Sue-meg State Park

Sue-meg is a square mile of forested headland north of Trinidad, and the name is the most important thing about it. On September 30, 2021 the California State Park and Recreation Commission voted unanimously to restore the Yurok name the place has carried since time immemorial, retiring Patrick's Point. It was the first park renamed under State Parks' Reexamining Our Past Initiative, done at the Yurok Tribe's request.

Sumêg Village sits near the visitor center — a reconstructed Yurok plank-house village built in 1990 by an all-Yurok crew. Sumêg means "forever." You can walk through it. Climbing the structures is not permitted, and the village is still used for ceremony.

The Rim Trail runs two miles along the bluff, once a path used by Native people, with four steep quarter-mile spurs dropping to the shore between Agate Beach and Palmer's Point. Wedding Rock is about a mile in. Ceremonial Rock rises 107 feet out of the meadow. Palmer's Point at the south end is the tidepooling spot, and where you'll hear sea lions on the offshore rocks.

Agate Beach is named for what washes up there; collecting is capped at 15 pounds per person per day.

The dog rule is the thing that catches visitors. Dogs are allowed in campgrounds, picnic areas and on paved roads only — not on beaches, not on trails. Trinidad State Beach a few miles south allows them everywhere, which makes the contrast confusing.

Three campgrounds hold about 120 sites plus four rustic cabins at Agate Beach. Day use is $8 a vehicle. Fog sits on this headland most mornings, much of the year.

Don't swim here. The park brochure says children shouldn't even wade.