My partner and I drove over the Golden Gate Bridge to reach a beautiful sliver in America. We drove up Highway 101 for six hours about six weeks ago. Redwood National and State Parks are located along approximately 40 miles of Northern California coastline. It is home to three state parks and one federal park, which together house 133,000 acres of natural beauty. You will find stunning beaches, rivers, and lagoons. There are also eye-popping biking and hiking trails.
The James Irvine Trail in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park was our favorite hike. You will find yourself in groves of huge redwood trees as you cross a wooden bridge that crosses a stream. These trees, which are thousands of years old and as tall as the Statue of Liberty, have a diameter of 18 feet. They are amazing examples of evolution. Their root systems allow them to communicate, cooperate, and share resources with one another. Their bark is so thick they can withstand scorching wildfires. Scientists have traced redwood’s ancestry back 160 millions years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
The trail takes you through the beautiful primeval forest for miles before reaching Fern Canyon. This place is so extraordinary that Steven Spielberg made it the setting for The Lost World: Jurassic Park. We crossed Fern Canyon to reach grasslands, where we met a group of Roosevelt elk. We managed to avoid the gang and arrived at Gold Bluffs Beach. There, we were able to gaze upon the stunning Pacific Ocean from the forested, rocky coast. This hike is a must-do.
The doorstep to this natural treasure, aEUR”, is so precious that the United Nations declared it a World Heritage Site. However, the outlook for the future of the town is grim. It is called Orick. To get to the park you will pass abandoned motels, ramshackle homes, and junkyard-like properties as you drive through Orick on Highway 101. Orick looks like a setting for a zombie movie.
I have seen Orick, a rural town that has been through economic disasters but never recovered. These abandoned buildings are macabre reminders of a more prosperous time. Orick is the entrance to this beautiful World Heritage Site. It is the nearest town to the parks. Redwood National Park’s administrative headquarters is located there. Orick is located in a picturesque valley close to the ocean and is surrounded by lush parkland. This is the ideal starting point for many outdoor adventures.
So why have all the motels been closed? Why isn’t there more restaurants and shops for tourists? Why haven’t people invested in infrastructure and upkeep? Orick, what the hell happened?
A 1963 team of scientists from the National Geographic Society discovered the tallest tree in the entire world. They found it while exploring a small area north of Orick. The tree, which stood at 362 feet tall, was discovered on Redwood Creek in private logging land. The tree was named Howard Libbey after the founder of the logging firm that owned the land. National Geographic featured the tree on its cover in 1964.
The once 2 million-acre coastal redwood forest aEUR”, which used to stretch from Big Sur to Oregon, had been reduced to 300,000. Most of this logging occurred after World War II when there was a huge demand for redwood lumber. This was Orick’s golden age. It had four sawmills and good union timber jobs. There was also a busy highway with cars and log trucks. There were plenty of shops, restaurants, bars, motels and shops. The town boasted a 350-seat theater and almost 3000 residents.
Orick’s timber industry was a threat to the last bastion of old redwoods. Technological advancements had allowed the logging industry cut redwoods on an unprecedented scale. This ecological destruction was causing flooding and mudslides throughout the region. Environmentalists became aware that the existing state parks did not protect 50,000 acres, or about one-sixth of the forest remaining. They began a passionate movement to create a national park.
Orick’s logging workers and companies hated the idea that a national park would be created. Their livelihoods were derived from the removal of trees in the proposed park area. After many squabbles, compromises, and a few more, President Lyndon Johnson signed the 1968 act creating Redwood National Park. This park now protects 58,000 acres. In the park, there is a huge grove of redwoods from old-growth, named Lady Bird Johnson Grove in his honor. The area was dedicated by Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, as well as First Ladies Lady Bird Johnson (and Pat Nixon).
However, the fight between environmentalists and loggers did not end with the creation of the park. Timber companies started cutting down redwoods within half a mile of the park after protests. The second, more intense battle began over plans to expand the park.
Local loggers organized a convoy to Washington DC called “Talk to America” to help accelerate the expansion of parklands. Jimmy Carter, a former peanut farmer was elected president. To give it to Jimmy Carter, the loggers brought a nine-ton redwood-carved peanut. The sign that they put on the peanut said “It may seem like peanuts to you but it’s work for us!” After the activists motorcade of 25 semitrucks had completed their nine-day journey to Washington, they met with presidential staff and tried to give President Carter the peanut. It was refused by the aides.
