Guide to the Big Basin Redwoods State Park Photographic Collection
California State Parks Photographic Archives interns and Sam Skow
California State Parks Photographic Archives
© 2016
4940 Lang Avenue, Dock H
McClellan, CA 95652
Phone: (916) 263-0997
Fax: (916) 263-1007
URL: http://www.parks.ca.gov/
California State Parks. All rights reserved.
Guide to the Big Basin Redwoods State Park Photographic Collection
Collection number: Consult repository
California State Parks Photographic ArchivesMcClellan, California 95652
- Processed by:
- California State Parks Photographic Archives interns and Sam Skow
- Date Completed:
- 2016
- Encoded by:
- Sam Skow
© 2016 California State Parks. All rights reserved.
Title: Big Basin Redwoods State Park Photographic Collection
Dates: 1890-2014
Bulk Dates: 1900-1940, 1945-1980, 1987-1995, 2010-2014
Collection number: Consult repository
Creator:
California State Parks
Collector:
California State Parks
Collection Size:
1,895 images
Repository:
Photographic Archives.
California State Parks
California State Parks
McClellan, CA 92262
Abstract: The Big Basin Redwoods State Park Photographic Collection contains 1,895 cataloged images that date from 1890 through 2014.
Images depict the abundant natural and cultural resources contained within California's oldest state park.
Physical location: For current information on the physical location of these materials, please consult the Guide to the California State Parks
Photographic Archives, available online.
Languages:
Languages represented in the collection:
English
Collection is open for research by appointment.
Property rights reside with the repository. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records. For permission to reproduce
or to publish, please contact the Head Curator of the California State Parks Photographic Archives.
[Identification of item including photographer and date when available], Big Basin Redwoods State Park Photographic Collection,
[Catalog number], California State Parks Photographic Archives, McClellan, California
Images donated by private parties, generated by California State Parks, and transferred from Big Basin Redwoods State Park
at various times.
Further accruals are expected.
Big Basin Redwoods State Park contains roughly 18,363 acres of natural, cultural, and historical resources. Located in Santa
Cruz and San Mateo counties, the park resides primarily in the Santa Cruz Mountains and extends to the Pacific Coast, encompasses
the Waddell and Año Nuevo Creek watersheds, and is roughly 65 miles southeast of the city of San Francisco and 23 miles northwest
of the city of Santa Cruz. The park is accessible by car from the east via Highways 9 and 236 and from the west via Highway
1.
The oldest park in the California State Parks system, the area now called “Big Basin Redwoods State Park” has been inhabited
by humans for at least 10,000 years. Prior to European contact in the late eighteenth century, the region hosted the Quiroste,
Achistaca, Cotoni, and Sayante tribes, four bands included in the larger Ohlone group. These hunter-gatherer tribes subsisted
on local game, including rabbits, elk, and marine life as well as acorns and grassland seeds, clarkia and tarweed. Archaeological
evidence includes grinding rock milling sites, stone and shell bead ornaments, and obsidian projectile points, implying access
to a vast trade network. Subject to Spanish missionaries, the majority of the Quiroste, along with other Ohlones, ultimately
died from the disease and violence so prevalent in the mission system.
As early as the 1830s, the region’s abundant timber resources attracted Euro-American loggers, a trend only accelerated after
California gained statehood. By 1884, the Big Basin area claimed 28 sawmills and produced 34 million board-feet of lumber,
shingles, railroad ties, and posts per year. In 1877, Ralph Sydney Smith, editor of the
Redwood City Times & Gazette and coiner of the battle-cry “Save the Redwoods,” first advocated for the disappearing resources. Smith was murdered 10 years
later, but other like-minded conservationists continued his mission. In 1896, the Sierra Club, founded four years earlier
to protect Yosemite, focused on Big Basin. Concurrently, a photographer in San Jose, Andrew P. Hill, also began a fight to
preserve the ancient trees. In 1900, Hill assembled a meeting of journalists, writers, publishers, artists, politicians, businessmen,
and scholars at Stanford University and formed the Sempervirens Club. The following year, State Assemblyman George Fisk introduced
a club-authored bill to create a state park at Big Basin. It passed in 1902, thus heralding the first successful effort to
save coast redwoods from logging and creating California’s oldest park (then called California Redwood Park).
After debating costs, the State of California purchased—and received by donation—roughly 3,800 acres of redwood groves from
the Big Basin Lumber Company. In 1908, the Redwood Park Commission, legislatively created alongside the park in 1902, acquired
an additional 3,980 acres of federal land, property that incorporated roughly half of the Waddell Creek watershed into the
park. Soon after, the commission successfully campaigned to develop access roads. Saratoga-Big Basin Road opened in May 1915,
right on time to receive visitors to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition held in nearby San Francisco. Two years later,
alerted to the construction of an adjacent sawmill, the commission successfully lobbied in support of a bill to purchase the
neighboring land, thus increasing the park’s size to 9,300 acres. Responding to the park’s mounting popularity and cramped
conditions after July 4, 1919, park warden William H. Dool constructed 100 more camp sites including camps for the Campfire
Girls, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and the YWCA. Although Sempervirens Club founder Andrew P. Hill died in 1922, the organization
continued to push to acquire all of Big Basin’s watersheds and, coordinating with other concerned conservationists, to create
a statewide park system. In 1928, Newton B. Drury, then secretary of Save the Redwoods League, helped establish the State
Park Commission, launch a sweeping state park survey, and author that year’s state park bond bill. That same year, California
Redwood Park was renamed and reclassified Big Basin Redwoods State Park.
