CHAPTER XV 



REDWOOD TYPE 



General Conditions. — The redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, 

 must be distinguished from its near relative, the big tree. Sequoia 

 Washingtonia, because they are very different in many respects. 

 They are unlike botanically, the wood has not quite the same 

 commercial value, and their ranges are not identical. The red- 

 wood is confined to a belt about lo miles wide and within 30 

 miles of the Pacific Ocean on the west side of the Coast Range in 

 northern California and southern Oregon. Its distribution is 

 well defined in the following quotation from Forest Service 

 Bulletin No. 38: 



The Redwood is^popularly thought to occupy a strip of 

 country 10 to 30 miles wide, from the Oregon fine to the 

 Bay of Monterey, but these boundaries do not cover its 

 actual distribution. Two thousand acres of Redwood, 

 in two separate groups, are growing in Oregon along the 

 Chetco River. South of the Chetco a continuous Red- 

 wood belt begins. By way of the river valleys and low- 

 lands it increases its width from 10 miles, at Del Norte 

 County, to 18 or 20 miles, and keeps on unbroken to 

 southern Humboldt County. Here, for about a township, 

 it thins out, but becomes dense again six miles north of 

 the Mendocino line, and after entering that county 

 widens to 35 miles, its greatest width. The Redwood 

 belt ends in Mendocino County, but isolated forests of the 

 species are growing in sheltered spots as far south as Sal- 

 mon Creek Canyon, in the Santa Lucia Mountains, Mon- 

 terey County, 12 miles south of Punta Gorda, and 500 

 miles from the northern limit of the tree along the Chetco 

 River. 



