Southern Oregon Coast: Crescent City, CA

So this post is obviously out of order and isn’t even in Oregon, so why is it part of this series? Crossing into California is necessary when approaching the southern Oregon coast from the south. As noted in a previous post in this series, this stretch of coast in southern Oregon is fairly remote and separated from I-5 by a complex jumble of mountain ranges converging. No navigable route by car exists except for the Redwood Highway (Hwy 99) to Crescent City, CA, to the south, or Hwy 38 or 42 to the north, to Reedsport or Bandon respectively.

I decided to put this post at the end because we didn’t spend much time in Crescent City. It was really just a place to sleep during the first two days of travel and the smoke was so bad during those days that we didn’t spend much time outdoors except to visit Battery Point.

The area surrounding Crescent City, CA, and the Redwood Hwy itself, deserve their own spotlight outside of this series. Specifically visiting the redwoods was not part of this trip, though we did drive through them on Hwy 99, and we did take the opportunity to visit the joint National and State Park offices to buy some swag and maps.

I will say this about Crescent City: it was not what I expected. The area seemed fairly depressed and reminded me a lot of my hometown in SW Washington. I’m not sure if it was a county-based economic issue at that time, or if the area is still reeling from the death of the timber industry, but it seemed to be lacking services. The next day we drove into Oregon, not far away, and it was like a different world.

Bonus: on any return trip I would love to spend more time at Crissey Field State Recreation Site just over the Oregon border. We stopped for just a moment at the Welcome Center on this trip to get some information about weather and smoke prospects up the coast, but activities outside, walking on the trails, or going down to the beach, was out of the question due to air quality.

Go back to the series landing page here: