It’s not as famous as Big Basin Redwoods State Park, its hallowed neighbor to the south. It doesn’t draw nearly as many visitors or feature as many ancient redwoods.
But Butano State Park, a 4,700-acre landscape of steep shady canyons, rippling streams and impressive coast redwood trees located in southern San Mateo County near Pescadero, has a loyal following among Bay Area campers, hikers and nature lovers.
Both parks were hit by the devastating CZU Lightning Complex Fire last year, but Butano, often in Big Basin’s shadow, is bouncing back faster.
The historic blaze, sparked by lightning strikes during a particularly dry, windy day in August 2020, destroyed the park’s trails, a campground, the water system, power lines and other features.
But unlike at Big Basin, two miles away — where searing, out-of-control flames burned to the tops of massive redwoods and destroyed nearly every building — the fire burned slower and cooler in Butano.
“It thinned the forest. It removed downed fuels,” said Chris Spohrer, Santa Cruz district state parks superintendent. “This was a beneficial fire. It’s what we would expect from a prescribed fire.”
Flames stayed low to the ground. They didn’t burn the canopies of trees in most places. The forest still feels cool and shady.
While most of Big Basin remains closed, Butano reopened six months ago. The visitor center is scheduled to swing open its doors in January on weekends. About 6 miles of the park’s 16 miles of trails have reopened, including the popular Año Nuevo Trail, with a scenic lookout, last month.
“Butano doesn’t have the iconic individual trees that Big Basin does,” said Sara Barth, executive director of Sempervirens Fund, a nonprofit group in Los Altos that has worked since 1900 to protect redwoods at Big Basin, Butano and other parks. “But it is an enchanting forest. It’s a special place. It’s one of California’s under-recognized gems.”
Significant work still remains. The fire did $14 million damage at Butano, Spohrer said.
It destroyed the park’s aging water system, which pumped from a creek. Powerlines nailed with brackets to redwood trees in the early 1960s all burned, leaving most of the park without electricity.
PG&E is working to install underground lines, but that could take another year or more, the company has said. Wooden bridges, retaining walls and culverts were lost. Crews from the California Conservation Corps and state parks have been steadily clearing trails and removing hazardous trees.
Spohrer said he hopes to have nearly all trails open this spring. But it will probably be 2023, he said, before the park’s main campground, with 39 spaces, can reopen because the water system must be rebuilt first.
“These parks are almost like mini-cities, in terms of the infrastructure,” Barth said. “People don’t always appreciate all the things that have been put into place decades before, and now that they are destroyed, they are the limiting factor in reopening.”
Butano is among the most overlooked parks in Northern California.
There isn’t even agreement on how to say its name, which is often pronounced “Beau-tah-no,” “Beaut-a-no” or “Boo-ten-o.”
The origin of its name is similarly jumbled. “According to some sources, it was the California Indians who gave the name Butano to the region, meaning a gathering place for friendly visits,” the park’s map notes. “Other sources indicate that the name was given by the Spanish, for a word that apparently means a drinking cup made out of a cow horn.”
One thing is clear: The park’s history offers a difficult lesson for conservation groups. If you wait too long to save something, you might lose much of it.
More than 150 years ago, civic leaders were awed by the ancient redwoods that covered roughly 11,000 acres around Butano Creek and Little Butano Creek. Ralph Sidney Smith, publisher of the Redwood City Times and Gazette, wrote editorials in 1886 urging that the timeless trees be protected from loggers who were cutting them down to make roof shingles.
Sempervirens Club won state approval to purchase Big Basin in 1902. The club worked with the Sierra Club, Save-the-Redwoods League and others in the 1920s and 30s to raise money to buy Butano, but funding always fell short.
At one point, backers brought former President Herbert Hoover into the Butano Forest, and he became an advocate to save it. By 1936, Timothy Hopkins, son of railroad baron Mark Hopkins and a founder of Palo Alto, who owned much of the forest, left it in his will to Stanford University.
Stanford trustees offered to sell 3,120 acres to San Mateo County for $300,000. Yet when the county couldn’t come up with the funds, Stanford sold the land to a lumber company in 1939, then sold another 4,700 acres to Pacific Lumber in 1945.
By 1955, as the redwood giants continued to fall, former Gov. Goodwin Knight vetoed a bill to purchase Butano Forest as a state park. By the time Knight agreed to a compromise the following year to provide $1 million to buy 2,100 acres, only 315 acres of old-growth trees remained.
“There’s no use deploring what might have been, but to me, what we got in the Butano redwoods is just a pathetic fragment of the wonderful virgin forest that we should have acquired years before,” said Newton Drury, who was California’s state parks director in the 1950s, during an interview in 1972.
Nevertheless, in the 65 years since the park was established, its second-growth trees have grown much larger. And the fire offers an opportunity for renewal, supporters say.
“It’s likely to be on the discovery list for a lot of people,” Barth said, “because they’ll be able to go there before Big Basin reopens.”
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