The Smith River is very beautiful, and it’s my favorite of the ‘six rivers’ in Northern California. Jedediah Smith explored the region, and the northern section of Redwood National Park is also named after him. A couple of the most impressive groves are near the river, including Stout Grove and Grove of the Titans. In July & August when the river is low, there’s a footbridge to cross from the Jedediah Smith campground into the Stout Grove. The Trees of Mystery tour (outside the park) lets you take an elevated walkway among the redwoods. If you’ve ever seen the Star Wars movie with the Ewoks, the experience will seem familiar, as many scenes were filmed in this forest.
This Wild & Scenic River is likely the cleanest river and one of the largest un-dammed watersheds in the US, although there have been wildfires away from the coast. There are three forks with plenty of hiking and paddling to enjoy. Crescent City makes a good base for exploring the mouth, the park and heading upriver. The US Forest Service manages this recreation area including many magnificent coastal redwoods that rival the higher altitude giant sequoias in girth. There’s a rare Dawn Redwood from China on display outside the Hiouchi Visitor Center. I find it difficult to photograph redwoods and the river at the same time, but you can see the reflection of a coast redwood in the Smith River below.
Until about a year ago, the valley above used to be called Iron Gate Lake. But the dam (far right) was removed to restore salmon to this stretch of the Klamath River in northern California. Four dams have been removed recently, and in May the local tribes began their traditional calls for the salmon to return. I believe the valley will now revert to its traditional name K’účasčas (or Fall Creek).
The Klamath is an important waterway, and there’s long been battles over its use. Above and below Klamath Falls in Oregon there are wildlife refuges for birds, but maybe 75% of the wetlands were lost when the water was diverted for agriculture. When traveling around Lava Beds and Tule Lake my car choked on clouds of locusts, and I saw few birds as the lower refuge was virtually dry.
Dams don’t increase the amount of water at all, but they do control when it is released and how it’s used. Besides the diversion of water into farms and factories, dams obviously block salmon, and the lowest remaining dam (near the CA-OR border) has a fish ladder that the salmon are unable to climb. Another problem the dams cause is warming the water in artificial lakes, which increases algae and disrupts the salmon’s cool water lifecycle.
Removing the dams is a step in the right direction, but the huge Klamath watershed still has a significant number of dams. The Klamath tributaries include the Salmon, Shasta and Trinity rivers and many creeks, with various artificial lakes. Logging and mining have also diminished the salmon, but I was able to find a delicious local steelhead fillet in Trinidad Head about an hour south of the mouth of the Klamath.
The even more serious and growing problem is wildfires. This year I drove along the Klamath through the forests to the sea. Much of the trip traveled through badly burned forests. The forests were noticeably healthier in tribal lands, where there is greater diversity of tree species due to less logging. In the middle of the trip, I saw the sign below in Happy Camp California on the banks of the Klamath, but surveying the damage, I was not a happy camper. The climate crisis is already devastating our public lands, despite all our efforts to protect them. We must stop burning so much carbon.
The Trinity River is misunderstood, although it is one of the largest recreational, scenic & wild river systems in the country. The river is in the middle of the scenic Six Rivers region of northern California, above the Eel, Van Dusen & Mad but below the Klamath & Smith. It was misnamed by someone who mistakenly thought it popped out near Trinidad Head. The river begins in the Trinity Alps Wilderness (above background) which is full of challenging hiking opportunities, and it was dammed to create Trinity Lake (foreground). There are campgrounds for rafting on the Trinity River below the dam, and the farther away from the dam you are, the prettier the river becomes. The Trinity drains into the Klamath, after passing through tribal lands along the Bigfoot Highway (below).
