About Portola Redwoods

Portola Redwoods State Park is a 2,800-acre redwood park near La Honda in the Santa Cruz Mountains, run by California State Parks. It opened in 1945 on land that had been a Shriners' summer retreat, and it is named for the Spanish explorer Gaspar de Portolá, whose 1769 expedition passed along the San Mateo coast. The park has since doubled in size through gifts from groups such as Save the Redwoods League.

The Quiroste

People have lived around what is now the park for thousands of years. The largest tribe here was the Quiroste, whose territory ran from Año Nuevo to Pescadero and up toward Skyline Ridge. They fished Pescadero Creek for steelhead and coho salmon and gathered natural asphaltum from Tar Creek to use as glue and sealant. A trade route crossed the park: coastal shell beads, abalone, mussels, fish and flint went inland, and obsidian, inland foods and bows came back over the mountain trails.

Portolá and the Spanish

In 1769 Gaspar de Portolá led an expedition overland up the San Mateo coast toward San Francisco Bay. It never came to this spot, but the trip, and those that followed, led to Spanish settlement around San Francisco and Monterey bays, and the park carries his name.

Loggers, a Cabin and Page Mill Road

The Gold Rush of 1849 created huge demand for lumber, and crews came into the Santa Cruz Mountains to cut thousand-year-old redwoods. The first European settler here, Danish immigrant Christian Iverson, made his living splitting redwood shakes and built a cabin on Pescadero Creek in the 1860s. The cabin site is still on the park map, beside the Old Haul Road.

In 1889 Iverson sold out to lumberman William Page. Page ran a shingle mill just east of today's Slate Creek Trail Camp and built a haul road linking several mills to the Embarcadero in Palo Alto. That road became Page Mill Road, which Bay Area drivers still use. The Slate Creek Trail leads to the Page Mill site.

The Shriners' Retreat

In 1924 San Francisco businessman John A. Hooper sold more than 1,600 wooded acres to the Masonic Lodge's Islam Shrine of San Francisco for a summer retreat. The Shriners built cabins, kitchens, a stage and a recreation hall. That hall is today's visitor center, which State Parks says still feels like a wilderness lodge, with couches and a fireplace.

When membership fell, the lodge sold the land to the state for $112,500, half of its $225,000 appraised value, in effect giving the other half. Portola Redwoods State Park opened in 1945.

The Forest Today

Coast redwoods dominate, mixed with tan oak, madrone, California bay, bigleaf maple, live oak and Douglas-fir. Huckleberries crowd the understory, and leopard lilies bloom by the creeks from May to July. Pescadero Creek holds protected coho salmon and steelhead trout, and the old-growth trees shelter the endangered marbled murrelet. Black-tailed deer, raccoons, gray squirrels, coyotes and mountain lions live here too. The most remote old growth is in the Peters Creek Grove.

Who Runs the Park

California State Parks manages Portola Redwoods, and the Portola and Castle Rock Foundation supports it. This website is an independent guide, not affiliated with either. For official information call the park at (650) 948-9098; see contact.