AT A GLANCE
Why go?
On the misty Mendocino Coast of northern California, the Pygmy Forest Discovery Trail hides one of the state's strangest landscapes: a "bonsai forest" of cypress and pine that, despite being more than a century old, stand no taller than a person. A short, wheelchair-accessible boardwalk winds through the dwarfed trees, with interpretive signs explaining how ancient, nutrient-poor soil stunted an entire woodland.↗↗↗
Tucked inside Van Damme State Park just south of Mendocino, the Discovery Trail is an easy 0.2-to-0.25-mile flat loop, ideal for families, birders and anyone wanting an unusual stop along Highway 1. The boardwalk is the gentlest way to see the phenomenon, and it is also the trailhead for longer hikes down into lush, redwood-lined Fern Canyon.↗↗
A Forest Frozen in Miniature
Most of California's famous woods reach for the sky. This one doesn't. Within the Pygmy Forest, mature cone-bearing cypress and pine trees top out at only six inches to about eight or nine feet, even though many are well over a hundred years old. Walking among them makes you feel like a giant stepping through a toy landscape, the raised boardwalk making the trees look even smaller than they are.
