State Parks crews and volunteers bring back more than just the trails at Caspar Headlands, they open links to the distant past- come along on photo journey and then come out and join in!
Jughandle could be next! Plein air and mural fun too!
A dozen community volunteers attacked the gorse, broom and dead grass on the Caspar Headlands. The long-neglected prime hiking area has been brought to life with the restoration of a driving trail (behind a gate) that runs from the old Caspar Post Office to several points on the headlands. This improvement would make it possible for a firetruck and possibly an ambulance to get access now.. And that’s good because there are many cliffs where a fall could kill or cause crippling injurie and a difficult rescue.. (Be careful there are very dangerous cliffs and precarious drop-offs as well as the beauty here) . Some places along the trails are undercut, stay away from the edge.
The big turnout was good news to Mark Ernst, trails and roads supervisor, and he is considering expanding the program to Jughandle State Park, where the trails never got as bad but needs some work, if people there are as interested as the Caspar crowd was. Another event will take place in Caspar in September.
While the improved emergency road is cool, the whole area has undergone a transformation at the hands of State Parks in 2025.
Except for one bad place, a handicapped person with a walker could go all the way to the creek and enjoy this place (although maybe not the uphill all the way back to the car). Parks is working on repairing that precarious spot, a sharp dropoff of about 3 feet located about 30 feet north of the beach. And everybody grabbed weed eater and hand tools and became trailblazers. Others followed with pitchforks and rake, piling up the cut brush.
Having come here for years, the upgrades are a thrill to many of us. Caparados are now coming back to this spot. “There were so many ticks that a lot of people just wouldn’t come here,” said one local man. He told Parks that widening the trail and removing detritus (the thing that attracts ticks) has made everything so much nicer in so short of a time. This man told the Parks crew about another trail that was so buried that Parks didn’t notice it was there. Jim Tarbell, who some people call the mayor of Caspar ( I don’t know of anybody else who calls him that, but I do), said this was the old trail to the mill itself. The young man set off south with his weedwhacker, making great progress opening up the trail nearest the road. We thought we would help him by going to the other end and cutting our way back with the weedwhacker. We were thinking how cool a trail through the eucalyptus grove would be. We started on the bank of the creek and went up about 100 feet and became suddenly afraid. We had been weedwhacking the invasive Himalayan blackberries on the trail when we realized those three leaved herbs we were into were NOT blackberry bushes anymore. The tallest stand of poision oak we have seen in years spread in all directions before us. A hasty retreat followed. While we have never gotten poison oak, yikes! This particular trail may not have been meant to be.
The crews made excellent progress. Go out and see this place and join in!
Our previous story tells how. Read it here
This area, with all the remnants of the old Caspar Lumber Company operations around is the best history walk we know of on the Coast. The Caspar Lumber Company was the most environmentally friendly of any big lumber company. We have learned this from extensive hiking and reading locally. They were the last family owned company, covering most of the headlands, Capar Beach and creek with a gigantic lumber mill operation whose scale is hard to imagine today’
Every local river and creek had a similar operation where logs were brought down a bulldozed out riverbed to a mill overtopping the water. The difference is those others have been gone for a half century or more commonly, a century or more. On the Caspar Headlands you can still see the remnants of what it all looked like and without too much imagination, go back to a time so radically different than our own. The big lumber companies wiped out most of the local forest resource and the salmon and steelhead all in one rush to cut everything as fast as possible.
But when one realizes who much has changed in such a short time, after being basically untouched for millennia, one can view this history and realize that everything could change just as drastically in the near future and we can be a positive force in that.
Oh, and the kingfisher was far, far angrier about all than we predicted in yesterday’s story.
One kingfisher flew over all of us all day, the agitated mood of his machine gun staccato song very clear. An osprey also flew over several times to have a look while going back and forth to a nest somewhere. There are so many birds in this place, its amazing. There is a lot of deer scat and some from a bear too. So respect the past and all the birds and mammals who call this home, and tread lightly and take some time checking this out.
There will be another volunteer day in September but no date or time has been set. Mendocinocoast.news will put out the word. This is the only trail stewards program in the Mendocino Sector so far but Ernst is willing to expand to Jughandle if there is interest there. There is another volunteer Trail Crew program in the Russian River Sector that meets weekly to do projects at Armstrong Redwoods SNR, Austin Creek SRA, and Sonoma Coast SP.
Enjoy today’s photo story on the Caspar Headlands!
More photos can be seen by clicking here
