On Friday morning, August 4, 2006, at 9:30 a.m., at the trail head on Crystal Creek Road in Whiskeytown National Recreation Area; a special Ribbon Cutting ceremony will be held to celebrate the public opening of the James Carr Trail to Whiskeytown Falls. The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony will last 20 to 30 minutes with a few brief speeches. The public will have unrestricted access to view Whiskeytown Falls after the event. The event will be held on Crystal Creek Road, 3.5 miles south of State Highway 299. New Highway signs direct people to the falls trail head up Crystal Creek Road which is ½ mile west of the Camden House Historic District. Rangers will guide the public up the trail and show case the trail improvements.
Park Superintendent Jim Milestone invites the public to join park staff in celebrating the opening of the trail that has been under construction for the past two summer seasons. National Park Service trail crew joined by seven college students from the Student Conservation Association (SCA), have been constructing the new trail. The park has spent approximately $100,000 on the trail project to date. The new trail incorporated two old logging roads that lead up the drainage to the once hidden falls. The steep trail required the clearing of hundreds of small trees and brush to open up the old logging road that were covered with vegetation. National Park Service and volunteer interns with the SCA constructed new trail through the forest to the falls. Two locations required specialized trail construction involving drilling steel rods into the granite rock to support new retaining walls. Other sections required constructing large granite retaining walls from local rock that had to be rolled and dragged by hand driven winch systems into place. These large rock walls were carefully placed in a dry rock wall style. At the falls itself, the National Park Service constructed stone steps utilizing a jack hammer to chisel steps and welded steel pipe railing to two vista points that give the visitor a true waterfall experience at Photographer’s Ledge and Artist Point.
“We hope to have our entrance fee dollars help pay for another Student Conservation Association trail crew in 2007,” said, Jim Milestone, Superintendent of Whiskeytown. We hope to make this trail a very popular hike for the people of Shasta County to show their friends visiting from out of town. Call the park’s Visitor Center for dates and times of future Ranger led hikes to the falls at (530) 246-1225.
