Photos

Muir Woods National Monument is in Mill Valley, CA. The reserve is a unit of the National Park Service for Marin County, located some 12 miles north of San Francisco. It protects 554 acres of Coastal Redwood, one of the last remaining old growth forests in the Bay Area. Notoriously difficult to photograph (!) because of frequent dense fog and rain, we got rather lucky this day because it was relatively clear, but cold. The fog is vital for the growth of the redwoods because they assimilate the moisture from the fog during dry summer periods. The climate is cool and moist year round, with an average daytime temperature between 40 and 70 degrees F. The family which Redwood trees belong to may be as much as 150 million years old; today, the Sequoia can be found only in the narrow coastal belt ranging from Monterey to Oregon. There used to be an estimated 2 million acres (8,000 sq km) of old growth forest containing Redwoods, but after the logging industry arrived most of the forests had been cleared by the early 20th century. US Congressman William Kent purchased 611 acres of land for $45,000 with the intent of protecting the Redwoods. On Jan. 9th, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt declared the land a National Monument, the first to be created from land donated by a private individual. Kent insisted that the park be named after naturalist John Muir, whose efforts helped to establish the national park system. After the Golden Gate Bridge was opened in 1937, park attendance tripled, reaching 180,000. Muir Woods today is one of the major tourist attractions of the Bay Area. Over 775,000 visitors passed through the park in 2005.