In addition to a nationwide economic depression, the 1930s also ushered in an era of massive development for the state and
national park systems. One of several New Deal programs, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) recruited unskilled, unemployed
young men to work under the supervision of unemployed professionals including engineers, landscape architects, and other contractors
in service to national, state, and local parks. The CCC established its first work camp at Big Basin in 1933 and soon built
two more. During its tenure there, the CCC constructed the Headquarters Administration building and Outdoor Theater with stage,
campfire circle, and cut-log benches in 1935, the Nature Museum and Store in 1938, and expanded the Nature Lodge in 1939,
in addition to building roads, a trail network, campsites, ranger residences, garages, work sheds, and other facilities. CCC-era
buildings, designed in the Park Rustic architectural style and constructed out of local natural materials, still stand in
the park’s original 3,800-acre acquisition. Together with the ancient stand of coast redwoods and the area’s other natural
resources, the Park Headquarters constitute a historic district nominated to the National Register of Historic Places.
The CCC was discontinued with American entry into World War II in 1941, but development and expansion of the park resumed
soon after the war. New employee residences were built at Lower Sky Meadow in 1949, and the 1950s saw the removal or remodel
of several dated features, such as filled-in swimming pools and updated water and sewage treatment systems. New features like
the Sempervirens Reservoir were also introduced. In 1961, the State of California purchased 488 acres of adjacent land from
the Big Creek Timber Company, which included Golden Falls, Silver Falls, and Lower Berry Creek Falls. In 1982, the State acquired,
named, and classified two subunits: 23-acre Theodore J. Hoover Natural Preserve and 5,810-acre West Waddell Creek State Wilderness.
Most recently, in 2011 California State Parks acquired the 534-acre Little Basin property from the Peninsula Open Space Trust
and Sempervirens Fund, which had acquired the property from Hewlett-Packard in 2007.
California State Parks, coordinating with the Mountain Parks Foundation, the Waddell Creek Association, the Friends of Santa
Cruz State Parks, the Santa Cruz Mountains Bioregional Council, the Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Association, Save the Redwoods
League, the Sempervirens Fund, and the Wildlands Restoration Team, preserves and interprets a wealth of natural, cultural,
and historical resources at Big Basin Redwoods State Park (Figure 6). In addition to its internationally renowned redwoods
population, the park also houses knob-cone pine, Douglas-fir, red alder, madrone, chinquapin, buckeye, and tanoak trees. The
park also offers refuge to several endangered species, including California red-legged frogs, San Francisco garter snakes,
coast horned lizards, southwestern pond turtles, marbled murrelets, American peregrine falcons, western snowy plovers, California
brown pelicans, and, along the coast, northern fur seals, California sea lions, Steller sea lions, harbor seals, and northern
elephant seals. In addition to its CCC-era headquarters, the park also provides rich historic interpretation at Rancho del
Oso, which includes sites and structures related to Ohlone tribes, Spanish explorers, early loggers, ranchers, and the prestigious
Hoover family. The park provides 146 family campsites, 4 group campsites, tent cabins, trail camps, horse camps, and over
80 miles of roads and trails.
Scope and Content of Collection
The Big Basin Redwoods State Park Photographic Collection spans the years 1890-2014, with the bulk of the collection covering
the years 1900-1940, 1945-1980, 1987-1995, and 2010-2014. There is a total of 1,895 cataloged images including 1,076 photographic
prints, scans, and negatives, 633 35 mm slides, and 186 born-digital images. Photographs originated primarily from Sempervirens
Club founder Andrew Putnam Hill and California State Parks staff.
The collection mainly depicts the natural and built features within the park. Natural features include vegetation, creeks,
waterfalls, beaches, mountains, and famous redwood trees “Father of the Forest,” “Mother of the Forest,” “Auto Tree,” “Chimney
Tree,” “Animal Tree,” “George Washington Tree,” “Stanford Tree,” and tree groups, “Cathedral Group” and “Cloistered Aisle.”
Locations include Opal Creek, Waddell Beach, Waddell Bluff, Waddell Creek, Sky Meadow, Silver Falls, Berry Creek Falls, Golden
Falls, Butano Creek, Basin Creek, and Lower Scott Creek. Also included are various views of the park and its interior from
numerous vantages including Pine Mountain and Mount Bielwaski.