Unfortunately, Trinity Forest was merged with Shasta Forest, leading to an alphabet soup of public lands and government agencies. The US Forest Service manages the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, the Trinity Alps Wilderness, and the 14,000+ foot volcanic Mount Shasta. Snowmelt from Mount Shasta flows both north into the Shasta River, another Klamath tributary, and south into Shasta Lake, a dammed section of the Sacramento River. And the USFS runs both Shasta and Trinity Lakes as National Recreation Areas, while the Bureau of Land Management manages the Trinity River where it flows through its lands. The NPS runs the third unit of the joint Shasta-Trinity-Whiskeytown NRA. So, this is a BLM WSR & USFS NRA visit, not to be confused with the NPS NRA. Clear as mud, right?
During the Gold Rush, the area was flooded with miners, and the town of Minersville is now under Trinity Lake. A fascinating stop in the 19th century Joss House in Weaverville, the oldest Taoist temple in California, built when the Dowager Empress was controlling a child Emperor to rule as regent. Well over 1000 Chinese miners lived and worked in the area, although the community was dispersed after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
The river has suffered a lot at the hands of men. Besides mining pollution and extensive logging, dams were built and much water was diverted to agriculture. Once plentiful fish and wildlife diminished. Today, our carbon pollution has altered the climate dramatically, with less snowpack, more severe droughts and more wildfires. We need to be better stewards of our public lands to preserve nature for future generations to enjoy.
There’s a 32 mile scenic drive through the Coastal Redwoods parallel to 101 in California along the Eel River, and it’s some kind of wonderful. The Eel River is one of the longest recreational, scenic & wild river systems in the US, and this is one of the prettiest places in the USA. When the kids were little, we paid a bit extra to drive through a tree—just like my grandfather did with his kids in Yosemite in 1952—, and I have happy memories of dining at the old Benbow Inn on the Eel. Over 100 years ago, conservationists who came this way were dismayed by the rapid logging, prompting them to found Save the Redwoods, which got the community to do just that. Today, there are still a dozen or so old growth groves where you can get out, walk, look up and feel very small.
The Eel River empties into the Pacific south of Humboldt Bay, and the Mad River empties north of the bay. The shallow bay has clean water due to tides, and this gives it fine oysters. Try one of the oyster restaurants in Eureka. Many long billed birds—Avocets, Curlews and Willets—rely on this flyway stop. The mouth of the Eel River has been restored, and the eels (Pacific Lamprey) are recovering. This is one of the famed six rivers in this part of Northern California, and it’s exceptional. I’m glad I returned.
Mom, Uncle Nim, Grampy & Grammy in Yellowstone in 1952
This is a fun river up in the Sequoia National Forest above Bakersfield California, with various rafting trips both above and below the Lake Isabella Dam. The north fork of the river starts up in Sequoia National Park and includes much more challenging whitewater. Kernville, where most float trips meet, is a cute town with some good places to eat, and it makes a good stop if you’re heading up this way to Giant Sequoia NM or Kings Canyon. The south fork travels through some wilderness and has an Audubon Preserve for birds. Nice area to retire in if you travel to a lot of national parks by EV.
The Housatonic River runs down the western edge of Massachusetts through Connecticut, and the heritage area is shared by both states. In Connecticut the river is designated as wild & scenic. Connecticut gets the best natural areas along the river—the bogs, fern-filled cobbles (hills) and pine forests—, while Massachusetts gets the best historic places. My childhood schooling is filled with stories from the Berkshires, so I wanted to revisit The Mount (above) in Lenox Massachusetts most of all. And how much improved it is! But that’s getting far ahead of the story.
The Mohicans lived here first, and before the Revolution, English settlers swapped land with them. Some of the first to learn to speak the native language were missionaries, and Rev John Sergeant’s house in Stockbridge can be visited during the summer. After Independence, the Shakers settled in Pittsfield, and their living history museum is recommended too. The old mill of the company that makes the paper for US currency is in Dalton. Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne lived and wrote here around 1850, and Melville’s Pittsfield home can be visited too. W.E.B. Du Bois was born and raised in Great Barrington, and there’s a walking tour in addition to his homesite, not far from Simon’s Rock, which has an excellent program dedicated to Du Bois.
