Redwoods in Southern California? Yep, at Carbon Canyon Park

I owe my wife a trip to the giant redwoods up north. As a down payment, I surprised her this morning with a trip to the smaller redwoods in the Redwood Grove at Carbon Canyon Regional Park.

Visiting the beautifully maintained Redwood Grove was a bargain. We only paid $3 for parking.

We parked in parking lot F (to the left after the guard station) so we could enjoy a little hike before reaching the redwoods. Parking lot F is all the way to top right of the park map (accessed October 23, 2020).

After a mostly flat hike, we reached the Redwood Grove marker.

After a short walk down the dirt trail, we reached the grove.

These aren’t giant redwoods like the ones up north, but one of the signs indicated that the tallest tree in the grove was measured to be 92 feet back in 2015. Even though they aren’t giants, they are beautiful.

Here are a few pictures:

I couldn’t get close enough to this California Scrub-Jay to get a great picture, but I did manage to get this ok picture:

The Redwood Grove is near the Carbon Canyon Dam, which, interestingly, has no water surrounding it. I assume it’s there for emergencies, which seems to be confirmed by this excerpt from an LA Times article dated August 6, 1988:

The park spreads up-canyon behind Carbon Canyon Dam. As Orange County grew, so did the need for flood control, and in 1959 a dam was built at the mouth of the canyon. If, as a result of winter storms, the Santa Ana River rises too high, the dam’s flood gates will be closed, thus sparing communities downstream of the dam but flooding the park.