California
Three miles of scenic Northern California coastline preserved in major redwoods deal
Before the Gold Rush changed California forever, and before California became a state, Fort Ross was a windswept outpost where Russian settlers and fur traders built a rugged community along the Sonoma Coast from 1812 to 1841.
On Thursday, a Bay Area environmental group announced the latest chapter at the venerable landscape: a $15 million deal to purchase 1,624 acres of redwoods and picturesque coastal meadows adjacent to what is now Fort Ross State Historic Park, expanding the protected lands around the site by 50%.
The redwoods property, larger than Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, includes 3.2 miles along Highway 1 that could have been developed into luxury homes.
Every year thousands of tourists, schoolchildren and others visit the historic wooden buildings at Fort Ross, and the purchase by the non-profit group Save the Redwoods League from Soper Wheeler timber company guarantees that rural part of the North Bay coast will remain as scenic open space, looking for generations to come much the same as it did 200 years ago.
“This property feels like the very best of California,” said Sam Hodder, president of Save the Redwoods League. “It’s true California coastline. It has spectacular redwood groves, sweeping vistas of the Pacific shoreline, and classic coastal bluffs with fingers of redwood forests coming up the drainages. It is just a stunning landscape.”
Save the Redwoods League, founded in 1918, has protected more than 220,000 acres of redwood and sequoia forests over the last century. By buying land and development rights from willing sellers, it has expanded 66 state, national and local parks around California, including Redwood National Park and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, along with Big Basin, Calaveras Big Trees, Del Norte, Emerald Bay, Grizzly Creek, Año Nuevo, Henry Cowell, Prairie Creek, Pfeiffer Big Sur, Jedediah Smith and other landmark state parks.

In 1989, the league purchased 2,157 acres adjacent to Fort Ross and sold it to California’s state parks department below the appraised price, expanding Fort Ross state park to 3,393 acres.
Hodder said the organization has been in discussion with state parks officials, along with Sonoma County parks officials, about selling the property in the coming years to allow public access and expanded recreation along the California Coastal Trail through the area.
The administrations of former Gov Jerry Brown and Gov. Gavin Newsom have resisted expanding the state parks system, citing budget constraints. Their two administrations have established only one new state park since 2009, Dos Rios State Park, which opened in June, and is 8 miles west of Modesto near the confluence of the San Joaquin and Tuolumne rivers.
“We’re trying to map out the strongest possible conservation outcome,” Hodder said of the newly purchased Sonoma Coast property. “It would be a terrific addition to Fort Ross state park.”
That may depend, he said, on voters passing Proposition 4, a $10 billion climate bond on the November state ballot that contains funding for parkland acquisition.
The property, inhabited for generations by the Kashia Band of Pomo Indians, is believed to be the first in California where redwoods were logged by Europeans, when crews working for John Sutter, the pioneer who purchased Fort Ross in the 1840s area after the Russian outpost declined.
It has some of the largest second-growth redwoods in California, towering 220 feet or more, along with several remaining old-growth redwoods estimated to be at least 1,000 years old.
Since 1980, it has been owned by Soper Wheeler timber company. Founded in 1904 and based in Nevada City, the company has been selling off its land holdings in recent years, said Aric Starck, executive chairman of its board.

It is owned by about 90 shareholders around the country, many of whom are direct descendants of founders James P. Soper Jr. and Nelson P. Wheeler. With California’s tough environmental rules and competition from other large timber companies, the shareholders decided it was time to move on, he said.
The company has sold much of its roughly 200,000 acres to Sierra Pacific and other timber companies. It is looking to sell 16,000 acres in other parts of Sonoma County, in Bonny Doon in the Santa Cruz Mountains and in other areas, Starck said.
“This property is a marquee piece,” Starck said. “It’s timberlands and beautiful coastal land. It would be great if it went to state parks and had a public use. That would be a fabulous outcome.”
Three years ago, the company sold 3,181 acres of rugged coastal redwoods along the Lost Coast in Humboldt County to Save the Redwoods League for $36.9 million.
“We’ve always practiced sustainable forestry,” Starck said. “We love what Save the Redwoods League is doing.”
Some of the Sonoma County property burned in 2020 during a wildfire. But much of the damage was moderate, and the forests already are recovering, Hodder and Starck said. The company planted 105,000 redwood seedlings on it over the past several years, working with Save the Redwoods League.
Caryl Hart, a Sebastopol resident and chairwoman of the California Coastal Commission, said she also would like to see the land added to Fort Ross State Historic Park.
“It’s a fantastic deal,” said Hart, a former director of Sonoma County Regional Parks. “It’s exactly what we should be doing — protecting these coastal areas that have been owned by timber companies and providing access eventually to the public. It’s a big deal. The preservation of this land is so important.”

