Henry W. Coe State Park


Henry W. Coe State Park is the largest state park in northern California, with over 87,000 acres of wild open space, for year-round enjoyment by hikers, mountain bikers, backpackers, picnickers and those seeking the quiet escape that only nature can provide.
 

As California has become increasingly urbanized over the last century, the State's remaining wild places have become even more important. It is these wild places that provide our thirsty cities with the water that they need, animal and plant species with the ecosystems that they need to thrive, and the places to which we can escape to reconnect with ourselves and with nature — places like Coe Park.


Coe Park is the wilderness next door for more than six million people in the San Francisco Bay Area.
 
 

May these quiet hills bring peace to the souls of those who are seeking
 

Sada Coe Robinson

Henry W, Coe State Park is located in the Diablo Range, south of Mount Hamilton. It is a place of rugged hills that often plunge nearly a quarter mile from the ridge tops to the canyons below. Towering ponderosa pine, majestic oaks, and meadows covered with spring wildflowers greet visitors to the park along with vistas that can extend from the snow capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada to Monterey Bay, and south across saw-tooth ridges towards Pinnacles National Monument.
 

More than 200 miles of trails assure that those seeking solitude will find it within an hour of leaving the trail head. Backpackers can travel for a week or more without revisiting the same place, and without encountering anyone else.
 


... I spent that rainy night in the confining comfort of my tent rehashing my trip. For five days I had been all alone, seeing no one and not speaking a word. The solitude had given me a great gift. It had untied all the knots in my psychological and emotional rope. My receptors began to pick up signals that are usually lost in the din and racket of life down here on the anthill. I had witnessed and been truly present for a shift in the wind, the first drops of rain, the interplay of light and clouds on the edge of a coming storm.
 
And all this happened (it never ceases to amaze me) just over the hill from home and just down the road from six million people. 
 

Ron Erskine