Hikers Guide
The CCT Needs a Trail Corridor off Highway 1 Around Rockport
The south end of the Lost Coast doesn’t just begin at Usal. You can already feel the Lost Coast (and see its King Range heart on a clear day) five miles north of Fort Bragg. When you get to Westport, you’re already on the Lost Coast. Magnificent Highway 1 follows the California’s coast for 7…
Read MoreCalifornia’s Lost Coast: Worthy of Wilderness Protection
The rugged and remote Lost Coast offers North America’s largest span of pristine beach and shoreline on the Pacific Coast outside of Alaska and Canada. Public lands here include 60,000-acre King Range National Conservation Area and 7400-acre Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, together stretching 40 miles along the coast. If you study the maps however, you’ll…
Read MoreThe Cape Mendocino Triple Junction and the Amazing Uplift of 1992
At Cape Mendocino, California’s Lost Coast thrusts westward against the driving California Current. The San Andreas Fault Zone trends west from its northernmost onshore extension at Shelter Cove to end as it joins the Mendocino Fracture Zone where the triple-plate junction of the North American, Pacific and Gorda Plates all meet. Directly offshore from the…
Read MoreThe Discovery and Settlement of Humboldt Bay
The Algonkian Wiyot people were the original residents of the Humboldt Bay region, inhabiting Pacific and bay shores from lower Mad River on the north to lower Eel River on the south, thriving on the marine abundance of this rich and gentle coastal strip. Their mythology’s depiction of abalone as the first people confirms the…
Read MoreThe Teamwork of Preserving the Coast
Protecting and preserving the California coast, with its 1200-mile shore spanning fifteen counties, is a huge job. It requires ongoing efforts from many governments, agencies, private nonprofit groups, and individuals. Many of them have helped create the California Coastal Trail. Redwood National and State Parks provide one excellent example of such efforts. The California State…
Read MoreThe Vibrant and Resilient Yurok Culture
The Klamath River, California’s second largest, and its abundant fisheries provide the central focus for Yurok civilization. In fact the river iS so important to the Yuroks that their language traditionally expressed directions as upstream and downstream rather than the cardinal points used by most cultures. This Was true even along the coast where settlements…
Read MoreThe Struggle for Redwood National Park
The Redwood Highway, Highway 101 north from San Francisco to the Oregon border, represented a substantial engineering achievement when it opened in 1917, negotiating the twisting, slide-prone Eel River Canyon and the steep coastal cliffs south of Crescent City. The road’s most significant accomplishment, however, was opening California’s north coast to mass tourism. Among the…
Read MoreWatch Out for That Wave!
The waves we see dashing against the coast start hundreds of miles offshore. As winds blow across the ocean’s surface, they create waves of various sizes. A wave’s size depends on wind velocity, duration and the distance the wind blows across the open ocean. Waves break, showing a churning crest of foam along their leading…
Read MoreCalifornia Lighthouses
CALIFORNIA’S RUGGED 1200-MILE COASTLINE has long been renowned for the fury of its hazardous waters and the deception of its offshore reefs and rocks. Only after California entered the United States in 1850 was any effort made to provide navigational aids. In 1854 Alcatraz Island Lighthouse in San Francisco Bay became the Golden State’s first,…
Read MoreThe Native Californians and the Center of the World
Before contact with white civilization, the abundant natural resources of California supported one of the highest population densities in North America. Most estimates place the California native population around 250,000, some argue two or three times that, about 10% of the native U.S. population. Like today’s pattern, the highest concentration of people lived on or…
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