Humboldt County
Land of the world’s tallest trees
VISITORS HEAD TO THE FAR northwest corner of California for the tallest redwoods—indeed the tallest trees anywhere in the world—but what pulls them under Humboldt County’s spell is everything else: the pristine coast, pastoral valleys, old timber towns and a laid-back atmosphere that evolved from its long-thriving (and now largely legal) cannabis culture.
Start your trip with a walk in those famous redwoods. The biggest payoff is in Humboldt Redwoods State Park where Rockefeller Grove holds 10 of the world’s 16 tallest trees, including spectacular stands along Bull Creek. And, 2019 marks a centennial: it was in 1919 that women of Humboldt County started a campaign to preserve old-growth redwoods.
Open Spaces
The county’s gorgeous array of open spaces will compete for your time but don’t miss Patrick’s Point, where seals, sea lions and whales can be watched from rocky spots above the Pacific.
Humboldt is also home to the Lost Coast, an isolated stretch that is so difficult to reach that engineers who built Highway 1 a hundred years ago—another 2019 centennial—avoided it and joined Highway 1 with inland Highway 101 instead.
However, much of the shore is easily accessible and lined with windswept dunes that stretch for miles. Take the drive along the South Spit of Humboldt Bay, a narrow finger of dunes that separate the bay from the ocean, a bit of paradise for birders, surfers or walkers packing a picnic. Out in the waters, about 70 percent of California’s oysters are cultivated.
Historic Architecture
Step back into time in Ferndale, a preserved Victorian village that is on the National Register of Historic Places. Once a farming and dairy town, today its shoplined streets nestled in a green valley are so picture-perfect they are used as movie backdrops.
An ideal base for visitors is the county seat of Eureka, which is easier to reach with new non-stop flights to Los Angeles and in June 2019 non-stops to Denver.
The city’s Old Town was recently named a state cultural district due to its thriving arts scene and Friday Night Markets. Board the Madeket, the oldest continually operating passenger vessel in the U.S., for a narrated tour of natural wonders and history that make this far corner of California—named by Lonely Planet as the top U.S. Travel destination in 2018—so alluring.