In 1917, as the new Redwood Highway pushed into Humboldt County, replacing a tortuous wagon road, tourists began to motor north to gaze up in wonder at the giant coastal redwoods.
Many, though, were dismayed to see so many of the wondrous trees heading south on the backs of logging trucks.
Among the visitors that summer were John C. Merriam, a University of California paleontologist; Madison Grant, chairman of the New York Zoological Society; and Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Appalled by what they saw, they founded the Save the Redwoods League the following year.
Now in its 90th year, the San Francisco organization has been instrumental in preserving old-growth redwoods and establishing a chain of state parks and reserves, and Redwood National Park.
From the start, the league has preserved old-growth groves and their watersheds with a simple but undeniably effective technique: It buys the land at fair market prices from timber companies and turns it over to the state and federal governments to manage as parks.
In the mid-1920s, the league talked John D. Rockefeller into writing two checks totaling $2 million - $23.5 million in today's dollars - to purchase much of the land that now encompasses Humboldt Redwoods State Park. Today, the 10,000-acre Rockefeller Forest within the park is the largest contiguous old-growth redwood forest in the world.
To date, the league has purchased and preserved more than 180,000 acres of forest - 280 square miles - much of it the land for 53 redwood parks and reserves, including Prairie Creek Redwoods, Del Norte Coast Redwoods and Jedediah Smith Redwood state parks.
About 15,000 acres of ancient redwood forests remain unprotected in California, and the league is working to acquire them, as well as the less-glamorous but crucial watersheds surrounding existing old-growth preserves.San Francisco Chronicle
