Park Information

Rules and Notifications

Sinkyone Wilderness State Park is located within bear country.  State Park regulations require that visitors store all food and scented items properly at all times.

The Needle Rock to Bear Harbor Road is currently closed to motor vehicles due to unsafe conditions. It is open to day hikers, backpackers, bicyclists, and equestrians.

  • Bring your own toilet paper, even at the Usal drive-in campground. Staffing cuts make it difficult to keep supplies adequate.

  • Pack it in, pack it out is the rule at Usal and other Sinkyone campgrounds. Visitors must bring their own garbage bags or refuse containers.

  • Camping at Needle Rock is not traditional car camping and visitors must camp in designated spaces.  No car camping or sleeping in vehicles is permitted.  This includes self-contained RV's and car-top tents.

  • Fees are collected at Needle Rock via self-registration with cash or check only.

  • In wet weather, roads may be impassable. RVs and trailers are not recommended in any season.

  • Bring your own drinking water or a water treatment device.

  • Dogs are not allowed on trails. At Usal Beach and Needle Rock Visitor Center they must be in your vehicle or on a leash no more than six feet long.

  • Please do not pick flowers or mushrooms. Eating berries is allowed. Just make sure you know how to tell the difference between the edible and poisonous ones.

  • Don't feed the animals. Hungry animals may beg for food, but once fed they may become aggressive in their demands for more.

  • Keep a clean camp. A bear or raccoon uses his nose to read your menu—and if you leave fragrant leftovers, he might pay you a surprise visit.

  • Lock food in a hard-topped car or (for backpackers) hang it in a tree or secure it in a bear container. Even in the car, store food in airtight containers, carefully wrapped.

  • Be careful around the majestic Roosevelt elk. Stay on trails and do not get close to them. Never get between a cow elk and her young.

  • Don’t approach marine mammals. Report a distressed animal by calling the North Coast Marine Mammal Center at 707-465-6265.

  • Driving on the beach is not allowed, and citations will be issued. Usal Beach is not an OHV park. Street legal vehicles are allowed on designated and maintained roads.

Weather

Weather  Summer temperatures average 45–75° F. Morning and evening fog is common.
Winter lows range from 35-55° F. Rain falls up to 80 inches per year, mostly between November and May.

Park History

Native People

The Sinkyone people lived in this area for thousands of years. When Europeans first arrived, the Sinkyones may have numbered about four thousand, with lands extending from the ocean to the main stem and south fork of the Eel River.

The name Sinkyone came from 20th-century ethnographers, who assigned it to separate political groups speaking the same dialect of the Athabascan language. Each group maintained its own geographic area and identity, but formed a larger economy that delivered goods as far as the eastern United States. Today, people of Sinkyone descent live throughout the North Coast.

Practices passed down through generations of Sinkyones have created a highly productive environment. Using time-tested methods, conservation and restoration projects headed by local tribal groups have been instrumental in healing the landscape.

Early "Settlers"

In the 1850s, early European settlers claimed land near Shelter Cove, just north of today’s state park. In the 1860s, settlers also began to occupy the land around what is now Bear Harbor, where they grazed cattle. Soon the landscape was devoted to cattle and sheep ranches, farms, and orchards.

By the mid-1860s, lines of pack mules carried a steady supply of local tanoak bark to San Francisco tanneries. Before long, the settlers were building wharfs and chutes to load ships with lumber, tanoak bark, and other profitable cargoes. In 1872, Robert Anderson built a wire chute at Little Jackass Gulch to slide lumber products to waiting schooners. The gulch, which he called “Anderson’s Landing,” was later renamed “Northport.”

Soon lumber schooners were departing regularly from Usal, Anderson’s Landing, Needle Rock, and other local ports. The Bear Harbor Railroad was built in the early 1890s to haul tanoak from inland forests to Bear Harbor. Plans to extend the line from Bear Harbor to a mill near Piercy were cancelled after a fatal accident and the 1906 earthquake. Railroad remnants may still be seen in the park.

