Avenue of the Giants scenic drive winding between old-growth coast redwoods in Humboldt Redwoods State Park, California

Humboldt Redwoods State Park covers more than 53,000 acres (21,400 ha), making it California’s third largest state park. About 17,000 acres (6,880 ha) of that is old-growth coast redwood, the largest remaining expanse of ancient redwood forest anywhere in the world. Some of the trees along this drive are over 350 feet (107 m) tall and more than 2,000 years old.

You can drive the whole Avenue in about an hour without stopping. Almost nobody does, and we certainly didn’t. Plan on a half day minimum, and a full day if you want to add a real hike or spend time at the river.

We drove the Avenue in July, which is the easy season here — warm, dry, and the one time of year the river is genuinely inviting. Here are the stops I’d recommend building a day around:

Humboldt Redwoods State Park entrance sign with park map at the southern end of the Avenue of the Giants

Driving the Avenue of the Giants – Practical Details

Access the Avenue from Highway 101 at one of three main exits: Phillipsville (exit 645) at the south end, Myers Flat or Weott in the middle, and Pepperwood (exit 674) at the north end. The route below runs south to north, starting at Phillipsville. Driving it the other direction works just as well.

Grab an Auto Tour brochure at either end of the Avenue or at the visitor center. It maps the numbered pullouts and memorial groves, and it was the single most useful thing we had on the dashboard.

Know the fee situation. Humboldt Redwoods has no entrance fee and no parking fee at almost every stop on this list. The exception is the Williams Grove Day-Use Area, which charges $8 per vehicle per day. California State Parks passes are accepted there.

Watch the road, not the trees. The Avenue is narrow, has no shoulder in most places, and carries logging trucks and RVs. Pull all the way into a designated turnout before you look up.

Cell service is patchy to nonexistent for most of the corridor. Download maps before you leave Garberville or Fortuna.

When to Go

Summer is the easiest season logistically. The park installs summer footbridges across the Eel River at Williams Grove, Garden Club of America Grove, Big Trees, Burlington, and California Federation of Women’s Club Grove — these typically go in around mid-June and come out in September. Several backcountry hikes depend on them, so call the park at (707) 946-2263 or ask at the visitor center before committing to a route.

Winter and spring bring dramatic fog and moss, but this park receives 7 to 10 feet (2 to 3 m) of rain a year, and the Eel River runs cold, fast, and deep. Roads and river access close periodically.

The Best Stops Along the Avenue of the Giants

(1) The Chimney Tree – Phillipsville

The Chimney Tree sits at the southern gateway to the Avenue, in Phillipsville. Fire hollowed out the entire trunk, leaving a chimney-like shaft you can step into and look straight up through — and the tree is still alive. Parking is generous and admission is free.

The Chimney Tree Grill shares the property and serves local beef burgers, fish and chips, milkshakes, and beer and wine. It’s a reasonable first or last stop depending on which direction you’re driving.

(2) Avenue Cafe – Miranda

Six miles north, Miranda is the best mid-route food stop on the Avenue. The Avenue Cafe at 6743 Avenue of the Giants has been the local standby for years, known especially for calzones and pizza, with covered outdoor seating and a short beer and wine list. Note that it’s closed Wednesdays, which catches a lot of travelers out.

Miranda also has one of the more appealing places to stay on the corridor if you want to be inside the forest overnight rather than driving in from Garberville or Fortuna.

(3) Shrine Drive-Thru Tree – Myers Flat

One of the oldest roadside attractions in the redwoods, and the only drive-thru tree actually on the Avenue. The opening is partly natural — an early twentieth-century lightning strike started a fire that hollowed the trunk, and the gap was widened from there. Admission runs about $8 per vehicle, $4 per motorcycle, and $3 to walk or bike through.

It is unapologetically touristy, and I’ll admit we enjoyed it anyway. The property also includes a walk-through stump and a step-through log, so there’s more to it than the one photo everyone comes for. That said, if you’re short on time, I’d spend that hour in Rockefeller Forest instead.

Straight stretch of the Avenue of the Giants lined with old-growth redwoods and sword ferns

(4) Eel River Access – Garden Club of America Grove and Williams Grove

The South Fork of the Eel River runs alongside the Avenue for most of its length, and summer is the season to get in it. Gravel bars, shallow swimming holes, and easy wading turn up all along the corridor. After a couple of hours under the canopy, stepping out into the light and heat at the river is a bigger contrast than you’d expect — the forest runs noticeably cooler than the open riverbed.

