San Vicente Redwoods

Stretching west from the slopes of the Santa Cruz Mountains down toward the Pacific Ocean, San Vicente Redwoods’ 8,532-acres encompass diverse habitats including redwood forests, grasslands, chaparral, wetlands, and eight creeks. Once the largest privately-held redwood forest in the Santa Cruz mountains, San Vicente Redwoods has been the site of clear-cut logging, mining, and railroads in the past, but today it is a crucial part of 27,000 linked and protected acres of habitat, wildlife corridors, and countless recreation opportunities.

Home to many species including endangered marbled murrelet, endangered coho salmon, threatened California red-legged frog, and rare plants, such as the Point Reyes horkelia and Santa Cruz manzanita, San Vicente Redwoods has been managed to optimize ecological health and habitat diversity since it was protected with our partners Peninsula Open Space Trust, Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, and Save the Redwoods League in 2011. In 2020, San Vicente Redwoods burned in the CZU Fire but the resilient land is recovering and fire-adapted species like redwoods, yerba santa, ceanothus, and bush poppies are restoring green to the landscape.

You can witness the magic of nature as the forest recovers from fire, and look for the fleeting beauty of fire-following plants on the 7.3 miles of trails, the first phase of the envisioned 38-mile multi-use trail system, which opened to the public on December 3, 2022. Each of the five trails is named in the Awaswas language in recognition of the people who lived on and cared for this land for millenia.