Edith Wharton built the Mount in 1902 and wrote many of her most famous books there. Her maiden name was Jones—as in the phrase “keeping up with the Joneses”—and her husband was related to the business school. She had already rebuilt Lands End on the Cliff Walk in Newport RI, making Interior Design a profession when she co-wrote a book about it. Gilded Age women were not supposed to be progressive writers, but Edith Wharton was, becoming the first woman to win a Pulitzer for Fiction in 1921 with The Age of Innocence.
When I visited the Mount as a child, the girls’ equestrian school there had just closed, and the once magnificent home was falling apart. I remember adults being much concerned with marble fireplaces collapsing, whether a Shakespeare company might help save it, or whether it would be demolished for condos. I liked the formal garden but little remained of the famous author who lived there. But thanks to some devoted preservationists, including a collection saved by a book dealer in London, the home and library have been gloriously restored. Highly recommended.
Reports of a two ton boulder of pure copper lying in a river bank on the Keweenaw peninsula of the upper peninsula of Michigan were dismissed as tall tales, until proven by a geologist in 1840. The boulder wound up at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, a huge mining boom rush erupted, and the closest port town was named after the geologist, Houghton. Most of the small mines failed, but eventually a large consolidated firm found and mined the largest pure copper lode in the world.
Technically the copper was “rediscovered” (or stolen) as the Native Americans here had been mining it for at least 7,000 years and traded it as far as Effigy Mounds, Hopewell, and other prehistoric sites around the country—so don’t accept the common misconception that Europeans introduced metal work to this continent. However, European immigrants did expand the mines here to an astounding scale. The deepest part of the Quincy Mine above is over 9,000 feet below ground, which is over 6 times deeper than the Empire State Building is high, with huge rooms left behind after the copper seam was excavated (see photo), and 92 levels mostly flooded after the mine closed in 1945 due to competition from western mines.
The huge equipment includes many rare and once record-breaking pieces of industrial machinery, and the Quincy Mine tour is fascinating and essential to understand miners’ lives. Be sure to get a big Cornish Pasty at Roys in Houghton. There are some museums and a visitor center in Calumet, including a magnificent old theater with lovely murals, but since most of those tours are only in the afternoon, it may be smarter to tour the mine in the morning. There are a couple dozen interesting sites on the Keweenaw peninsula, including the wild & scenic Ontonagon River I crossed, but for me the most haunting exhibit was the description of the Italian Hall disaster at Christmas in 1913.
While capitalists are allowed to organize freely under the law, labor was not. Thousands of copper miners went on strike, and the mine owners hired ruthless, violent strikebreakers. Someone—an anti-unionist according to eight witness who later testified to Congress—yelled ‘fire’ into a crowded Christmas party on the second floor of the Italian Hall in Calumet. There was no fire, but 59 children and 14 adults died. Woody Guthrie explained what happened below.
“The copper boss’ thugs stuck their heads in the door, One of them yelled and he screamed, “there’s a fire” A lady she hollered, “there’s no such a thing. Keep on with your party, there’s no such thing.”
A few people rushed and it was only a few, “It’s just the thugs and the scabs fooling you, “ A man grabbed his daughter and carried her down, But the thugs held the door and he could not get out.
And then others followed, a hundred or more, But most everybody remained on the floor, The gun thugs they laughed at their murderous joke, While the children were smothered on the stairs by the door.”
In 1859 John Muir built a Sugar Pine cabin some yards from the spot above and lived in the Valley for 2 years. Sugar Pines can live 500 years, so the decades John Muir spent saving this valley are just a fraction of their long lives. Muir saved Yosemite, lost neighboring Hetch Hetchy to a dam, and influenced Teddy Roosevelt who ended up protecting 150 million acres of forests nationally. Now the park is a World Heritage Site, with the Merced River running through Yosemite Valley and the headwaters of the Tuolumne River running through the meadows designated wild & scenic; it’s my favorite park for waterfalls. But in the near future, the crown jewel of John Muir’s legacy may still be lost forever.
