Monte Rio Grows, Connecting Sonoma’s Redwood Corridor

Through a densely forested slope on the west side of Dutch Bill Creek, upstream of its confluence with the Russian River, a dirt road zigzags skyward through the redwoods. Once used by loggers to extract the watershed’s timber, the road leads past marks of the lumbering era: a coil of rusted cable strewn in the ferns, deeply eroded stream channels, and countless redwood stumps uphill and down. 

But the din of logging has vanished from this land. Today, the steep road is a multiuse trail and the recovering forest is protected, part of Sonoma County’s Monte Rio Redwoods Regional Park and Open Space Preserve. Opened in 2020, Monte Rio quadrupled in size last summer with the purchase of 1,517 acres of mostly second-growth redwoods and mixed woodland. Significantly, the approximately 2,030-acre preserve connects to adjacent public property, making it a wonderland for hikers, cyclists, and equestrians. 

All told, the complex of public land covers 22,000 contiguous acres, including rugged slopes walked by black bears and mountain lions, creeks containing coho salmon and steelhead trout, an extensive network of trails, and several miles of terraced prairie along the Sonoma coast. 

Just over two miles after starting out from the Main Street parking lot, my dog, a blue heeler named Arrow, and I have climbed nearly 1,000 vertical feet. Above the redwoods, the trail levels out and leads us northwest along a ridge of live oak, bay, madrone, and tanoak before the trees open and the view explodes. We’ve arrived at West Pole, a grassy clearing and vista point marking the park’s northwest corner. The meadow rolls forward like the soft side of Half Dome, careening toward the town of Duncans Mills and the meandering silver curls of the Russian River, while distant mountains gallop for the horizon.   

Before European contact, this land was used by the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians and the Southern Pomo group of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. According to Anthony Macias, tribal historic preservation officer for the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians, their ancestors fished in the area’s streams, hunted in its meadows, and, using fire, tended its oaks, from which they harvested acorns.

The arrival of outsiders—including Russian fur hunters and Spanish missionaries—marked the beginning of a long and brutal subjugation that would eventually decimate the Indigenous population and displace survivors from their land. 

In the 19th and 20th centuries, lumber companies felled most of the coastal range’s old-growth redwoods. In the Russian River watershed, devastated hillsides hemorrhaged, spewing silt and sediment into the area’s streams, clogging channels and smothering fish habitat. Salmon and steelhead dwindled. 

Early in this century, the logging industry loosened its grip on the area, and the locked gates into this secret landscape began to open. In 2005, Sonoma Coast State Park expanded with the acquisition of 3,373 acres of ridgeline prairie and redwood groves along Willow Creek. In 2020, Sonoma County Regional Parks purchased a 515-acre plot just over the hill, on the slopes above Dutch Bill Creek, establishing Monte Rio Redwoods Regional Park. Interest soon turned to a larger adjacent parcel, owned by the Mendocino Redwood Company, LLC. 

Save the Redwoods League led last summer’s acquisition effort and secured $24 million from the California Wildlife Conservation Board, the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, the Sonoma Land Trust, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, and other contributors. In June 2025, the new parcel opened for public use.

The expansion means hikers and bikers now have several routes and loops where they previously would have met closed gates. And a master plan currently in development could grow or improve the trail network.

“This was quite a hole in the network of connected properties,” says Sara Press, senior manager of land protection with Save the Redwoods League. She describes the new parcel as “a missing link” that “fills in that connectivity.” 

The acquisition protects the headwaters of important coho salmon creeks—especially Willow and Dutch Bill—where work to restore degraded habitat in the watersheds’ lower reaches has already been completed. 

Greg Sarris, chair of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, which contributed $306,000 to the latest purchase, says protecting large trees like redwoods is invaluable in today’s society. When many people “are living life virtually” through social media and AI, “there is something about the reality of touching a tree,” he says. “The opportunity to have open public space like this is the opportunity for health-giving.”

Visitors will find marked trails with names like Bad Finger, Middle East, Radar Love, and Vacation Wonderland—not the expected legacy of a lumber operation. In fact, these trails were made and named by members of the Gianni Cycling Association, which for decades enjoyed tenuous access to the property. 

The club’s founder, Tom Gonnella, says he’s thrilled by the new arrangement. For one thing, he says, he’s no longer responsible for monitoring public use of the land. 

“I didn’t like being a cop out there and saying, ‘Hey, this is private land,’” he says. “I just wanted to be able to see someone on the trail that I didn’t know and say, ‘What a great day.’” 

Better, the park is now preserved. 

“To me, this is like the jewel of the county,” Gonnella says. 

Arrow and I slowly amble southwestward along the Monte Rio multiuse trail, taking in views, examining plants and animal scat, and trying to match distant peaks and other features with marks on the map. 

Then I see the time. It’s almost 3 p.m. and I hope to cover at least another 10 miles over the erratic terrain. We pick up the pace, sights set on such place names as Campo Gianni, Hole in the Tree, Sound of Music, and Koerber Benchmark, a 1,481-foot summit. We trot along gently sloped fire roads like Fern Springs, Freezeout, and Box Springs, and we make cross-watershed connections on single-track trails that plunge into cool creek ravines and switchback up the opposing slopes.

By the time we begin the final drop to the parking lot, my Strava route tracker shows we’ve walked 12 miles and climbed almost 3,000 feet. Still, there is so much to return for—miles of trails within Monte Rio, and many more that connect to Sonoma Coast State Park and, through valleys and over ridges, all the way to the ocean. 

As the forest darkens with dusk, we pass more relics of the logging age: Huge redwood stumps, hollowed by time and blackened by fire, stud the mountainside—fading scars of a messy past. But from their remains, second-growth redwoods sprout in rings, growing toward the light.

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