Weekly Walker: Little Butano Creek Trail Loop, Jewel of Redwood Forest Crown

[Editor's Note: Watch for this column each Thursday on Patch by local hiking enthusiast Tom Davids. Below is this week's suggested hike to Little Butano Creek Trail Loop in Butano State Park.]

By Tom Davids

Little Butano Creek Trail Loop
Butano State Park

Directions: South on Highway 1 to Pescadero Road. Turn left and drive to Cloverdale Road (2.5 miles). Turn right and continue 4.2 miles to park entrance in less than half a mile. From the Peninsula, you can also take Highway 84 (La Honda Road), cross Skyline and watch for signed cutoff to Pescadero. Turn left on Cloverdale Road a couple miles east of Pescadero.
Trail Map: www.parks.ca.gov/ and search for Butano

Grade: Easy, with 400 feet elevation gain.

Distance: About two miles. 

Time: Two hours.

Special Conditions: Day use fee required. Picnic tables are available along the main road. Campsites are available on a first-come, first-served basis, but you can reserve space by calling Reserve America at 1-800-444-7275. No dogs allowed on trails. This is a California State Park.

Butano State Park is a 3,200-acre preserve with a dark and majestic canyon leading to open grassland, oak woodland, and chaparral as you hike to the ridgelines. Butano (say “Boo-tano”) became part of the State Park System in 1961.

Early European settlers came to Butano Canyon in the mid-1800s. The Jackson family settled in the Jackson Flats area on the north side of the canyon, and the Taylor and Mullen families settled on the south or Goat Hill side. James Taylor built a sawmill on Little Butano Creek around 1873, and this hike will take us to that location.

Park at the entrance kiosk, and walk east along the asphalt park road. The forest is primarily fir and oak, but soon the canyon deepens and darkens under the redwood cover. Along the way is a picnic site with restrooms and water. To the left, watch for a flume built to transport water from a dam upstream. Portions of the flume are concrete, but most of what you see is newly built of wood. The original flume and reservoir were built many years ago to carry water from Little Butano Creek to several small reservoirs in the Cloverdale Road Valley for irrigation purposes. The “old” flume was destroyed during the Loma Prieta Earthquake, and the farmers and ranches in the valley below paid for this replacement.

A short distance up the creek is a concrete dam complete with heavy wood planks that once maintained the small reservoir behind at a certain level. This reservoir is now totally filled with dirt, but you can walk above the dam and see how water from the creek is directed to flow to the flume during winter and spring rains.

Beyond the dam you will pass by junctions for the Mill Ox Trail and the Little Butano Creek Trail on your left. Continue straight on the asphalt road to where it swings right into the Ben Ries Campground (named after the first ranger at the park).

At the turn, continue straight on the dirt service road and climb up to a junction with Goat Hill Trail. Stay on the service road, and notice that the thick redwood forest is now thinning out high above the creek below. Pass by a park maintenance building on the right, and begin a descent to the creek below. Soon the trail will cross over Little Butano Creek on a wooden bridge, and then take a hairpin turn that joins a single-track trail returning west.

It was in this area of the canyon that James Taylor developed a shingle mill in about 1873. The mill was later sold to Purdy Paris, who owned it at the time of his death in the mid-1880s. Pharis was a highly successful lumberman, and his untimely death by suicide or murder raised many questions that remain unanswered 120 years later.

While the deep and narrow Butano canyon was rich in redwood, tree harvesting and transporting was a difficult proposition. For this reason, much of the cut timber was reduced to shingles and packed out on ox carts or mule trains to water transport at Pigeon Point or Pescadero.  

The return hike along Little Butano Creek is a narrow trail through a second-generation redwood forest with a few giants still standing. The canyon is a beautiful short hike from the asphalt road if your time is limited. The creek flows year-round, but runs high and fast during winter storms.

The Little Butano Creek Trail exits at the asphalt service road where you return the way you came.

By the Way…

The word “Butano is Californian Spanish for a drinking cup made out of a cow’s horn.”  So states Dr. Alan K. Brown in his book “Place names of San Mateo County”. Historians Svanevik and Burgett tell us that Butano is an Indian word meaning friendly gathering place. Whatever the true meaning may be…for me, Butano is one of the jewels in the redwood forest crown.

Information on sawmills in this article came from the book “Sawmills in the Redwoods” by Frank M. Stanger, published by the San Mateo County Historical Association. 1967.