OK, where’s the corral?

Photographer Dave Van De Mark searches for a spot he photographed more than half a century ago in Redwood National Park

Fifty-three years to the day(!), five of us headed out on the lower Redwood Creek Trail in search of the location of a corral, easily visible in a photo I took on August 27, 1967. It has been on my mind for several years now because it would help me tie down exactly where I was standing when taking the photo.

A tight cluster of three young trees can be seen rising up in the distance and just behind some fencing that was part of a corral. Also, a small “grove” of redwoods, with one tree very flat topped, can be seen behind the four left-most backpackers. I am still trying to document where all of us had been but that is not part of the corral story.

In this area of Redwood Creek, there were homestead buildings and cattle grazing, at least up to the 1964 December storm. In 1967, the road the backpackers are on was being used by Arcata Redwood (and possibly Georgia-Pacific) to move out logs. I never got much help in my initial efforts to locate where the corral was. But on a hike I took mid-August 2020, I stumbled upon a view of three trees that struck me as very similar to the trees I saw in 1967. The response from others was basically, “Naaawwww!”

…Those 3 trees again, now viewed further away and showing more surroundings.

A couple things may not be evident that need explaining. The dirt access road used by homesteaders, loggers, and the backpackers, went off to the left as seen on the previous black-and-white photo, clearly crossing Hayes Creek upstream from the corral.

The present park trail, it appears, abandons the old road alignment and passes through where the corral once existed and leads you to the base of the three trees.

So, as best as we could ascertain, it seemed clear that the area behind the fence would be the area seen in the foreground of the previous photo! Plus much more land to the left of that photo. No other redwoods can be seen from my photo position because hardwoods have matured in those 53 years. We walked a little further and there they were—the “grove” of redwoods seen in the black-and-white photos!

After joining the four in what should now be known as the“Corral Grove,” we looked up and before us stood the last piece evidence needed to prove (for me, anyway) that we had found the old corral location with decent certainty: the “flat-top” tree! We all felt that was the icing on the cake :)