Donna Hufford, an Orick resident and businesswoman, says that the redwood peanut “really came back to Orick.” She has been living in Orick since 1970. It’s still there. It hasn’t been a big icon. It is still there, right in front of the only gas station we have left.”
President Carter signed a 1978 act to expand the Redwood National Park by 48,000 acre, almost doubling its size. The Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus predicted that at least 1,000 jobs in timber would be lost during the park’s initial year of expansion. However, he also predicted that these jobs would eventually be lost once all the forest resources had been exhausted. Logging towns on the West Coast, most of them not near national parks, have a history that go bust after the trees have been removed. In this instance, however, the timber industry had clear boogiemen. They were hippie-dippie “tree huggers”, and the federal government.
Hufford states that “the problem was when national park took control, you could just begin to see the decline of logging.” “And that was their lifeblood, and they were fighting to get it.”
Protests forced Secretary Andrus to fight for provisions to limit the economic impact of the park’s expansion. He is an Oregonian, who was born into a logging family, and has worked as a logder himself. The Redwood Employees Protection Program was created by the law expanding the park. It provided benefits and payments as well as retraining for timber workers who had lost their jobs. The US Government Accountability Office later found that the program provided more than 100 million dollars in payments to 3,500 ex-timber workers between 1978-1988, which was far higher than the initial projections. It was also revealed that only 432 workers were enrolled in retraining programs. Program delays and design problems were blamed by the authors. They also noted that payments weren’t tied to retraining and stated that “the benefits became a disincentive for work.” It was likely that the lack of great jobs in the region to train for didn’t help. In 1989, the last payment was made.
The welfare program for displaced workers wasn’t meant to be a permanent solution in the face of the industry’s collapse. Instead, legislators and environmental groups sold tourism to be the solution to the economic crisis. They claimed that the national park would bring huge amounts of tourism to Orick, and the surrounding areas aEUR” more than the existing tourism to the three state parks.
National parks are known to have a positive impact on the local economies. Recent research by economists Gergely Ujhelyi and Andrea Szabo found that national parks have “substantial multiplier effect on the economy driven through visitation,” especially for the construction, hotel, and retail industries. Redwood National Park is different?
Szabo and Ujhelyi were kind enough for us to crunch numbers and found that Redwood has a significantly lower number of visitors than other national parks. Redwood National Park received only half a million visitors in 2019. Yosemite in central California saw nearly 4.5 million visitors, aEUR” 800% less.
Redwood National Park’s total visitors don’t include visits to its three state parks. This unique federal-state arrangement was established in 1994. To get an estimate, we reached out to National Park Service. They said that many visitors report visiting both the state parks and national parks. However, we were unable to get accurate numbers about total visits. Erin Gates, spokesperson for NPS, says that they are working to obtain more accurate visitor data as we know we have significantly undercounted total Redwood National and State Park visits.
Although the data isn’t conclusive, it is clear that Redwood National Park and State Parks are much less popular than major national parks. Perhaps it’s because these parks are far from major population centers. Perhaps it’s because it is often foggy and cold in this region. Perhaps people don’t value old trees as much or don’t know how unique these trees are. Perhaps people don’t realize how beautiful this area is.
However, locals have blamed the management of the national parks for not fulfilling their promise of tourism. Redwood does not have a grand lodge, unlike many national parks. Redwood does not have a large trail network or a drive-in campground. State parks do. It seems to not invest in visitor services or marketing. Locals are concerned that many people drive through Orick on Highway 101 to get to the park. They park, then pee and look at trees before moving on.
Redwood National Park is not considered a park in Yosemite Yellowstone or Mount Rushmore terms,” stated a local official to Congress in 1995. It is a preserve. It’s not about visiting, but conservation.
This could explain why Ujhelyi and Szabo believe that the hotel industry is less important in this area than it is for other national parks. Redwood’s hotel income appears to have stagnated over time, despite it growing in other national parks.
Redwood National Park attracts some economic activity. According to the National Park Service, it generated approximately $32 million in regional economic activity and supported 446 jobs. Orick is not the only beneficiary of this tourist money. It now has a population of less than 400 people, 26 percent of which live in poverty.
The federal government provided $13.4 million for Redwood National Park expansion to help fund infrastructure and to provide high-risk loans for businesses. The money was used to establish the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission. This commission provides loans to businesses who have difficulty getting funds from other sources.
