Trees of Mystery - Klamath, California

When I was a kid in the 1960’s, my grandparents spent the summer at the mouth of the Klamath River fishing for salmon. Dad got two weeks vacation and we would head up there with our Rainbow travel trailer.

Just after passing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco on U.S. 101, I would see these big yellow signs attached to the front bumpers of opposing traffic - “Trees of Mystery” and “Sea Lion Caves” - crowd-sourced advertising of the day. If an unsuspecting tourist stopped at one of these locations, an employee would wire the advertisement to the front of the vehicle, usually without notice, and these two enterprises received free advertising for hundreds of miles.

While we spent plenty of time in Northern California, we never went to the Trees of Mystery or Sea Lion Caves. Dad would never stop because it was just “a tourist trap.”

That changed in 2016 when we stopped at the Sea Lion Caves, and in 2019 when we visited the Trees of Mystery. Imagine my surprise when we found this:

Childhood memories began flooding back of this place of mystery - a place unknown to me except for the big, yellow cardboard advertisements on traffic coming the other way.

We found a huge Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe. Mr. Bunyan would carry on a conversation with guests as they were arriving. There was a beautiful Native American museum, and plenty of souvenirs. but the best part was that big, yellow, free piece of cardboard for the front bumper.