California State Parks has released its recovery plan for Big Basin Redwoods State Park, the oldest one in California.
Nearly five years on from the CZU Lightning Complex Fire, which torched over 90% of the park and destroyed more than 900 homes in the area, the plan will guide the rebuilding of all park campgrounds, day-use parking, park operation facilities and park access, including visitor centers and shuttle systems to bring visitors into the old-growth redwood forest.
“Big Basin Redwoods State Park holds a special place in all of our hearts,” said California State Parks Director Armando Quintero in a press release June 17. “We’re dedicated to restoring public access to this iconic park after the devastating 2020 CZU Fire. This project summary reflects the plans to reimagine the park in a way that is focused on the health of the old-growth forest and providing inclusive, welcoming access for all future visitors to experience the beauty and wonder of the Santa Cruz Mountains.”
Under the “draft project summary” of the Facilities Management Plan, now available for online viewing, the state agency says it will develop the former park headquarters as an ecologically sensitive hub for day use (with fewer paving and buildings than before) and rebuild campgrounds on the edges of the old growth forest (though some campsites within sensitive old growth areas—Blooms Creek, Sempervirens and Wastahi—would be removed).
A new park entrance would be created at the Saddle Mountain location, with parking available for those who want to take a 15-minute shuttle ride (available year-round on weekends) into the old growth core. Officials also stated they want to focus on group recreation and indigenous land stewardship at the Little Basin area of the park.
Following last week’s announcement, locals say they are thrilled to see the progress being made to bring the public recreation gem back to full health.
“It’s where the big trees are,” said Jason Fisk, a 55-year-old Boulder Creek artist and carver, outside Joe’s Bar. “It’s just a cool place to go hiking.”
Fisk said it’s heartening to see the administrative side of things start to bloom, just as the natural world has sprung back to life.
“It looked like hell, kinda,” he said, referring to the charred landscape left by the lightning-sparked inferno—and how greenery has returned. “The redwood trees, they sprout out.”
Now, he noted, visitors can do the loop up Big Basin Highway, through the park, and back down Highway 9 if they want (it was blocked off before).
“It was really sad, you know what I mean?” he said of the fire damage. “But you know, Mother Nature grows back quick. If you go up there now, it will blow your mind.”
Gundula Sartor, who lives on Big Basin Highway at the Boulder Creek Country Club, remembers the lightning storm and the blood red skies above the state park that followed.
“It was insane,” Sartor said.
She’d been primed for what to do in such a situation, because she’d been living in San Bruno when the PG&E pipeline explosion occurred in 2010, injuring dozens and killing eight people.
But while humans weren’t responsible for causing the CZU Fire that ravaged Big Basin, the bureaucratic morass that Santa Cruz County victims have had to fight their way through in the aftermath continues to drag out the tragedy, Sartor added.
“Honestly, the people that actually lost their homes I feel really badly for. It took so long for them to get a permit,” she said. “They could have given them easily. Santa Cruz County really was not friendly about the situation at all. My friends were crying. The pain in their face was horrible.”
And, she added, it seemed to her like some took advantage of fire victims by increasing their prices.
“It was a money-making business,” she said. “One of my friends had good insurance on his house, and he still had to pay over $350,000 just to rebuild.”
Sartor said she’s been up to Big Basin State Park since the CZU Fire, and couldn’t help but notice the environment has been revitalizing itself.
“It was completely different, but beautiful at the same time,” she said, noting she spied “ladybugs and things I never saw there before—it just had a different beauty after the fire.”
During the interview, firefighters were battling a small wildfire over in San Jose.
Sartor said it’s important to remember that something like the CZU Fire could happen again.
“We’re on our toes here, worrying about another fire,” she said. “It can happen again this summer.”
The public is invited to a webinar about the new parks plan on July 10. For more information, visit reimaginingbigbasin.org.