Garden Club of America Grove and Williams Grove are the two most reliable day-use access points, with parking, restrooms, and short walks down to the water. Williams Grove is the one stop on the Avenue that charges an $8 day-use fee.

Two caveats:

• The California Federation of Women’s Clubs Grove day-use parking lot and road have been closed to vehicles since May 2025 because of bank erosion, with no reopening date announced. The grove is still open to pedestrians, but roadside parking there fits about three cars. Check current status before you plan around it.
• Blue-green algae can bloom in the Eel when flows drop in mid to late summer. It’s hazardous to people and especially to dogs. Look for posted warnings at the access points.

South Fork of the Eel River seen through summer wildflowers along the Avenue of the Giants

(5) Humboldt Redwoods Visitor Center – Weott

The visitor center at 17119 Avenue of the Giants, near Burlington Campground, is worth thirty minutes even if you normally skip visitor centers — and I usually do. The exhibits cover redwood ecology and the logging history that nearly erased this forest, and the rangers have current information on footbridges, river conditions, and road closures that you will not find online.

• Hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. May through September; 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. October through April
• Day-use areas park wide: 8 a.m. to sunset

Behind the center, the Gould Grove Loop Nature Trail is a 0.6-mile (1 km) ADA-accessible loop through 300-foot redwoods, flat the entire way, about 30 minutes at a slow pace. It’s the best short walk on the Avenue for anyone with mobility limits or small children.

(6) Rockefeller Forest and the Big Trees Area – Mattole Road

Turn west onto Mattole Road near Dyerville and you leave the Avenue for what I think is the most impressive stretch of forest in the park. Rockefeller Forest is the largest contiguous old-growth coast redwood forest left on earth, and the road through it sees a fraction of the Avenue’s traffic. This is the detour people skip because it isn’t on the main drive, and it’s the one I’d least recommend giving up.

The Rockefeller Loop Trail is an easy, flat 0.7-mile (1.1 km) walk through dense, cathedral-scale forest. It’s quieter and darker than anything on the Avenue proper.

Continue to the Big Trees Day-Use Area, which holds a remarkable concentration of record redwoods within a short walk:

• The Giant Tree — 363 feet (111 m), the park’s champion coast redwood since 1991
• The Tall Tree (also called the Rockefeller Tree) — 366.5 feet (112 m)
• The Flatiron Tree — a fallen giant whose buttressed, triangular cross-section is easier to appreciate on the ground than it ever was standing

Mattole Road is narrow, winding, and partly unpaved further west toward the coast. The section to Big Trees is fine for any passenger car in dry conditions.

Keep driving west and it becomes the Lost Coast Scenic Drive — the same road climbs over the ridge to the ocean at Cape Mendocino and runs back to Ferndale. Done in reverse, that drive delivers you straight onto the Avenue, which makes a wild empty coastline in the morning and old-growth redwood in the afternoon one of the better single days in Northern California.

(7) Founders Grove – Dyerville

If you make only one stop on the Avenue, make it this one. The Founders Grove Nature Loop is a 0.5-mile (0.8 km) ADA-accessible loop with flush restrooms, picnic tables, and easy parking.

The Founders Tree stands 346 feet (105 m) tall and is visible a short walk from the lot. Further along the loop lies the Dyerville Giant, a roughly 370-foot (113 m) redwood that stood for an estimated 1,500 years before another falling tree knocked it down in March 1991. Residents a mile away reported feeling the impact.

Walking the length of that trunk on the ground gave me the clearest sense of scale I got anywhere in the park. Standing at the base of a living redwood, you can’t really take in the size of it — the top disappears into the canopy. Lying down, the whole thing is right there, with the upended root mass towering well overhead.

(8) Eternal Treehouse and the Immortal Tree – Redcrest

Two quick roadside stops a couple of miles apart in Redcrest.

The Eternal Treehouse is a 20-foot room inside the living stump of a redwood estimated at 2,500 years old, hollowed by fire centuries ago. Admission is free and the lot handles RVs and trailers.

