Sempervirens Fund
Sempervirens Fund is California’s oldest land trust. It began in 1900 as the Sempervirens Club, founded by Andrew P. Hill to save the old-growth redwoods that became Big Basin Redwoods State Park—the first California state park, created in 1902. The fund’s mission is to protect and permanently preserve coast redwood forests, wildlife habitat, watersheds, and other important natural features of California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, and to encourage people to enjoy this environment. It does this by buying land for protection and transferring it to state or local agencies, and by establishing conservation easements and trail linkages between parks and coastal preserves. By 2013, Sempervirens Fund had saved more than 34,000 acres of redwood lands.
The idea began when Hill photographed a giant redwood in 1899 and refused a grove owner’s demand to hand over his negatives. He returned to San Jose and launched a campaign to protect the Santa Cruz Mountains’ coast redwoods. With leaders from Stanford and other supporters, a surveying committee led by Hill and Carrie Stevens Walter formed, and they camped along Sempervirens Creek in what is now Big Basin. The Sempervirens Club was born to lobby for a public park at Big Basin, raising a small fund and beginning a long effort that culminated in 1901 with a bill from the California Legislature and, in 1902, the acquisition of 3,800 acres to create Big Basin Redwoods State Park—the first in the state park system.
The club continued to protect nearby lands and dreamed of a much larger park that would reach to the coast. By 1968, Big Basin was thriving but threatened by development in the Waddell Creek area. Local conservationists renewed the club’s charter, renamed it Sempervirens Fund, and worked to protect the entire Waddell Creek watershed and establish Castle Rock State Park. In 1976, the fund acquired Rancho del Oso at Waddell Beach to preserve the watershed and expand Big Basin. The fund’s largest project came in 2011 with the 8,532-acre CEMEX property near Davenport, done in partnership with the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County, The Nature Conservancy, Peninsula Open Space Trust, and Save the Redwoods League.
Today, Sempervirens Fund remains the only organization devoted exclusively to permanently protecting the coast redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Its long-term vision is a “Great Park”—a continuous area of protected lands spanning San Mateo, Santa Cruz, and Santa Clara Counties, connecting Big Basin, Butano, Portola Redwoods, Año Nuevo, Castle Rock, and other parks and preserves for habitat, watershed protection, and public recreation.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 07:41 (CET).