Some species of trees still living here evolved in the Jurassic, long before the Chicxulub asteroid wiped out most dinosaurs and millions of years before humans arrived. Millenia ago, natives started fires for hunting and agriculture, and over a century ago, the timber industry clear cut forests throughout the Sierra Nevadas. But humans now present a threat bigger than any logging or dam. Now the threat is carbon pollution, which dwarfs all others, even logging. Fires burn hotter, more frequently and many times larger, because we have changed our planet’s climate dramatically—and it’s still getting worse. Species here, despite evolving 1000 times earlier than humans, are now threatened with extinction by our vehicle exhaust.
10 years ago, the 250,000+ acre Rim Fire burned over 10% of Yosemite, killing many Sugar Pines and Sequoias that had survived fires for centuries or millennia. At the time, it was the second largest fire in California history. Now it doesn’t even make the top ten. I visited the park with my family before that fire, and the park was undamaged. Now, the park is still beautiful, but it is still scarred badly, with many areas still closed.
Yosemite Falls should not be so glorious in the photo above taken in July. The snow should still be on the mountain tops, melting slowly over many months. Instead, every decade is warmer than the last and the rate of temperature rise in increasing. The Lyell Glacier that Muir saw in Yosemite has lost over 95% of its mass, no longer moves and will be gone in a few years. Man has messed up the climate, and many of the species, including the largest trees, can no longer live here safely. And it’s not the fault of Smoky Bear telling people to put out their campfires, it’s the fault of people who continue to drive gas powered vehicles. And yet the park is full of them, blithely surveying the damage they contributed to and continue to cause. If I were in charge of the park service, I would convert the shuttle buses to electric and ban all fossil fuel vehicles.
The horizontal line across the Garden Wall on the other side of the valley is the Going-to-the Sun Road, which I finally drove—3rd time’s the charm. This year the dramatically scenic road opened on 13 June with little ice & snow visible in July. Just over the wall in Many Glacier, old photos show the many large glaciers are now very small, rapidly melting glaciers. My son and I rode horseback up in 2018, and the area should be renamed Many Lakes. The wild & scenic Flathead River forms some of the park’s boundaries, and it’s now filled with snowpack runoff more than glacier melt. Combined with its neighbor across the border, Waterton Glacier International Peace Park is still a UNESCO World Heritage Site, despite the obvious melting problem.
Melting ice and glaciers are one of the tipping points that will flip our Climate Crisis into a catastrophe. Consider the Arctic ice cap. Every year recently, the multi-year ice has been shrinking at an accelerating rate. Eventually, the ice will disappear in summer. Then the same energy that currently raises ocean surface temperatures by 1° will raise it by a multiple of that amount. There are two reasons for that. First, the white ice will no longer reflect the sun. Second, the existing ice will no longer be there to act as a temperature break. When you boil water with ice, it takes something like three times the energy as water without ice, because most of the energy goes into melting the ice first. So, not only is it bad that glacial ice is melting due to flooding and dry rivers in the fall, but once the ice is gone, the surface temperature rise will accelerate much more rapidly. Please, reduce your carbon footprint.
The parkway runs along the wild & scenic Snake River (above) connecting Grand Teton and Yellowstone, but the park includes a 24,000 acre land & river corridor for wildlife, without which we couldn’t enjoy seeing as many migratory animals in the two famous parks. The Rockefellers were instrumental in a number of national parks, including Acadia, Smoky and Marsh-Billings. Despite opposition from local ranchers, they purchased huge tracts of ranch lands and donated them to us. Laurance Rockefeller later donated his family’s 1,000 acre ranch to become part of Grand Teton, and his Preserve Center there near Phelps Lake is the best place to get in tune with their legacy. Considering the damage being done every day by burning the oil that created their fortune, it’s really the least they could have done.
”How we treat our land, how we build upon it, how we act toward our air and water, will in the long run tell what kind of people we really are.”