The Immortal Tree is a coast redwood estimated at 950 to 1,000 years old that has survived nearly everything the last century threw at it. Loggers from the Holmes Eureka Company started cutting it in 1908 and never finished — an axe head is mounted about 10 feet up the trunk marking the spot. A lightning strike later took off the crown, dropping the tree from close to 300 feet (91 m) to roughly 248 feet (76 m). A metal fish marker about 25 feet up shows the high-water line from the catastrophic 1964 flood. Fire has charred it as well. It’s a five-minute stop, it’s free, and the layered scars make it more interesting than most single-tree attractions.

(9) Drury-Chaney Loop Trail – Pepperwood

Near the north end of the Avenue, at roughly mile marker 43.9 just south of Pepperwood, the Drury-Chaney Loop Trail is a level walk through dense second-growth and old-growth redwood. The park lists it at 2.4 miles (3.9 km) and about an hour and fifteen minutes; the inner loop on its own runs closer to 1.7 miles (2.7 km), so your total depends on how much of the connecting spur you walk. The forest floor is carpeted with redwood sorrel, and the trail sees far less traffic than Founders Grove. Most people who hike both rate this the better walk.

Wide view of towering old-growth redwoods lining the Avenue of the Giants

Best Hikes in Humboldt Redwoods State Park

If you want more than a nature loop, these are the trails worth planning around:

• Drury-Chaney Loop Trail — Easy. 2.4 miles (3.9 km), about 1.25 hours, level. The best easy hike on the Avenue itself.
• Bull Creek Trail North — Moderate. 7.4 miles (11.9 km) round trip, about 5 hours, only 200 feet (61 m) of elevation change. This runs through Rockefeller Forest along Bull Creek, and it’s the hike that gets you deepest into old-growth without any real climbing. Note that the full Bull Creek Flats loop depends on the seasonal summer footbridges — check status before you go.
• Grasshopper Peak — Strenuous. 13.4 miles (21.6 km) round trip, about 8 hours, 3,100 feet (945 m) of elevation gain. The summit sits at 3,379 feet (1,030 m) with an old fire lookout and views over the Eel River watershed in every direction. This is the hardest hike in the park and the only one that gets you above the canopy. Start early and carry water — there is none reliably available on the route.
• Gould Grove Loop Nature Trail — Accessible. 0.6 miles (1 km), 30 minutes, level and ADA-accessible, starting behind the visitor center.

Photography Notes

The Avenue is a harder place to photograph well than it looks, and I learned most of this the hard way shooting it in the middle of a bright July afternoon. A few things that help:

• Shoot in overcast or fog. Direct midday sun creates a contrast range the forest can’t hold — blown highlights in the canopy gaps, black shadows on the trunks. Flat light is your friend here, and this is one place I’d happily trade a blue-sky day for a gray one.
• Look straight up. The canopy shots are the ones people remember, and a wide angle pointed vertically from the base of a cluster of trunks is the classic Humboldt frame.
• Include the road or a person for scale. Without a reference object, a 350-foot tree photographs like any other tree.
• Early morning on the Avenue gives you empty pavement and low-angle light filtering through the trunks. By ten in the morning in summer you’ll be waiting for gaps in traffic.

Food, Breweries, and Places to Stay

Food, Breweries, and Places to Stay

Eat on the Avenue. The Chimney Tree Grill in Phillipsville and the Avenue Cafe in Miranda are the two dependable options actually on the route. Both are casual, both are seasonal in their hours, and Avenue Cafe is closed Wednesdays. Honestly, though, I’d grab picnic supplies from one of the small markets in Myers Flat or Redcrest instead — there are tables at Founders Grove, Williams Grove, and the visitor center, and eating lunch under 300-foot trees beats eating it indoors.

Beer at the north end. Eel River Brewing Company at 1777 Alamar Way in Fortuna, about 20 minutes north of the Avenue’s north end, was the first certified organic brewery in the United States. The taproom and grill are open daily from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. with a beer garden out back. It’s the natural end-of-day stop if you’re driving north.

