Carl Ross

North America has been blessed with one of the richest and most varied forest ecosystems the world has ever known. Certainly, no forests surpass the beauty of the hardwood groves of the Smoky Mountains or the moss-draped evergreen forests of our Olympic peninsula. Of all species on earth, redwoods are indisputably the champions. Among the oldest trees, living more than two thousand years, and absolutely the tallest, growing to nearly four hundred feet in height, a single towering redwood is one of the largest plants or animals ever to exist--larger than the blue whale, larger even than the brontosaurus.

Millions of years ago, when the climate was moist and warm, redwood forests covered more than half of what is now the United States. Following subsequent ice ages, most redwood forests were replaced by prairies and hardwood and evergreen forests. Fortunately, the redwoods were still able to grow along a five hundred mile stretch of the west coast, from the San Francisco Bay to the mouth of the Rogue River in Southern Oregon. For the last ten thousand years, the California redwood forests flourished in harmony with the hunter-gatherer cultures of Native Americans living amidst them.