By 1892, the demand for lumber had destroyed thousands of acres of virgin coast redwoods. John A. Wonderly, who had acquired the Usal Lumber Company in 1888, shut it down for lack of timber. Using skillful marketing and partnerships, San Franciscan Robert Dollar resurrected it for a while in 1894, and then shut it down again in 1901. In November 1908, the Nelson Lumber Company of New York State acquired the mill for $10 in gold.

Preservation

The land continued to change hands frequently, with various attempts to revive logging operations. In 1975, the state of California began acquiring local land to preserve as Sinkyone Wilderness State Park. In 1986, environmentalists sued to prevent Georgia-Pacific Lumber Company from clear-cutting a large parcel of land adjacent to the state’s holdings, including the old-growth redwoods in Sally Bell Grove. Before the case came to trial, Georgia-Pacific sold the property to the Trust for Public Land. Funds for 3,200 acres of the purchase came from Save the Redwoods League, California State Coastal Conservancy, and other donors, as well as the Trust for Public Land. In 1986, those acres were added to Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, adding the Sally Bell Grove and nearly doubling the park’s size.

Another 3,900 acres of the Trust’s land was sold to the InterTribal Wilderness Council in 1997. Operating under a conservation easement, the Council established Intertribal Sinkyone Wilderness Park, which is used by local Native Americans for conservation of cultural and natural resources, including salmon habitat.

Science & Nature

Geology

Sinkyone Wilderness State Park lies near one of the most seismically active places on the planet: the Mendocino Triple Plate Junction. Here the Pacific, North American, and Gorda tectonic plates all come together, with lots of folding and faulting.

The park’s beaches are mostly black sand, made up of dark, iron-rich mineral grains and small cobbles and gravels from local Franciscan bedrock. Sometimes a frosting of purple or pinkish garnet sands appears and then vanishes, brought about by the washing action of the surf.

Animals

Amphibians include southern torrent salamanders, giant salamanders, tailed frogs, and yellow-legged frogs.

Overhead, raptors—including red-tailed hawks, Cooper’s hawks, sharp-shinned hawks, golden eagles, northern harriers, peregrine falcons, northern spotted owls, and osprey—descend from the skies, seeking their prey. Out at sea, brown pelicans, rhinoceros auklets, and their close relatives—tufted puffins—can be seen diving for fish.

Plants

Sinkyone Wilderness has steep Douglas-fir forests close to the coast. Tanbark oak grows on the inland slopes. Coastal terraces are covered with coastal prairie and coastal scrub vegetation. Only three groves of old-growth redwoods survived the logging era: J. Smeaton Chase Grove southeast of Bear Harbor, School Marm Grove north of Wheeler, and Sally Bell Grove on Little Jackass Creek.

Sinkyone’s redwoods are windswept, twisted, and up to 10 feet in diameter. That’s not especially big by North Coast standards. (Trees more than 20 feet in diameter and 350 feet tall live elsewhere.) However, Sinkyone’s trees are especially picturesque.

More Information

For more information about geology, plants, and animals along the North Coast, go to the Redwood National and State Parks website http://www.nps.gov/redw/naturescience/index.htm or to the “In Depth” section of the Humboldt Redwoods Interpretive Association website http://humboldtredwoods.org

To find out about scientific research in California's redwood parks, go to Save the Redwoods League’s website. http://www.savetheredwoods.org/our-work/study/redwood-research/redwoods-research.

Marine Protected Areas: Double Cone Rock State Marine Conservation Area (SMCA)

Like state and national parks protect wildlife and habitats on land, marine protected areas (MPAs) conserve and restore wildlife and habitats in our ocean. Under the California Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) passed in 1999, California began a historic effort to establish a science-based, statewide network of MPAs through a collaborative effort that includes the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and California State Parks. California is taking a regional approach to the design and implementation of MPAs, and has divided the state into five regions: the north coast, south coast, north central coast, central coast and San Francisco Bay.