Where to stay:

• Camping in the park — Burlington Campground is open year-round next to the visitor center. Albee Creek and Hidden Springs are seasonal. Reserve at Reserve California more than 48 hours out. All campgrounds are in bear country; store food properly.
• Miranda — Miranda Gardens Resort has been operating on the Avenue since 1929. Cottages range from simple one-room units to two-bedroom cabins with full kitchens, fireplaces, and whirlpool tubs, and there’s a seasonal pool and a playground. The most convenient base if you want two days on the drive.
• Garberville — the Benbow Historic Inn on the Eel River, about 20 minutes south of the Avenue, is the upscale option. Historic 1920s Tudor building, restaurant and lounge, terrace over the river, and a nine-hole golf course.
• Fortuna — the practical chain-motel base at the north end, and where Eel River Brewing is.
• Eureka — about 45 minutes north, and the most practical base if you’re doing the whole redwood corridor rather than just the Avenue. Full services and the widest lodging range on this coast. It’s also where you’ll find the Madaket harbor cruise, a good half day when the weather turns.

Know Before You Go

• Dogs are not allowed on trails anywhere in Humboldt Redwoods, service animals excepted. They’re fine on leash in campgrounds, day-use areas, and picnic areas. Plan accordingly if you’re traveling with a dog.
• Fishing on the South Fork and main stem of the Eel is catch-and-release with barbless hooks only, and requires a California license. Salmon and steelhead run in fall and winter.
• Bicycling is allowed on designated multiuse trails and is best suited to experienced riders. The Avenue itself is a popular road ride, but treat the narrow, shoulderless sections with respect.
• Check for closures before you go. This park sits in an active landslide and flood corridor, and access roads close with little notice. The California Federation of Women’s Clubs Grove road closure is the current example; it has been closed since May 2025.

If You’re Driving the Whole Redwood Corridor

The Avenue is the southern end of a run of redwood parks that stretches about 150 miles up Highway 101 to the Oregon border. If you have more than a day, the rest of it is worth the drive:

• Fern Canyon — a fern-walled gorge in Prairie Creek Redwoods, about two hours north. Needs a summer reservation.
• Lady Bird Johnson Grove — the best easy old-growth loop in Redwood National Park, free and no permit.
• Tall Trees Grove — a permit-only hike to 350-foot trees on Redwood Creek, capped at 50 parties a day.
• Lost Coast Scenic Drive — the drive that connects to this one, over the ridge to California’s only coastal wilderness.

For the full picture, see the California Redwoods Guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long is the Avenue of the Giants? The Avenue is a 31-mile portion of the old Highway 101 alignment, now State Route 254, running between Phillipsville at the south end and Pepperwood at the north.

Is the Avenue of the Giants the same as Redwood National Park? No. The Avenue runs through Humboldt Redwoods State Park, a separate California state park about 100 miles south of Redwood National and State Parks. Different parks, different agencies. Both protect old-growth coast redwood, but they are not the same destination and you can’t see both in a day.

Is there a fee to drive the Avenue of the Giants? No. Humboldt Redwoods has no entrance fee and no parking fee at almost every stop. The exception is the Williams Grove Day-Use Area, which charges $8 per vehicle per day.

How long does it take to drive the Avenue of the Giants? About an hour without stopping. Plan a half day to actually see it, or a full day if you want to add a hike or spend time at the river.

What is the best stop on the Avenue of the Giants? Founders Grove if you only have time for one — a half-mile accessible loop with the Founders Tree and the fallen Dyerville Giant. Rockefeller Forest, on Mattole Road just off the Avenue, is the most impressive forest in the park and the one most people skip.

Can you drive the Avenue of the Giants in an RV? Yes. The Avenue itself is paved, two lanes, and carries RVs regularly. Mattole Road west toward the coast is a different matter — it narrows and turns unpaved, and motor homes and trailers are not advised beyond the Big Trees area.

Can you swim in the Eel River? Yes, in summer. Garden Club of America Grove and Williams Grove are the most reliable access points. Watch for posted blue-green algae warnings when flows drop in mid to late summer — it’s hazardous to people and especially to dogs.

If you’re driving Highway 101 anywhere in Northern California, the Avenue of the Giants is worth the detour off the freeway. It costs you an hour of driving time at minimum and it’s the part of the trip you’ll definitely remember.

Park headquarters: 17119 Avenue of the Giants, Weott, CA 95571 — (707) 946-2263.

For more information on the California Redwoods National and State parks visit our California Redwoods Guide here.

For current conditions, camping reservations, and the park brochure, visit the California State Parks page for Humboldt Redwoods.