The Ghost Forest: Racists, Radicals, and Real Estate in the California Redwoods
The Ghost Forest: Racists, Radicals, and Real Estate in the California Redwoods
By Greg King
The definitive story of the California redwoods as told by an activist who has fought for decades to protect their existence. California’s redwood range is a wonder of the natural world. Yet the great redwoods - the tallest of all trees - have been logged nearly to extinction. Today, just four percent of the original two-million-acre coast redwood biome remains. The Ghost Forest explains how and why this liquidation occurred, from the 19th century robber barons who stole hundreds and thousands of acres of redwood lands to the modern corporations who exploited the forest for their own agenda.
This compelling book, written with first person intensity, tells the story of one of Humboldt County's greatest battles that culminated in the Timber Wars. It covers the effort to fell and exploit our once vast redwood forests and the counteracting quest to save their magnificent remnants.
King begins his over-400-page saga by recounting the Jurassic beginnings of the Sequoia family and their spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Then with his family roots in Sonoma's former redwood lands, he tells how he was drawn into the decades-long effort to save the remaining trees, soon focusing on Humboldt's Headwaters Forests and the contest with Pacific Lumber and Maxxam. From personal commitment, the author recounts the rise of Earth First and other environmental movements, the daring actions of tree sitters, arrests, and the surprisingly controversial Save the Redwoods League. King also details the early history of lumber companies, capitalist investors, the personalities involved, and the surprising intermingling of racism in the early conflicts.
The detailed end matter and the inserted photographs are valuable additions to this book, but it is the knowledge and passion that makes it so engrossing. Redwoods are among the major elements of Humboldt history, and "Ghost Forest" sheds a new, comprehensive and self-admittedly slanted light on the vibrant heart of Humboldt.