Documenting the park’s built environment, the collection includes images featuring Park Headquarters, the Campfire Bowl amphitheater,
Maddock’s Cabin, the Warden’s Office, the Nature Lodge, the Coffee Shop, the employees’ quarters, the Gift Shop, Big Basin
Inn, park museums, the carpentry shop, and the Rancho del Oso Visitor Center. Campgrounds, such as Barlow Camp, Governor’s
Camp, Huckleberry Campground, and Sempervirens Campground as well as Sempervirens Dam and the park’s sewage treatment facilities
are also depicted. Additionally featured are various trails—Redwood, Shadow Brook, Creeping Forest, Lane-Sunset, Giant Berry
Creek Falls, Soroptimist Memorial Grove, and Horse trails—as well as Boulder Creek Highway and Gazos Creek, Sky Meadow, Campground,
and Hihn-Hammond roads.
The collection also includes historic photographs created by Andrew P. Hill and donated to California State Parks by the Sempervirens
Club of California. These images document the Sempervirens Club and the Redwood Park Commission’s activities at Big Basin
circa 1900-1915. Included are numerous group portraits featuring club members such as Stanford University President Dr. David
Starr Jordan, members of the Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce, T. W. Billings and Q. Packard, professors Emory Smith and H.
R. Dudley, General N. P. Chipman, journalist Carrie Stevens Walter, Lieutenant Governor William T. Jeter, Judge John E. Richards,
and businessman H. L. Middleton, among many others. Also included are individual portraits of California governors Henry Tifft
Gage and Hiram W. Johnson, journalist Josephine Clifford McCrackin, ranger Albert M. Weaver, and Andrew P. Hill himself. Historic
photographs also document several locations in and around the park including H. L. Middleton’s sawmill, Forgev’s Ranch, the
Boulder Creek Hotel, Waddell Creek, Barlow camp, Slippery Rock, Sempervirens Falls, Big Basin Inn, Saratoga Summit, Pescadero
Canyon, and Pine Mountain.
Also depicted are numerous exhibits from the Nature Lodge, interpretive programs, and DPR employees engaging in other park
business. Exhibit images primarily include plant and animal specimens collected and mounted by park interpreter Leonard Penhale.
Interpretive programs include Campfire programs at the amphitheater hosted by first female state park ranger and collection
donor, Harriett “Petey” Weaver, with Don Meadows, Bud Reddick, and Leonard Penhale in the 1940s as well as the 2014 Junior
Ranger Program led by DPR employee Kelsey Killoran. Other DPR-employee activities include various construction and facility-maintenance
projects.
The collection also documents several ceremonies and events held at the park. These include: the Andrew P. Hill dedication
ceremony held in 1946; naturalist conferences held in 1954, 1957, and 1960; the Lane-Sunset Trail Camp dedication held in
the early 1970s; the 1972 Soroptimist Memorial Grove Trail groundbreaking; and Big Basin Redwoods State Park’s 50th-anniversary
celebration in 1978.
The collection also contains several images from the CCC era. Images include: vegetation surveys featuring various plant specimens;
buildings such as employee residences, the Warden’s Office, Governor’s Camp, and Big Basin Lodge; group portraits of CCC workers;
and the construction of North Escape Road.
The collection also includes several miscellaneous items such as historic postcards from the park, Sempervirens Club documents,
and H. Richter paintings of pioneer life produced for the Works Progress Administration.
The Big Basin Redwoods State Park Photographic Collection captures the scenic qualities of the park, documents its natural
and built features, conveys its myriad interpretive efforts, and showcases seminal California State Parks history with its
inclusion of scanned Sempervirens Club photographs. However, the collection of CCC-era images would be stronger with the inclusion
of other construction projects, such as the Park Headquarters, Campfire Bowl, trail network, campgrounds, and various facilities.
Additionally, while the Rancho del Oso Visitor Center museum interior is documented, the actual historic properties that house
it are not.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in
the library's online public access catalog.
Big Basin Redwoods State Park (Calif.)
California. Department of Parks and Recreation
California Redwood Park (Calif.)
Civilian Conservation Corps (U.S.)--California--History
Cultural resources
Drury, Newton Bishop, 1889-1978
Mountain Parks Foundation (Felton, Calif.)
National Register of Historic Places
Natural resources
Ohlone Indians
San Mateo County (Calif.)
Santa Cruz County (Calif.)
Santa Cruz Mountains (Calif.)
Save-the-Redwoods League
Sempervirens Club of California
Sempervirens Fund
Weaver, Harriet E.
Related Material at California State Parks
Big Basin Redwoods State Park Collection
Related Material at Other Repositories
Big Basin Park Photograph Album, History San Jose Research Library
Save the Redwoods League Records, UC Berkeley: Bancroft Library
Sempervirens Club of California Records, History San Jose Research Library
Sempervirens Club of California: An Album of Photographs of the 1900 and 1901 Gatherings of the Club in Santa Cruz County,
UC Berkeley: Bancroft Library