California
Northern California’s House of Clocks has stood the test of time for 55 years
While we may lose an hour of sleep this coming weekend, one clock store in California is gearing up for one of its busiest times of the year: daylight savings.
It’s the House of Clocks, the largest clock company in Northern California, which was recently celebrating 55 years of business.
It’s a place frozen in time. Just visit the store’s 240-year-old grandfather clock. It’s got plenty of stories to tell, dating back to 1780.
“This is the oldest piece we have right now,” clocksmith Joey Hohn said.
The House of Clocks is on the outskirts of Downtown Lodi in San Joaquin County.
“We have new, we have vintage, we have antique,” co-owner Sandy Hohn shared. “Honestly, it feels like not a day goes by that we don’t get a phone call or an email of somebody wanting to sell something for 100 different reasons.”
The clock store has been with the Hohn family for three generations. It’s all thanks to one family heirloom.
“When the first war started, [my grandparents] left everything and had to move,” Joey Hohn explained. “After the Second World War, my grandpa was stationed in Germany. They went back to the house that had been abandoned and the neighbor who they left the property to said, ‘As far as I’m concerned, everything in the house is still yours.’ They went back and got this, so this is my great-great-grandparents’ clock.”
You can find just about anything in the House of Clocks, from old grandfather clocks to clocks that can fit in the palm of your hand.
What you can’t find anywhere else is the Hohns’ love for Lodi.
“We’ve made so many friends over the years out of customers,” Sandy Hohn said. “Friends that are just wonderful, that love collecting, and we keep them repaired for their families, which is awesome. They have sentimental value that’s passed down.”
That same love for the city and their community runs in the family.
“We had a customer that wanted to repaint their dial,” Joey Hohn explained. “We told them no because it was her father’s who had passed away. Every time he went to wind the clock, he placed his thumb in the same spot. When we told her that smudge there on the dial was her father, she said, ‘Back away, don’t you dare.’ It was just a good memory we have.”
While you can’t turn back time, what we can do is keep memories alive and treasure the present moment.
“There’s so many personalities,” Sandy Hohn said. “We just try to find a good home for them.”
California
Signs of spring blooming at Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve after wet, warm winter
It’s beginning to look a lot like spring!
The warm and wet weather this winter has led to the start of a dazzling super bloom at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve.
“We had an unseasonably warm winter as well, so there’s actually a lot of growth,” said Callista Turney with California State Parks. “We’re having early wildflowers that are already at the park. So if you look at the poppy live cam, it shows a lot of orange already.”
The rain has helped the early blooms, but it’s actually the heat that accelerated the growth of the flowers.
“It will actually speed up the growth of the plants, so some of them were already blooming and that’s going to cause those blossoms to accelerate faster towards seed production. And the blossoms that are in the process of being formed, those are going to open up soon as well.”
We also sometimes see great super blooms in Death Valley National Park, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Joshua Tree and the Mojave National Preserve.
“It’s definitely a rare occurrence because we don’t always have the right conditions. It’s gotta be the weather, the wind, the rain, all coming together,” said Katie Tilford, Director of Development and Communications with the Theodore Payne Foundation.
If it continues to stay unseasonably warm, we’ll see a shorter bloom. The key to a longer season is milder weather.
Copyright © 2026 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.
California
Republican governor candidate Chad Bianco says he’s the ‘antithesis to California state government’
We are counting down to the California governor’s race. Chad Bianco, the sheriff of Riverside County, is one of the two biggest names running on the Republican ticket.
In a one-on-one interview with Eyewitness News political reporter Josh Haskell, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said, “I am the antithesis to California state government because I am going to take a nuclear bomb into that building and absolutely destroy everything that they do to us behind closed doors.”
Although he’s been elected by the voters twice, Bianco says he’s not a politician — which is why he believes his campaign for California governor is resonating, as reflected in the polls.
“President Trump, in one year, from 2025 when he took over, until now, did absolutely nothing to harm California. What’s harming California is 30 years of Democrat one-party rule that have created an environment here that no one can live in anymore. They’ve only been successful here in California because we vote D no matter what. You vote D or die. I mean, that’s it. Charles Manson would be elected in California if he was the only Democrat on the ballot,” Bianco said.
Bianco isn’t the only conservative Republican running for governor, and according to polling, he’s neck-and-neck with former Fox News host Steve Hilton.
SEE ALSO: CA governor candidate Steve Hilton says ‘everybody supports’ Trump’s immigration policies
Leading in some polls in the wide-open California Governor’s race as the June primary creeps closer is Republican and former Fox News host Steve Hilton.
“Steve has no chance of winning in November. The Democrats know that I’m going to win in November, and so they have to do everything they can to keep me out of that,” Bianco said.
When asked about the affordability crisis in the state, Bianco said, “Almost the entire issue of affordability in California is because of regulation, excessive regulation imposed by government. Every single regulation can be signed away with the governor’s signature.”
“It is a drug and alcohol addiction problem that, and a mental health problem,” he said about the homelessness crisis. “Every single bit of money that is going to these nonprofits that say ‘homeless,’ zero money. You’re getting absolutely nothing. I can’t tell you that we would end what we see in the homeless situation within a year, but I guarantee you we would never see it again after two years.”
When challenged on that prediction, pointing to how the state doesn’t have the facilities to treat the number of people living on our streets, Bianco responded, “We have been conditioned to believe that buildings take five years to build. It takes 90 days or less to build a house, but in California, it takes three to five years because the government won’t allow it. The regulations that are destroying this state are going to be removed with me as the governor.”
Bianco also said California jails shouldn’t have to play the role of treatment facilities.
Although he says he supports the Trump administration and wants the president’s endorsement, Bianco has been traveling the state — meeting not just with Republicans, but Democrats and independents as well. He says all of our state government officials have failed.
The primary election is June 2.
No clear front-runner in race for California governor, new poll shows
A new poll shows there’s still no clear front-runner in the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Copyright © 2026 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.
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