Big Basin became California's first state park in 1902, after a two-year campaign by the Sempervirens Club, formed in the basin in 1900 to stop the last old-growth redwoods from being logged. This tells that origin story, from a photographer who wouldn't hand over his negatives to the thirty-two dollars that started it, and how Boulder Creek has been the gateway ever since.

Boulder Creek's story runs in three chapters: scattered sawmill settlements in the 1860s and 1870s, a rail-served lumber boomtown from 1885 to about 1915, and the quieter mountain town and Big Basin gateway it's been since. This short history moves through all three, from the valley's first people and a settlement called Lorenzo to the CZU fire and recovery, and where the town stands today.

Boulder Creek is known as the gateway to Big Basin, a former lumber boomtown and railroad terminus, a silent-film location, and a town that voted to stop being a city.

A dated timeline of Boulder Creek, California: sawmills, the flume, the railroad, Big Basin, the film era, cityhood and its end, floods, fire and recovery.

Who's actually from Boulder Creek? A sourced directory separating people raised here, former residents, working visitors, and claims that don't hold up.

A sourced database of films, shorts and music videos shot in Boulder Creek and Big Basin, from 1914 silent westerns to Vertigo to a Rachel Platten video.

In 1915 a film company built a 25-building fake gold-rush town outside Boulder Creek. At least eight silent films were shot there. Then it vanished.

Beatriz Michelena was one of the first Latina stars of American film. In 1915 she co-built a 25-building movie set outside Boulder Creek and made films there.

In 1917 Cecil B. DeMille brought Mary Pickford to Boulder Creek to shoot A Romance of the Redwoods on the Poverty Flat set. The film still survives.