106 



fl)- Edwin Kifitn jr. J 



A new park saved the tall trees, 

 but at a high cost to the community 



The lives are house-iall now, reachiiii^ loward liic 330- 

 fbot heiglus lliev niav e\entiialiv allain. On oiire cuiovei 

 slopes belou the Tall Trees Overlook in C.alifbniias 

 Redwood Xaiional Park, ihe voung redwoods now march 

 downhill, to the bend in Redwo(Kl (Ireek where the 

 worlds tallest trees rise out ol the mist. Green siri|)e> of 

 grasses and haidwoods mark where old logging roads 

 have been bulldozed and the hill graded back to its nat- 

 ural contours. In the rushing waters below, salmon and 

 sieelhead trout can again head upstream to spawn. 



.■\rt Eck. deputy superintendent of the park. looks 

 about him approvinglv. The overlook's displav of be- 

 fore-and-afier photographs contrasts the scene with the 

 hillside as it looked a few years ago: an ugly battlefield of 

 stimips, slash and chewed-up earth crisscrossed by the 

 gashes of roads and skid trails. Now, thanks to the 

 restoration effort, the forest is returning to its past ap- 

 pearance, before the saws and axes came. "The land is 

 healing." Eck savs proudly. "But of course, some scars 

 still show." 



Sentenced to hard times and heartbredk 



Ves, the scars of Redwood National Park do show, and 

 not onlv on the greening hillsides above Redwood 

 Creek. Twenty-five years after the establishment of the 

 nation's first billion-dollar national park. 15 years after 

 an expansion more than doubled its size (Smithso.m.w. 

 July 1978). the trees are coming back, but the painful 

 wounds left by a bitter battle over the park formation re- 

 main raw in the li\ es of the people. Loggers and former 

 loggers, businessmen selling to loggers, and local offi- 

 cials of California's two northernmost coastal counties 

 insist that establishing the park with 78,000 acres of 

 prime timberland triggered a downward economic spiral 

 that stole good-paving jobs, savaged the timber industry 

 and sentenced the area to chronic hard times and hean- 



