thanks to the mineral-rich country it drains. In summer it slows into swimming holes and gentle stretches perfect for a cold plunge, a snorkel, or a paddle; in winter and spring it surges with rain and snowmelt into strong whitewater.

It is also a legendary fishing river, famous for big salmon and record-setting steelhead. And it is the force that keeps Stout Grove open and its giants fully visible, flooding through the grove and clearing the floor year after year. Upstream, the Smith River National Recreation Area protects hundreds of miles of its wild tributaries, so the whole watershed, from the redwoods at its mouth to the canyons above, stays close to what it was.

Long before any of this was a park, the Tolowa people lived along the river and coast, and their descendants remain in the region today. Their presence here reaches back thousands of years, a reminder that this forest and river have been home far longer than the maps that named them.

The park lies about nine miles east of Crescent City along US-199, and roughly twenty-five to thirty miles south of Brookings, Oregon, so it makes an easy day from either coast town. Start at the Hiouchi Visitor Center on the highway to get your bearings, then choose between the Stout Grove loop, the Howland Hill Road drive, and a river stop. Remember that Howland Hill Road and its trailheads are off-limits to RVs and trailers, so plan your vehicle accordingly.

Come in summer for warm days and the best river swimming, or in the wet months for a lush, dripping, dramatic forest, keeping an eye out for occasional flood closures. Whenever you come, give yourself time to slow down: this is a place that rewards a walk under the giants, a wade in the green river, and an unhurried drive down a road too narrow for the hurried world outside it.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.