Crescent City, California
What's so special about Crescent City?
It isn't on the way to anywhere. It's the tail end of California, up past the redwoods, where the coast turns rocky and the weather turns honest. You have to want to be here.
Whether you are weighing a move or a week away, the question is the same, so this is one page rather than two.
Getting here
Easier than people think.
You won't do it every week. But you'll do it more than you'd think, and it's genuinely fine.
- San Francisco
- About six hours by road. The drive is the good part: wine country, then the northern forests, then the sea.
- Portland
- Half a day by road.
- Medford
- Two and a half hours over the Siskiyous, with real connections.
- By air
- The regional airport (Del Norte County, CEC). Advanced Air flies to Oakland every day, and a couple of times a week to Los Angeles.
Once you're here, you're close to everything that matters. From the middle of town, the old-growth redwoods are ten minutes away, and so is the nearest beach. Groceries and the hospital are a few minutes away.
The weather
Cool summers, wet winters.
Summer is a sweater season. The fog comes in off a cold ocean, and the thermometer rarely clears the high sixties, even in July and August, while inland California is doing something else entirely.
Winter is the trade, and it's a real one. It rains, properly: about seventy inches a year, most of it in the cold months. What you never get is a heat wave.
A long weekend
Redwoods, a river, and a rocky coast.
Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, the old-growth one, is ten minutes from town. Take Howland Hill Road: a narrow, unpaved road that runs straight through the old growth, so you can see the best of it without walking a trail.
Then the Smith River. It is the only major river in California that has never been dammed, it is federally protected as Wild and Scenic, and it runs clear green. There is river access in the park for swimming and a picnic.
It is also a fishing river. Chinook run in November and steelhead in January, and the state-record steelhead, twenty-seven pounds, came out of the Smith.
On the coast there are tidepools and, on a good day, a beach with nobody on it. Battery Point Lighthouse can be toured only at low tide, when you can walk across to it from the beach. Check the tide table before you go.
Coffee, a pint, a pizza
Coffee at Paragon Coffeehouse or Swell Coffeebar. A beer at SeaQuake Brewing. A pizza from Itza Pizza. A glass of wine at Enoteca. Hours change, so look them up before you go.
A Tuesday
What a Tuesday looks like.
You take the dog out before your first meeting. The fog hasn't burned off yet, so everything is grey and wet and smells like cedar. You get a coffee somewhere that knows you. You work until lunch, eat something outside, and either go back to work or go find a beach with nobody on it. You end the day with dinner at home, with a window that looks out on trees and not a parking lot.
Is it for you?
What you give up, and what you get back.
What you give up is a big city close by. San Francisco is about six hours down the road, so you plan your trips instead of taking them on a whim. What you get back is space, quiet, and a Tuesday morning that starts with fog burning off a line of redwoods instead of a neighbor's leaf blower.
If that sounds like a downgrade, this isn't the place for you. If it sounds like the thing you've been trying to buy back for years, write to us.
Write to us
Thinking about Crescent City?
Tell us what you are looking for, whether that is a home, a move, or a first look at the place. It helps to know before a property goes on the market.