The first time I visited Crescent City California my wife and I were encouraged by several locals to go see Stout Grove. So we drove north from Crescent City and then turned east onto Highway 199. After a few miles, we passed the campground, the Hiouchi East Information Center, and reached the Hamlet of Hiouchi where we stopped at a little cafe for breakfast. A short mile or so further we crossed the Myrtle Creek Bridge there we turned right and crossed the Smith River on another bridge and passed a launch facility. Then after crossing another creek on another bridge we stayed right at a 3-way intersection and continued on past a small residential area. There the paved road turned to dirt as we entered the redwoods.
This is the Howland Hills Road, it is one of the best redwood drives anywhere and it passes through the heart of Stout Grove, part of Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. The park is big, nearly 10,000 acres and is at the northern end of Redwood National and State Parks. Stout grove contains one of Redwood National Park’s best concentrations of giant redwoods and here there are many of the world’s oldest redwood trees. They are huge and there are a lot of them on this easy 10 mile round trip drive from Crescent City and back.
Howland Hills Road is a well-traveled narrow, dirt vehicle road and along the way we occasionally met another car coming from the opposite direction and we each carefully pulled aside so the cars could pass. Apparently built and/or improved by Chinese laborers in the early 1900s, this road once was used by logging vehicles. Before that, it was part of the stagecoach route to Oregon.
The terrain here is almost prehistoric. In may areas along the road the undergrowth is made up of ferns, bushes and is a mass of vegetation. We both commented that it looked like the kind of environment dinosaurs word live in. Remember the third Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi, when the Ewoks were driving the jet sleds among the big tree? Yep, those scenes were filmed here.
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Read more about Crescent City and the Smith River.
Then
What was the Day of Discovery?
