Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The trail continues northeast, switching from redwoods amid lush sorrel and
sword ferns to drier stands of oaks and bays. Sadly, most of these oaks are dead or
dying from sudden oak death. The main trail is clearly marked and well trodden in
contrast to the numerous spurs, remnants of trails once used to haul out batches of
tanoak bark.
BIG SUR LUMBER
The redwoods along Partington Creek are among Big Sur's largest, survivors of a
lumber industry that clear-cut whole stands along the Coast Ranges. Redwood is
highly valued as a building material, but these gnarled old-growth trees were unsuit-
able for lumber and spared from the axe.
Tanoaks, however, were extensively harvested for the leather-tanning industry.
The trees were clear-cut in this canyon, then shipped from Partington Cove to tan-
neries in Santa Cruz and San Francisco. The harvest was hard on the forest. Tanoaks
didn't grow in pure stands, so loggers forged rough trails to reach the trees. Although
tanoak wood is usable as a building material or firewood, loggers were only after the
bark and left the trees to rot.
Yet today, extensive stands dominate Partington Canyon along the Tan Bark
Trail. This recovery is due to tanoak's reproductive capacity to “stump sprout” from
the roots of a felled tree. These sprouts grow at the same time, establishing multiple
trunks from a common root system.
Just past a minor confluence of the
south fork
(2 miles, 1550'), note the enorm-
ous old-growth redwoods, some nearly 10 feet in diameter. Continue your gentle as-
cent through the glade to a creek that flows in all but the driest months. Ignore the
overgrown trail to the northeast and follow the main trail southeast to a bench beside
the creek. Check the path for obvious stonework (2.3 miles, 1680'), remnants of
Swiss
Camp,
built by settler Gunder Bergstrom in the 1920s. The most strenuous climbing
is now behind you.
For the next 0.7 mile you'll climb a gentle grade, soon reaching a junction with
a
spur
(3 miles, 2110') that climbs a prominent ridge on private property. Stay on the
main trail and follow it downhill 200 yards till you merge with the wide Fire Road.
From here you'll bear left and descend another 200 feet to the
Tin House
(3.3 miles,
1960'), perched on a ridge crest.
Built during World War II from tin scavenged from a defunct gas station, the Tin
House is a peculiar structure with an obscure history. In wartime, tin was a tightly
controlled material, so it's unusual to find so much tin in a house from that era. The
previous landowner was Lathrop Brown, a politician who served in Congress and the
Department of the Interior. Locals insist Brown built the house as a retreat for friend
and college classmate Franklin D. Roosevelt. Others believe it served as the Browns'
