Just north of Founders Grove, Mattole Road turns west toward Bull Creek. Take it if you have an hour to spare. Rockefeller Forest, roughly 10,000 acres of redwoods that have never been cut, is the largest unbroken stand of old-growth coast redwood left anywhere on the planet.
It survived because John D. Rockefeller Jr. was brought out to see what was being lost and gave a fortune, matched by the state of California, to buy these flats from the lumber company in the late 1920s. The Bull Creek Flats area has easy walking among trees that rival anything in the redwood world.
Bull Creek taught the park a hard lesson. The giants on the flats were protected, but the ridges above them were clearcut, and in the floods of the 1950s and 60s the bare slopes shed their soil and the creek undercut and toppled hundreds of old-growth trees. The park bought the upper watershed to stop it: you can’t save the grove without saving the ridge above it.
The creek’s older name, Lolangkok, belongs to the Sinkyone people, whose homeland this is.
Pro tip: Ask at the Visitor Center about the Rockefeller Loop and Mattole Road before you go. Both have closed in the past for storm damage and hazard-tree work, and current status changes.
- • Mattole Road is narrow and winding; drive slowly and use pull-outs.
- • Check current trail and road status at the Visitor Center or with the park before driving out.
- • There are no services out on Mattole Road.
- What is Rockefeller Forest?
- Rockefeller Forest is a roughly 10,000-acre stand of never-logged coast redwood in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, the largest remaining old-growth coast redwood forest in the world. It lies west of the Avenue of the Giants along Mattole Road and Bull Creek.
