After much controversy and compromise with timber companies, Congress finally approved a federal park, and on October 2, 1968, President Lyndon B.Johnson signed into law the act that established Redwood National Park. The new preserve placed 58,000 acres in the care of the NPS.
As its nickname suggests, giant or coastal redwoods thrive in the moist, humid climate of the Northern California coast, where marine fog delivers precise conditions necessary for its growth. The fog adds moisture to the soil and helps trap it there by lowering the rate of evaporation.
General Sherman is a giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) tree located at an elevation of 2,109 m (6,919 ft) above sea level in the Giant Forest of Sequoia National Park in Tulare County, in the U.S. state of California. By volume, it is the largest known living single-stem tree on Earth.
Redwood National Park is home to the world's tallest trees and old-growth redwood forests. Many of the trees in the forest of over 300 feet tall and 2,000 years old. The redwoods alone are enough to make this park worth visiting.
Over the hundreds or thousands of years that a redwood may live, even moderate growth adds up. The evolutionary driver of bigness in redwoods may be the advantage in being good at survival. Or it may be simply be that being taller means better access to sunlight in the dark forest.
With an average lifespan of 500-700 years, coast redwoods can live to more than 2,000 years and grow to over 360 feet in height. Their great longevity is not why redwoods are called sequoia sempervirens, or sequoia ever-living.
Visit our restoration webpages to learn more about this exciting work. How many acres of old-growth forest are left? Fewer than 120,000 acres, or 5 percent, of the original redwood forest remains today.