United States · California
Redwood National Park (Eureka)
The tallest trees on earth, in a fog-soaked coastal forest that only just survived the saw.
Redwood National and State Parks protect the last great stands of coast redwood, the tallest living things on earth, along roughly 80 kilometres of far northern California coastline. Only a small remnant of the original old-growth forest survived a century of logging, and what is left has been stitched together from a national park and three state parks that run from ocean bluffs and elk meadows up into fog-fed groves. It is a damp, quiet, unhurried corner of the state, hours from anywhere large, and much less visited than California's marquee parks.
Suggested stay
2–4 days
Language
English
Currency
USD
Timezone
UTC-7
Why you'll love Redwood National Park (Eureka)
The trees old-growth redwoods well over 90 metres tall, in groves dense enough that the light turns green and the sound drops away
The coast the parks run all the way to the sea, so a morning under thousand-year-old trees can end on a driftwood beach or a bluff above migrating whales
Wildlife Roosevelt elk graze the meadows in open herds, and the understorey of sword fern, sorrel and banana slugs is a temperate rainforest in its own right
The quiet one of the least crowded of the famous national parks, because it is a long way from any city and nobody arrives here by accident
Best time to visit
Apr-Oct
14-18° days
40.802° N, 124.171° W
UTC-7 · America/Los Angeles
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Weather & when to go to Redwood National Park (Eureka)
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-Oct
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Redwood National Park (Eureka)
No genuinely bad season - this is a forest built by rain and fog, and the big groves stay walkable even in the wettest weeks. The two quirks worth knowing: coastal summer days often stay grey and cool under the marine layer, and winter storms can shut an unpaved side road or wash out a trail for a while.
Top things to do in Redwood National Park (Eureka)
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Tall Trees Grove - the permit hike into the Redwood Creek giants
hiking nature wildlife ⭐ Highly recommendedA limited number of vehicles a day get the gate combination for the Bald Hills Road spur, then it is a steep drop through recovering forest onto the alluvial flat where the celebrated trees stand. The climb back out is what keeps the grove quiet.
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Stout Grove and Howland Hill Road - old growth from an unpaved lane
scenic nature wildlife ⭐ Highly recommendedA narrow dirt road threads Jedediah Smith Redwoods with trunks close enough to touch from the window, ending at a level grove on the flat of the Smith, the largest undammed river left in California. Winter floods scour the understorey clean, which is why the grove looks like a cathedral floor. Not for large vehicles or trailers.
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Fern Canyon - a creek walk between walls of fern
hiking scenic 👍 PopularHome Creek has cut a slot through the Gold Bluffs whose vertical sides, some fifteen metres high, drip with five-fingered and sword ferns; it stood in for prehistoric jungle in a Jurassic Park sequel. Getting there means an unpaved road with shallow creek fords, a permit in the busy months, and wet feet either way.
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Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway - sixteen kilometres of old growth by car
scenic 👍 PopularThe old highway alignment through Prairie Creek Redwoods, left in place when the freeway was routed around it, with pull-outs at the big wayside trees and trailheads every few hundred metres. Slow enough that the drive itself is the attraction.
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Elk Prairie and Elk Meadow - Roosevelt elk in the open
nature wildlife 👍 PopularHerds of the largest elk subspecies in North America graze the meadows either side of the parkway, unbothered and a great deal bigger than they look from the car. Bulls bugle and spar through the autumn rut, which is exactly when to keep your distance.
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Lady Bird Johnson Grove - the ridge-top loop in the cloud
hiking scenicA footbridge over Bald Hills Road leads to a level loop through a ridge grove that stands in fog most mornings, named for the first lady who campaigned hard for the park. The gentlest introduction to old growth here, and the best walk in bad weather.
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Gold Bluffs Beach - elk on the sand below a wall of cliff
nature wildlife scenicA long wild strand backed by high crumbling bluffs, reached by the same unpaved road as Fern Canyon; elk wander down onto the sand and the campground sits behind the dune line. Cold water and serious rips - this is a walking beach, not a swimming one.
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Klamath River Overlook - whale watching from a headland
nature wildlife scenicA picnic bluff roughly two hundred metres above the river mouth, one of the highest coastal overlooks anywhere on this shore, where grey whales pass close on their migrations and sea lions work the river bar below. A steep spur trail drops to a lower platform for the best of it.
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Boy Scout Tree Trail - the long walk to Fern Falls
hikingOff Howland Hill Road, a mostly level path deep into Jedediah Smith's old growth to a huge double-trunked redwood and a small falls at the far end. Muddy for much of the year and quiet even at the height of summer.
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Damnation Creek Trail - down through old growth to a hidden cove
hikingThe hardest of the park's day hikes: a steady drop of some three hundred metres through mossy redwood and Sitka spruce, on part of an old Yurok route to the sea, then the same climb back. Sections have been rerouted after landslides, so check it is open before you set out.
