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Jug Handle Trail: Location 13

This fence marks an old property line. Both sides are now part of the state reserve, but in the past the west side was a family farm while to the east was a lumber company's harvest area. The forest was logged around 1961, it is not a good place to observe plant succession - the orderly natural process by which plant communities are replaced by others. Here, as the distrubed land grows back to forest, some of the sun-loving shrubs like ceanothus (blue blossom) and manzanita, which grew rapidly when the trees were cut, are now dying because the young pines have grown tall enough to shade them out - a typical step in plant succession. Imagine a logging truck trying to drive the path you will be walking along, which is an old logging road, and you will have an idea of how the forest is recovering.