Crews are making progress in building a new gateway to Redwood National Park in Humboldt County. Work has just wrapped up for the year at the site of an old timber mill near the town of Orick. Operations will pick up again next spring, and the site is expected to open to the public in 2026. Jessica Carter is the Orick Mill project manager for the Save the Redwoods League, which owns the land. She says visitors will get to enjoy a host of new features. The area sits on Native American ancestral lands, so the Yurok Tribe Construction Corporation is doing much of the restoration work. The nonprofit Cal Trout is also involved – restoring just under a mile of Prairie Creek and its floodplain, which are important to the broader watershed as breeding grounds for salmon and steelhead. Carter says the Orick Timber Mill operated from 1960 to 2009, and was demolished twelve years ago. Other partners in the restoration project include the California State Coastal Conservancy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Restoration Center, the Wildlife Conservation Board, and the Ocean Protection Council.
For California News Service, I’m Suzanne Potter