Gregg Foster, who is the current executive director, claims that most of the federal aid never reached Orick. A large portion of the federal assistance was used to build a marina in Orick and an airport that is better. Orick lacks any political representation, he claims. It is an unincorporated community without a mayor or city council.
Orick’s inability to self-determine has been frustrating local residents over the years. It has been subject to bureaucrats from the national park, the coast commission, fish and game commissions, regional water quality boards, county supervisors and many other agencies. It even doesn’t control its main street. Highway 101 is the state’s main street. Foster claims that the state has created a morass in red tape that has hampered investment and made it difficult for businesses to do business in the region. Foster claims that officials have not pursued smart development plans to transform the town. Orick is his “orphan.”
Foster states that while everyone has some part of the regulating Orick, no one has actually aEUR,” in my opinion, aEUR,” taken on the responsibility to help them transition. “And there were a lot promises made years ago that you would thrive as the gateway to this amazing place, the UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, no one has made the necessary investments to make it happen.
Redwood National Park closed down what was considered by locals to be a boon for Orick’s tourist industry in 2003. For many decades, hundreds of families drove their RVs to the area, and stayed at “Freshwater Spit”, a small strip of land between Freshwater Lagoon’s Pacific Ocean and Orick. Many of these visitors would frequent the town to eat and shop. This was the problem: it was on Highway 101, which runs through the park. Transportation officials, environmentalists and park rangers were furious at the highway-side camping. Foster claims that the new regulations prohibiting camping were “the last nail in Orick’s coffin” for Orick’s struggling tourism industry.
Locals set up picket lines along the highway after camping on Freshwater Spit had been banned. They even threatened to kill park rangers. The park service dispatched a SWAT team to stop the violence after a pipe bomb was discovered in an outhouse.
Many of Orick’s businesses have been destroyed over the years. After an inspection revealed cockroach urine, cockroach feces and other violations of health codes, Humboldt County health officials closed down the Palm Cafe. A nearby motel was also closed by the Palm Cafe.
Orick’s Green Valley Motel was closed by country officials late last year. They found “inadequate sanitation and structural and fire hazards”, faulty weather protection, faulty weather protection, faulty electrical work and manual equipment, hazardous electrical work and machinery, inadequate heat supply, solid rubbish accumulation, bedbug infestations, cockroaches, and bedbugs.” The name Green Valley Motel was a bit of a misnomer by then. The motel was primarily a temporary establishment that rented rooms out on a monthly basis to people who were traveling.
Orick resident Donna Hufford says, “I have to say, I believe closing down the Green Valley Motel is a blessing.” “It had gotten so terrible there: drug dealing. Broken down cars. Garbage everywhere. No maintenance. Holes in the roof. Probably, nobody’s been painting it for thirty years. This is not what you want to see in the main area of town.
Donna and Joseph, their husband, have been hoping for investment, development and street beautification to save their little town. Joseph was born in Orick during the 1950s and 1960s when Orick was flourishing. After his father’s death, he purchased the family’s sand-and-gravel plant. The Huffords have invested in Orick over the years. In the mid-2000s they were involved in the construction of Elk Meadow Cabins, the last remaining lodging company in Orick. Donna ran the cabins for 13 years.
“We have relatives that live here and want to stay here. Hufford adds that my husband’s Indian heritage means he is deeply rooted in Orick. “And we want Orick to be the best it can.”
The Redwood Region Economic Development Commission granted the Huffords a loan to renovate and buy one of the shuttered motels in the town. The motel has been renamed Roosevelt Base Camp and will be open for business next month.
Hufford states, “Our small family has never lost faith that good things will occur here,”
The story of the Huffords is a moving one. It’s a tale of perseverance and hope as their small town struggles to breathe amid deindustrialization. However, not all Orick residents have managed to adapt to the economic challenges of the region within the legal limits.
Hufford states that there are many people who are poor and drug and alcohol abuse is common. “They are a problem, and we have park rangers with guns. They have the same authority and authority as law enforcement officers, so there is tension.”
Next week’s Planet Money newsletter will feature a story on a black market that threatens Redwood forests. Rangers have been able to take down this strong arm of the national parks, even obtaining search warrants. Next week’s Planet Money newsletter will feature the strange underground economy that is tree poaching aEUR. Register here
