Park Information

Weather

Weather During the summer months, temperatures are usually in the 70s and 80s. It's cool, wet, and 40 to 50 in winter, making this the perfect place to fish for steelhead and salmon. With up to 65 inches each year, rain prevails from November to May.

Rules & Notifications

• Do not feed wildlife. Store all food and scented items in bear-resistant lockers.
• Fires are permitted only in the stoves or fire rings provided by the park.
• Dogs must be on a leash no more than six feet long and must be confined to a tent or vehicle at night. Except for service animals, pets are not allowed on trails.

Wildlife

Black-tailed deer can be seen watching for bobcats or mountain lions. Tracks of California black bears, raccoons, and river otters dot the river’s damp banks.

Pileated woodpeckers hammer at the trees, in the company of dark-eyed juncos, northern spotted owls, winter wrens, and boisterous Steller’s jays. Great blue herons fish among the river rocks.

In winter, the confluence of Grizzly Creek and the Van Duzen River is a good spot for viewing the park’s run of spawning Chinook salmon.

A marbled murrelet chick was found on the ground here in the summer of 2009, proving that this seagoing species (Brachyramphus marmoratus) can nest in redwoods 30 miles from the coast. Murrelets once numbered 60,000 along the California coast. Today less than 6,000 remain. Corvids (jays, crows, and ravens) prey upon murrelet eggs and chicks. Please do not lure more corvids into the area by dropping food or crumbs.

Keep it Crumb Clean

This park is Crumb Clean. Visitors are required to watch this short video about the impact human food has on park wildlife.

Plants

The tallest trees on earth, coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) are the dominant tree species at Grizzly Creek. Near the eastern boundary of their range, they rely on winter rains and morning fog for survival. Other common trees include Douglas-fir, tanoak, and bigleaf maple.

Among the plants growing underneath these trees are white trillium, calypso orchids, fairy lanterns, wild ginger, and Douglas iris.

Research in the Redwoods

With the help of Save the Redwoods League and other funding partners, California’s redwood state parks have become a living laboratory for scientists.

Scientists studying the effects of rising global temperatures have found that the size and longevity of redwoods helps them store more climate-altering carbon dioxide than other plants. Even old redwoods continue to grow, each year adding more carbon-filled wood than smaller, younger trees. After redwoods die, their rot-resistant wood holds onto that carbon for a long time.

To find out more about research in California's redwood parks, click here.

Indigenous Californians

For thousands of years, native California Indians known as Nongatl lived in this area. They spoke an Athabascan language. Native groups traded with each other; local objects such as ceremonial blades and shell beads have been identified as far away as America’s Deep South and East Coast.

The ceremonies of Athabascan-speaking people often included multiple groups, and intermarriage between groups was common. Many local indigenous people spoke or still speak two or more languages. Four native language families exist in the region today: Athabascan, Algic, Hokan, and Yukian. Though these languages are distinct from one another, their speakers share many cultural traits.

With the coming of Europeans and Americans, native lands around the Van Duzen River were turned into farms and ranches. In the 1860s, U.S. Army troops from Fort Humboldt took the Nongatl people to the Round Valley, Hupa Valley, and Smith River Reservations. Many of these people eventually returned to their homelands, and the Rohnerville Rancheria was established north of Fortuna in 1910.

Some descendants of the Nongatl belong to the Bear River Band of Rohnerville Rancheria, maintaining cultural and ancestral ties while retaining and practicing their own traditions.

Park Protection

In the late 1860s, the Van Duzen River area—named for New Jersey gold seeker James Van Duzen—was a stagecoach stopover and resort. When the state of California acquired the acreage in 1943, the river and its banks had long been popular with visitors. Cheatham Grove was added in 1984, after Georgia Pacific donated it to the Nature Conservancy and the Conservancy identified Save the Redwoods League as an interim steward.

Additional Resources

To go deeper, check out these books:

 

Johnstone, Peter and Peter E. Palmquist, Giants in the Earth: the California Redwoods, Heyday Books, 2001. Includes an excerpt from L.K. Wood’s Lure of the Humboldt Bay Region, about his and James Van Duzen’s adventures in the region. One memorable passage describes an encounter with five grizzlies.

Margolin, Malcolm and Mariko Conner, Trail Posts: A Literary Exploration of California’s State Parks, Heyday Books, California State Park Foundation, 2014. Features an excerpt from The Legacy of Luna, by Julia Butterfly Hill. The famed activist’s course was set when she took a solo meander among the big trees of Grizzly Creek: “For the first time, I really felt what it was like to be alive, to feel the connection of all life and inherent truth—not the truth that is taught to us by so-called scientists or politicians or other human beings, but the truth that exists within Creation.”

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

Call or write the Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park office at 707-777-3683 or
16949 Highway 36, Carlotta, California 95528.