Botanical Name: Sequoia Sempervirons
Back in 1851, Harry Meiggs, founder of San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, sailed to Mendocino with a full sawmill. Recognizing the opportunity that lay in the area's dense redwood forests, he set up the mill and made Mendocino the Bay Area's primary source for lumber. For the next 30 years, business boomed and more than 27 dams dotted the Big River's waters. These dams caught and held the logs until enough rainwater fell to drive them on to Meigg's mill at the river's mouth. Many of the best bottom-cut logs some of them up to 12 feet in diameter sank to the river floor, where they remained and got buried.