Enjoy the view —visual resources inventory report: Redwood National and State Parks

Meyer, Mark; Taylor, Ksienya; Grantham, Karin

Each unit of the national park system has special visual characteristics that are often a central component to the unit’s management and visitor experience. Redwood National and State Parks (RNSP) offer visitors a wide range of visual experiences and the existing scenery is an important way to better understand the connection between natural and cultural resources. Visualizing this connection is a critical part of the visitor experience. As part of Enjoy the View Call to Action, RNSP completed a visual resource inventory that focused on identifying key facts about the scenic views in the Bald Hills area of Redwood National Park. The Bald Hills area was selected because potential changes the visual setting that may be caused by a project to pave a portion of Bald Hills Road. Bald Hills Road is a key component of three cultural resource areas Bald Hills Archeological District, Lyons Ranches Rural Historic District and the Bald Hills Ethnographic Landscape. The inventory was completed according the methodology developed by NPS for assessing and protecting visual resources. The inventory system consists of both fieldwork associated with view description and scenic quality ratings, and an office-based process for assigning importance values to the views. Redwood National and State Parks selected 14 views for the initial visual resource inventory to inform internal view management objectives and help develop external view conservation goals. The results of the inventory identified that two views fell into the very high and four in the high category. The remaining six views were rated as having a moderate scenic inventory value.

Enjoy the view —visual resources inventory report: Redwood National and State Parks

Series