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Trillium Falls Trail - a short loop from the elk meadow
hikingA gentle circuit out of Elk Meadow through bigleaf maple and redwood to a small falls, one of the few genuinely easy trails that still feels like deep forest. Good with children and good in the rain.
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Coastal Drive Loop - a gravel road past a disguised radar station
scenic historyA one-way gravel loop on the bluffs south of the Klamath, passing a farmhouse and barn built as camouflage for a Second World War early-warning radar post. Steep, narrow, often foggy and closed to trailers.
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Eureka's Old Town and the Carson Mansion - what the redwoods built
history culture artsThe base town's waterfront district is a block-by-block record of the timber boom, topped by a Victorian mansion of such wildly elaborate carpentry that it is probably the most photographed house in the state. It is a private club, so it is admired from the pavement.
Best areas to stay in Redwood National Park (Eureka)
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Eureka
First-time visitors $$Victorian port city, the coast's biggest base
Explore hotels in Eureka →
Arcata
Younger travellers $$College town around a leafy plaza
Explore hotels in Arcata →
Trinidad
Coastal setting $$$Tiny fishing village on a rocky headland
Explore hotels in Trinidad →
Klamath
In-park base $Barely a village, right in the middle
Explore hotels in Klamath →
Crescent City
Northern groves $Working harbour town at the north end
Explore hotels in Crescent City →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Redwood National Park (Eureka)
Getting to & around Redwood National Park (Eureka)
Getting there
Fly into the small airport at McKinleyville north of Eureka, or drive up the coast on US-101 - either way you need a car
Flight
California Redwood Coast-Humboldt County Airport (ACV)
The airport sits on a bluff at McKinleyville, about 26 km and half an hour north of Eureka on US-101, and roughly as far again south of the first park groves at Orick. A handful of regional flights connect it to California hubs. Hire cars are collected at the terminal and a shared airport shuttle runs the corridor, but nothing scheduled goes into the parks themselves. A smaller airport at Crescent City serves the northern end.
Drive
US-101 from San Francisco
The classic approach, roughly 6-7 hours north through the Sonoma and Mendocino wine country and then the Avenue of the Giants
Drive
US-199 from Grants Pass
The Oregon approach, dropping down the Smith River canyon straight through Jedediah Smith Redwoods to Crescent City in about two hours from Interstate 5
Drive
US-299 from Redding
The eastern approach off Interstate 5, a winding three hours over the Coast Range to Arcata; the pass can be slow in winter weather
Coach
Eureka and Arcata
Long-distance buses work the US-101 corridor from the San Francisco Bay Area; a separate county service continues north through Trinidad, Orick and Klamath to Crescent City
Getting around
Hire car
Effectively mandatory: the parks are strung along about 80 km of highway and the best groves sit on side roads with no other way in
TBC
Gravel park roads
Howland Hill Road, the Davison Road to Gold Bluffs Beach and the Coastal Drive are unpaved, narrow and closed to trailers and large vehicles; check conditions and creek levels first
TBC
Regional bus
A county service links Crescent City, Klamath, Orick, Trinidad and Arcata along the highway a few times a day - workable for a trailhead near the road, useless for the inland groves
TBC
Town bus
Eureka and Arcata run their own local services, handy for moving between the two towns without a car but not for reaching the parks
TBC
Cycling
The Drury Parkway has wide shoulders and a few old logging grades in the parks are open to bikes, though the highway itself is no fun on two wheels
TBC
Walking
Old Town Eureka, the Arcata plaza and Trinidad are all walkable; the parks are drive-to-a-trailhead, walk, drive again
Free
Day trips from Redwood National Park (Eureka)
Avenue of the Giants and Humboldt Redwoods State Park
Full dayOld-growth scenic drive
A 50-kilometre alternate road threading the old highway through Humboldt Redwoods, which holds the largest surviving block of old-growth coast redwood anywhere. Founders Grove and the Rockefeller Forest are the two stops worth getting out for, and the whole drive is quieter than the national park to the north.
Getting there
car
About 45 min to 1 hr south of Eureka by car on US-101
Ferndale
Half dayVictorian dairy town
A dairy town on the Eel River delta whose main street is a near-complete run of ornate Victorians built on butterfat, and still a working town rather than a museum piece. It is also the gateway to the slow mountain road over Cape Mendocino.
Getting there
car
About 30 min south of Eureka by car
Trinidad and Sue-meg State Park
Half daySea stacks and headlands
Trinidad Head and its small memorial lighthouse stand above a working pier and a scatter of sea stacks. The state park just north, long known as Patrick's Point, strings clifftop lookouts, an agate beach and a reconstructed Yurok village along the bluff.
Getting there
car
About 30-40 min north of Eureka by car
Crescent City and the Del Norte coast
Full dayHarbour town and north groves
The northern half of the parks in a single run: Stout Grove and Howland Hill Road inland, then a harbour town rebuilt after a tsunami destroyed its centre, with a lighthouse on a tidal island you can only walk out to at low water.