MPAs contribute to healthier, more resilient ocean ecosystems that can better withstand a wide range of impacts such as pollution and climate change. By protecting entire ecosystems rather than focusing on a single species, MPAs are powerful tools for conserving and restoring ocean biodiversity, and protecting cultural resources, while allowing certain activities such as marine recreation and research. There is a global body of scientific evidence about the effectiveness of marine protected areas and reserves to restore marine ecosystems (http://www.piscoweb.org).

In the waters adjacent to Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, there is one MPA, Double Cone Rock State Marine Conservation Area (SMCA).

  • Double Cone Rock State Marine Conservation Area (SMCA)
    • This area is bounded by the mean high tide line and straight lines connecting the following points in the order listed except where noted:
      39° 48.500' N. lat. 123° 50.713' W. long.;
      39° 48.500' N. lat. 123° 55.875' W. long.;
      thence southward along the three nautical mile offshore boundary to
      39° 44.300' N. lat. 123° 54.178' W. long.; and
      39° 44.300' N. lat. 123° 50.055' W. long.
    • Double Cone Rock SMCA is 20+ miles north of Fort Bragg, just past the point where Highway One leaves the coast. At Rockport you can hike down to Rockport Bay. Look north to the Double Cone SMCA, and look south to Rockport Rocks, a special closure area 300 feet out from the rocks. You can see more of Double Cone Rock SMCA by going north to Usal Road and driving to Usal Beach. ROADS MAY BE IMPASSABLE IN WET WEATHER. RV'S & TRAILERS NOT RECOMMENDED.
    • Permitted/Prohibited Uses: Take of all living marine resources is prohibited EXCEPT the recreational take of salmon by trolling and Dungeness crab by trap, hoop net or hand; the commercial take of salmon with troll fishing gear and Dungeness crab by trap.
    • The following federally recognized tribes (listed alphabetically) are exempt from the area and take regulations for Double Cone Rock State Marine Conservation Area (subsection 632(b)(16)) and shall comply with all other existing regulations and statutes:
      • Big Valley Band of Pomo Indians of the Big Valley Rancheria
      • Cahto Indian Tribe of the Laytonville Rancheria
      • Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians
      • Elem Indian Colony of Pomo Indians of the Sulphur Bank Rancheria
      • Guidiville Rancheria
      • Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake
      • Hopland Band of Pomo Indians of the Hopland Rancheria
      • Lower Lake Rancheria
      • Manchester Band of Pomo Indians of the Manchester-Point Arena Rancheria
      • Middletown Rancheria of Pomo Indians
      • Pinoleville Pomo Nation
      • Potter Valley Tribe
      • Redwood Valley Rancheria of Pomo Indians
      • Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians
      • Round Valley Indian Tribes of the Round Valley Reservation
      • Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians
      • Sherwood Valley Rancheria of Pomo Indians

Additional Resources:

For additional information on MPAs please visit the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s website: https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/MPAs

For resources related to MPAs, please visit the Marine Protected Areas Education and Outreach Initiative’s website: http://www.californiampas.org/

Call Richardson Grove at 707-247-3318, or write to Sinkyone Wilderness State Park, c/o Richardson Grove State Park, 1600 U.S. Highway 101 #8, Garberville, CA 95542.

The Sinkyone Wilderness State Park brochure contains valuable information on the park’s natural and cultural history as well as tips for planning your visit.

Another good source of information is Save the Redwoods League http://www.savetheredwoods.org/park/sinkyone-wilderness-state-park.

To go deeper, check out these books:

• Chase, Joseph Smeaton, California Coast Trails: a horseback ride from Mexico to Oregon, Houghton-Mifflin, 1913.  Chapter 21 describes Usal Road—and the people who lived along it—more than a century ago. 

• Evarts, John, and Marjorie Popper, editors, Coast Redwood: A Natural and Cultural History, Cachuma Press, 2001. In chapter 6, pages 150–151 describe the fight for Sally Bell Grove and the expansion of Sinkyone Wilderness State Park in the 1980s.

• Lorentzen, Bob and Richard Nichols, Hiking the California Coastal Trail, Volume One: Oregon to Monterey, Coastwalk, 2002.

• McKinney, John, Day Hiker’s Guide to California Parks, The Trailmaster, 2007.