In one of the largest deals to protect open space in the Bay Area over the past decade, an environmental group is purchasing a scenic redwood forest in the North Bay that will create a 7-mile-long unbroken chain of protected redwood parks and preserves from the mountains to the ocean.
The Save the Redwoods League, based in San Francisco, has agreed to pay $24 million for the 1,517-acre property, located 2 miles south of Guerneville near the Russian River in Sonoma County.
The size of 1,149 football fields, the rolling parcel includes 20 miles of trails and more than 3 miles of streams and grassy meadows with breathtaking views of the ocean. It has been owned since 1998 by Mendocino Redwood Company, controlled by the Fisher family, owners of the Gap, Banana Republic and the Athletics baseball team.
“This is the missing puzzle piece in the whole landscape there,” said Sam Hodder, president and CEO of Save the Redwoods League. “There are open pastures and meadows that look out across to the coastline. There are views to the mouth of the Russian River to the west and Mount Saint Helena to the east. The views are spectacular.”
Under the deal, scheduled to close in May, the lands will be added to Monte Rio Redwoods Regional Park and opened to the public by the end of this summer, said Bert Whitaker, director of Sonoma County Regional Parks.
“This is a big deal,” he said. “We have worked to preserve this area for 25 years. It’s just a really special place. It’s a huge part of larger connectivity for wildlife.”
The acquisition connects Sonoma Coast State Park to Monte Rio Redwoods Regional Park and the Bohemian Grove, a 2,700-acre private campground south of Guerneville that has been owned since 1878 by a private men’s club, the Bohemian Club.
Every year the club has a camping retreat at the grove under tight security. The club’s members in the past have included presidents, from Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, captains of industry such as David Packard, Joseph Coors and William Randolph Hearst, and other prominent people, including writer Jack London, atomic physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In addition to providing a protected link for wildlife, the new acquisition, known as the Monte Rio Expansion property, also offers the potential to create a new network of public hiking trails from Monte Rio park to the Sonoma Coast, Whitaker said.
The property has been logged off and on since the 1800s.
There are a few old-growth redwood trees, including one ancient tree 14 feet wide with a natural tunnel through its base. But most are second-and-third growth trees, mixed in with Douglas fir and other species, Hodder said. The last logging operation there occurred in 2022 when Mendocino Redwood Company selectively cut 319 acres.
Mendocino Redwood Company, based in Ukiah, already has expanded parks in the area. The company sold the adjacent 3,400 acres of redwood forest in 2005, a property called Willow Creek, to the California Department of Parks and Recreation. It was added to Sonoma Coast State Park.
“We were approached by Save the Redwoods League on this, and they made a good case for the benefits of adding these forest lands to what was already created in 2005,” said Mendocino Redwood Company President Bob Mertz. “We were able to work through it together.”
The property is home to a number of threatened and endangered species, including the spotted owl, California giant salamander and yellow-legged frog.
Of the $24 million purchase price, $6 million will come from the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, a local government agency, and $4 million is expected to come from the Sonoma Land Trust, a non-profit environmental group.
The rest, Hodder said, will be raised in private donations and government grants by Save the Redwoods League. He noted that California voters in November approved Proposition 4, a $10 billion state bond act to fund forest and parkland preservation, fire safety projects and climate change work, and that the league would be applying to the state for some of that money.
Save the Redwoods League, founded in 1918, has protected more than 220,000 acres of redwood and sequoia forests over the last century. By buying land and development rights from willing sellers, it has expanded 66 state, national and local parks around California, including Redwood National Park and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, along with Big Basin, Calaveras Big Trees, Del Norte, Emerald Bay, Grizzly Creek, Año Nuevo, Henry Cowell, Prairie Creek, Pfeiffer Big Sur, Jedediah Smith and other landmark state parks.
Last September, the group closed a $15 million deal to purchase 1,624 acres of redwoods and picturesque coastal meadows adjacent to what is now Fort Ross State Historic Park, 12 miles north of Sonoma Coast State Park, expanding the protected lands around Fort Ross by 50%.
In 2021, the group spent $36.9 million to buy five miles of rugged oceanfront land on the Mendocino Coast, totaling 3,181 acres, at the southern end of the “Lost Coast” between Rockport and Ferndale. Last month, it transferred that property to the Bureau of Land Management for public recreation.
Whitaker said the public will enjoy the new Monte Rio property when it opens this summer.
“You are surrounded by an expansive, beautiful forested area,” he said. “You come across amazing meadows. In the morning, the fog comes in, and it feels like you are on top of the world. It’s a classic Northern California landscape.”
