The Redwood Highway

The Redwood Highway. Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway. , First conceived in 1909, the Redwood Highway extends from San Francisco's Golden Gate to Grants Pass, Oregon. The original route passed through nearly two million acres of the world's tallest forests, ancestral Indian lands, and dozens of small logging and ranching communities. Over the past 100 years, the Redwood Highway has carried logging trucks and moving vans, scientists and sightseers - and you - past these same big trees. , In 1918, Save the Redwoods League was established to protect ancient redwoods along the route. With the support of local communities, school children, women's clubs, private individuals, and the timber companies themselves, tracts purchased by the League became the foundation for California's redwood state parks. , Paving of the Redwood Highway didn't reach into Humboldt and Del Norte counties until the 1920s. Earlier visitors had to negotiate often-muddy dirt roads through the northernmost redwood forests. , I despise the idea of the government usurping and taking over Yurok territory, yet given the circumstances of the last hundred years the land probably couldn't be in better hands. If it were still privately owned, it would have been all cut down by now except for a strip along the freeway. , - Chris Peters, Yurok Tribe member. , The route of this highway made the timber accessible and the immediate result was the establishment of small lumber camps that are destroying the trees along its edge. , - Madison Grant, a founder of Save the Redwoods League, 1919.