Overlogged and Thirsty: Bay Area Redwoods Are Struggling

Bay Curious

KQED

Places & Travel, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2026

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Muir Woods National Monument is known for its towering redwoods because some old growth trees have been preserved there. But redwoods used to grow all over the San Francisco Bay Area until they were logged for their timber just after the Gold Rush. Most of what we see in places like Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park in Oakland are second growth trees, ones that have grown since that time. After the 1906 earthquake and fire was another period of intense logging. Timbermen worked their way up the coast to provide the lumber that would rebuild San Francisco. Bay Curious listener Christy Dundon wants to know just how much of our old growth forests were devestated. Additional Resources: The Bay Area's Famous Redwood Trees Are Struggling Read the transcript for this episode Sign up for our newsletter Got a question you want answered? Ask! Your support makes KQED podcasts possible. You can show your love by going to https://kqed.org/donate/podcastsThis story was reported by (insert reporter name). Bay Curious is made by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and Olivia Allen-Price. Additional support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Maha Sanad, Ethan Toven-Lindsey and everyone on Team KQED. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:29.1	Learn more at gene.com. That's g-e-ne.com.
0:34.6	From KQED.
0:37.1	This is Bay Curious. I'm Olivia Allen Price.
0:40.2	Have you ever paused a moment to fully take in a redwood tree?
0:46.8	Staring up at its towering trunk,
0:50.3	cupping a hand around a single ridge of its massive bark, inhaling that warm, woody, slightly sweet scent.
1:00.7	Bay Curious listener, Christy Dundan has...
1:04.0	Back when I was in high school, I worked for the Alameda Recreation and Park Department, and we had a day camp, and we would take kids up to the Redwood Regional Park.
1:14.0	The Redwoods in the park now are mostly younger, second-growth Redwoods.
1:18.5	But there are signs left of the old growth Redwoods that once stood.
1:22.5	And I remember showing them the stumps that were there, which were pretty big with usually trees in a circle around them.
1:29.0	Sometimes they'd have them lie down, and its diameter was wider than they are tall.
1:33.4	Seeing these stumps got Christy wondering about when these trees were cut down and why.
1:38.1	And also, how many redwood forests once stood in the Bay Area?
1:42.1	I would love to know how extensive it was.
1:44.9	I mean, did they just, somebody got the idea, this is where we're going to get our lumber,
1:48.6	and then how much was actually cut down.
1:50.9	For this story on old growth redwoods, we called up an old friend, Daniel Potter.
	...

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