Getting there
car
About 1.5 hr north of Eureka by car on US-101
The Lost Coast and Shelter Cove
1-2 daysRoadless wilderness coast
Where the mountains pushed the highway inland and left California with its one long undeveloped shoreline. Shelter Cove is the only settlement and the jumping-off point for the Lost Coast Trail, and it is far enough that an overnight beats a dash.
Getting there
car
About 2.5-3 hr south of Eureka by car, the last stretch on a slow mountain road
A little history of Redwood National Park (Eureka)
Coast redwoods once ran in an almost unbroken band from Big Sur to the southern Oregon line, wherever summer fog reached inland off the Pacific, and the biggest of them were already ancient when Rome was young. Yurok, Tolowa, Chilula and Wiyot people lived in and around that forest for thousands of years, splitting fallen redwood into plank houses and dugout canoes without felling a standing tree. The Yurok remain the largest tribe in California, with their territory along the lower Klamath in the middle of the parks.
The Gold Rush changed the arithmetic. Ships found Humboldt Bay in 1850 hunting for a port to supply the Trinity mines, mills opened within months, and redwood - straight, rot-resistant and apparently inexhaustible - built and rebuilt San Francisco. Cutting accelerated hardest after the Second World War, and by the time a national park was finally created in 1968 roughly 95 per cent of the original old growth had gone. What is protected now is a patchwork: three California state parks bought grove by grove from the 1920s onward, a national park layered over and around them, and a huge tract of logged-over hillside added in 1978 that the parks have been slowly restoring ever since.
Ships enter Humboldt Bay seeking a supply port for the Trinity gold mines; Eureka is founded and the first mills open within the year
Wiyot people gathered for a world-renewal ceremony are massacred on Tuluwat Island in Humboldt Bay
The Save-the-Redwoods League forms to buy groves ahead of the saws, funding memorial parks by public subscription
California acquires the first large holdings, which become Prairie Creek, Del Norte Coast and Jedediah Smith redwoods state parks
A tsunami thrown out by the Alaska earthquake destroys much of downtown Crescent City, the worst tsunami damage recorded on the mainland west coast
Redwood National Park is established after a long campaign, over fierce opposition from the timber towns it was drawn around
Congress expands the park to take in the logged Redwood Creek watershed above Tall Trees Grove, beginning a decades-long restoration
The parks are inscribed as a World Heritage Site
The national park and the three state parks begin managing the forest jointly as Redwood National and State Parks
Hyperion, the tallest known living tree, is measured in the park; its exact location has never been published
Eureka returns Tuluwat Island in Humboldt Bay to the Wiyot Tribe
Know before you go
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FAQs about Redwood National Park (Eureka)
▸ When is the best time to visit Redwood National Park?
April to October is the sweet spot, with the longest days, the driest trails and the unpaved side roads at their most dependable. Late spring adds rhododendrons through the groves, and September and October are often the clearest months on the coast once the summer fog thins. Winter is not a bad season so much as a wet one - the forest is at its most atmospheric in rain, and you will largely have it to yourself.
▸ How many days do you need in the redwoods?
Two full days covers the headline groves at either end if you are willing to drive. Three or four lets you slow down, walk a long trail, see the coast as well as the forest, and fit in a run south to the Avenue of the Giants. The parks spread across about 80 kilometres of highway, so days get eaten by driving faster than you expect.
▸ Do you need a car?
In practice, yes. A county bus works the highway corridor and stops near a few trailheads, but the best groves are up inland side roads with no service at all, and there is no passenger rail anywhere near this part of California.
▸ Where do you see the very tallest trees?
Tall Trees Grove, on the Redwood Creek flat, holds the celebrated ones and needs a permit from a small daily allocation. Hyperion, the tallest known tree of all, stands somewhere in the park, but its location has never been published and the ground around it is closed to protect the roots. Stout Grove and the Prairie Creek flats deliver the same sense of scale for a fraction of the effort.
▸ Is Fern Canyon hard to reach?
It is the fiddliest stop in the park. The access road is unpaved with shallow creek fords and unsuitable for large vehicles, and a permit is required in the busy months. Footbridges go in over the summer and come out before the winter flows, so outside that window you are wading the creek.
▸ Where should you base yourself?
Eureka has the most beds and the most going on, but sits at the southern end, an hour from the main groves. Arcata and Trinidad shorten that drive, Klamath puts you in the middle of the parks with almost no services, and Crescent City is the practical base for the northern groves and for arriving from Oregon.
▸ Is it expensive?
Cheap by California national-park standards. The national park has no entrance station, the state parks folded into it charge for day use only at a few staffed areas, and lodging on the north coast sits well below what the gateway towns of the Sierra parks command. Campgrounds are plentiful in and around the parks, and fuel is the one thing that costs noticeably more than it does inland.
▸ Is it worth visiting when it is foggy?
The fog is the point. It is what lets these trees grow so tall, since they strip moisture from it through the rainless summer, and a grove in the mist is the version most people remember. Bring layers, because coastal summer days here run far cooler than the rest of California.
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