A Lighthouse and Amazing Redwood Trees

While at Crescent City we went to see the Battery Point Lighthouse. You can only go to the lighthouse during low tide, and we ended up just getting pictures. On the way there we stopped by the Brother Jonathan Cemetery, which is a memorial to people who died of the Brother Jonathon ship wreck at Point St. George Reef.  St. George Reef Lighthouse was built after that. It is six miles at sea on “Dragon Rocks”. and was in service from 1892 to 1975. It was the most expensive of the 19th century lighthouses at $700,000, and took 10 years to complete. Can you imagine that cost in 1892? I didn’t realize they’d have two lighthouses so close together.  I was able to get a distant picture of St. George Reef Lighthouse.

Battery Point Lighthouse

St. George Reef Lighthouse

Brother Jonathon Memorial

We were told that most of the older and larger trees are in the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Today we’re doing Jedediah Smith, tomorrow Prairie Creek and the Redwoods National Park. We passed the North road to the State Park on our way to Crescent City, so we entered on Howland Hill Road from the southwest. RVs are not advised on this road. It is narrow, some low branches.  It is a 10-mile road which will take you to highway 199. There are pullouts along the way and hiking trails.

If you’ve never seen the giant redwoods, they are amazing. Pictures don’t do them justice. We took some pictures of ourselves or the jeep with a tree simply for perception of size.





There are three distinct redwood species: Dawn Redwood, Giant Sequoia and Coast Redwood. The Dawn Redwood are only found in central China. They are deciduous, not evergreen and smaller in size with height up to 140 feet and diameter to 6 feet. The Giant Sequoia are in the western slopes of Sierra Nevada Mountains in central California. They are evergreen, with a height to 314 feet and diameter up to 30 feet. The Coast Redwoods are in northern California coast and southernmost coastal Oregon. They are evergreen, with a height up to 390 feet and diameter up to 26 feet. Of course, not all of the trees we saw are this large. As some of the older trees die and fall down, new ones will grow from them - on top of them, inside them, wherever.  Some of the trees grow together. Some have holes near the base and we could go inside; they were hollow. You could see that there had been a fire. We were surprised how many of the trees are broken off on top.




Tomorrow - head south and see more.

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