Arcata Community Forest — Attraction in Arcata

The great Arcata community forest!!!! If these trees could speak they would tell many a tale of 6 foot long 2lb joints of Humboldt s finest weed being smoked at the 420 festival that used to happen annually here, or of the numerous drum circles that used to happen in the meadow complete with beautiful hippies dancing with hula hoops and the occasional summertime school bus migration passing thru. In the late '80s and early '90s, this place was a west coast hippy paradise, and people actually went deep into the forest at night and camped back there for months at a time. As happens with many a paradise, a few unconscious people ruined it all by leaving piles of unsightly trash, litter, and empty bottles of old crow effectively infuriating hikers and the arcata city council to the point where they hired a park ranger and thus begins the legacy of ranger bob. Now good old ranger Bob took his job of harassing hippys very seriously and when he was not handing out citations for camping he could be found with binoculars hiding in the bush's making sure those dime bags of the devil's lettuce were not being sold or consumed without him getting his share. As a 215 patient himself, it has been rumored that on his mantle at home, there lies a $2000 artistic hand-blown glass bong confiscated from a well-to-do visitor to the redwood park. The city does a great job of maintaining the park's trails keeping them clean and maintaining the cool little playground for kids here. There is a sweet downhill mountain bike track that has a great flow to it, a basketball half-court, some bathrooms, and a small place to grill food. Enjoy this magical place with respect, PLEASE, as it is one of the most beautiful places on sol-3...

Someone in a movie once said: "If you build it, they will come." And therein lies the problem with wilderness type parks, a catch - 22 type situation: if you make the park more accessible for people to visit, and manage the park, you destroy part of the wilderness, if you just leave it alone, and still let people visit it, somebody might get hurt. I'm happy to say that Arcata Community Forest has reached a middle ground; it's accessible, but mother nature hasn't been altered that much. After visiting a number of national forests and state parks, the Community Forest is quite a change. Some of the national forests I've visited have become so manicured and landscaped that they're almost city parks. Of course, then, you have the benefit of camp sites, kayaking, and moto-x trails. I'm not sure if you can do all of that at Arcata Community, however, it does have well kept trails. A wee bit tricky to walk along in platform boots, but I managed. My friends and I were there for just part of the day, and we didn't exactly take a long hike, and had plenty...

The most beautiful place in Arcata. There are miles of maintained trails throughout the Arcata Community Forest with multiple access points. It is a great place to walk, hike, run, mountain bike or ride horses. While walking the trails you will be transported into another world and quickly forget you are still in the city. The city has a trail map online which can be downloaded into a free app so you can find your location via GPS on your cell phone. If you are not familiar with the trails, I would not go to far into the trails without a map. Your cell phone will work in the forest, but the forest is too dense to see any of the trails on a satellite...