Save trees:
Group looks to save old-growth Peninsula redwoods.
The hikers paused amid the cool dampness of the ancient forest to get a better look at a truly remarkable specimen of redwood jutting out of a lush hillside across Peters Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
The huge sequoia looked to be at least as large as the Patriarch Tree, a 285-foot giant a short walk away in Portola Redwoods State Park, but none of the walkers could accurately gauge the height of the tree, obscured as it was by the thick canopy.
“That’s a big one,” said Larry Holmes, admiring the tree’s tremendous girth, unusual light-
brownish color and the enormous striations in the bark creasing upward along the trunk. The stroll through this 145-acre forest in a canyon south of the San Mateo County town of La Honda was a walk back in time — to a place dominated by 1,000- and 2,000-yearold redwoods — but it is the future of the colossal trees that Holmes is concerned about.
Preserving redwoods
The 72-year-old Holmes, whose family has for 38 years owned what experts say is the third-largest old-growth redwood grove in the Santa Cruz Mountains, agreed this month to sell it to the San Francisco conservation group Save the Redwoods League. If the $8 million deal goes through, it would forever protect the land and establish a conservation easement on 214 acres of forest at nearby Boulder Creek. In all, 359 acres of some of the last remaining old-growth redwoods along the Peninsula would be preserved.
“The residual amount of old growth in California is 5 percent or less of what it once was, so these trees are precious,” Holmes said. “We’ve always felt they should be part of the park.”
The plan for the Peters Creek property is to build trails, work on easements for better public access and, someday when state finances are better, sell the land to the California State Parks. The conservation easement would prohibit subdivisions and timber harvesting around the Holmes family ranch 5 miles away in the Boulder Creek area, which is next to Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California’s oldest state park.
But the deal is not yet complete and, as always, money is the issue. The redwoods league must raise the $2 million down payment by the end of the year, or the deal is dead. The rest of the purchase price would have to be paid by December 2013.
The effort has the support of the Portola and Castle Rock Foundation and the Peninsula Open Space Trust, which recently donated $1.1 million to the cause. The work is part of what is called the Living Landscape Initiative, a collaboration among five local conservation groups, including the redwoods league and the open space trust, to protect 20,000 acres of redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
It is a minor miracle that any redwoods still exist in what was once an enormous wilderness of giant trees, grizzly bears and shaded creeks teeming with coho salmon and steelhead trout. The fish were an important source of food for the Ohlone Indians and later the Spanish, who named one of the creeks Pescadero, which means “fishing place.”
Logging by homesteaders
Logging began in the 1860s to support an influx of homesteaders who came to the area after the California Gold Rush. They were, by all accounts, a rough bunch, including Danish immigrant Christian Iverson, who claimed to be a former Pony Express rider and built the first cabin amid the redwoods.
Iverson split redwood shakes and shingles for a living and, in the 1880s, served as a bodyguard for the wife of Capt. Harry Love, a California ranger who supposedly captured and beheaded the famous outlaw Joaquin Murrieta. One day Love flew into a jealous rage and opened fire on his wife and her protector, only to be shot to death by Iverson.
In 1889, Iverson sold his property to William Page, who had built the first of two sawmills along Peters Creek, which was named after another early immigrant named Jean Peter, who ran a dairy and grew hay and grain.
Page, who also operated a general store and served on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, used the lumber to make shingles. He later built a logging road that became known as Page Mill Road. The road, which still exists, was used to transport lumber to Palo Alto.
Many of the old-growth trees survived because the lumber in the area was used mainly for shingles, which require straight grain and selective logging.
The Islam Shrine of the Masonic Lodge purchased the land in 1924 and built cabins and camp facilities for members to use as a mountain vacation resort. The regulations at the Shrine Grove prohibited logging. The Shriners sold the property in 1945 after membership dwindled and the state park was created.
Easing public access
Bill Middleton, a San Francisco car salesman who had built summer cabins in the area, sold the Peters Creek parcel to the Holmes family in 1974. The Holmeses bought the Boulder Creek parcel in 1977.
The trail along Peters Creek, which includes an unpaved portion of Page Mill Road, leads into Portola state park, which contains many 200-foot-plus old-growth trees and is famous among naturalists for its beauty. As it is now, the public can reach the redwoods inside the park only via a steep and circuitous 11-mile round trip route. The new acquisition is expected to drastically shorten that hike.
Sam Lawson, the director of land protection for the Redwoods League, said he also plans to work with neighboring property owners on trail easements and with the Portola and Castle Rock Foundation to develop a docent program.
“If everything goes to plan,” Lawson said, “we will be able to open this up to docent-led tours soon after the first of the year.”
Victor Roth, a state parks acquisitions specialist who was on the hike through the Holmes property, said he is confident the land will eventually be part of the park.
“These are thousand-yearold trees bounded on two sides by state parks,” Roth said. “It is my job to identify acquisition opportunities, and given the spectacular resources, this is a special opportunity.”