Sempervirens Club

Sempervirens Fund, originally established in 1900 as Sempervirens Club, is California's oldest land trust. Founder Andrew P. Hill’s goal was to preserve the old-growth forest that became Big Basin Redwoods State Park, the first California state park in 1902. Sempervirens Fund’s mission is to protect and permanently preserve coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests, wildlife habitat, watersheds, and other important natural features of California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, and to encourage people to appreciate and enjoy this environment. Sempervirens Fund does this by purchasing land for protection and transferring it to state or local agencies. Sempervirens Fund has also worked to establish conservation easements and trail linkages between parks and coastal marine preserves. As of 2013, Sempervirens Fund has saved more than 34,000 acres of redwood lands.

In 1899, San Jose photographer Andrew P. Hill was on assignment in Northern California’s Santa Cruz Mountains. His photographs were to accompany a news story about a recent fire in the redwoods that had been put out using wine from a local vineyard. While Hill was photographing a very large redwood tree, the owner of the grove stopped him, accused Hill of trespassing and demanded the negatives. Hill refused, and though he hadn’t thought of himself as a conservationist, returned to San Jose and started a campaign to save the coast redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains and make them accessible to the public.

At the time, logging of the coast redwoods was moving at a frantic pace to meet the demand for redwood lumber to build the new towns and cities of a booming California. Concerned that the redwood trees of the Santa Cruz Mountains would be lost forever, Hill, with the help of Stanford University’s President David Starr Jordan, convened a meeting of scientists and other influential people at the Stanford University Library to discuss what could be done to protect the redwoods. At this meeting, a surveying committee was appointed, headed by Hill and Carrie Stevens Walter from the San Jose Woman’s Club. They went camping along the banks of Sempervirens Creek in what is now Big Basin Redwoods State Park and then and there formed the Sempervirens Club. The Club committed to lobby for the protection of the redwoods and for the creation of a public park at Big Basin. They passed a hat, collected $32 to finance their efforts, and launched a fundraising and lobbying campaign to achieve their goal.

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