China Camp State Park and Muir Woods (Monday, August 15, 2022)

We had to revisit China Camp State Park just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, where we stayed in 1997. The park is the site of  the historic China Camp Village, where 19th century Chinese immigrants fished for shrimp that was dried and sent back to China. A series of laws excluding Chinese immigrants, and banning shrimp exports led to the end of the village. Papa Tom looked for ripe blackberries.

Muir Woods National Monument is a 554-acre redwood forest about an hour from San Francisco. The forest has been federally protected since 1908, so has survived the logging that decimated surrounding redwood forests.

Some of the redwoods are nearly 1,000 years old and reach heights of more than 250 feet.

The only way Papa could photograph the treetops.

In the early 1900s, Congressman William Kent donated the land to protect the redwoods from the logging industry boom to rebuild homes destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.  Before the logging industry came to California, there were about 2 million acres of redwoods along the coast. By the early 20th century, most had been cut down.

If you have time, you should read about the all-male Bohemian Club, still in existence. It's not exactly the Trilateral Commission, but was instrumental in the Manhattan Project to develop the nuclear bomb, for instance. In 1892, they held their summer retreat in what is now Muir Woods National Monument, building a 70-foot statue of Daibutsu Buddha. Nothing of the statue remains.

Came upon another historic object in the woods: a phone booth!