LITTLE BASIN — In simpler times, families slept in cabins here. They roasted marshmallows under the stars, bobbed for apples and shared in the camaraderie of each other’s company, brought together by one of Silicon Valley’s pioneering companies.

But now Little Basin is a blackened landscape of twisted metal, charred redwood trees and piles of ash.

The 535-acre property eight miles east of Boulder Creek near Big Basin Redwoods State Park was destroyed by the wildfires that have devastated the Santa Cruz Mountains over the past two weeks.

The property was purchased by legendary Hewlett Packard co-founders William Hewlett and David Packard in 1963 as a retreat for their employees. A source of countless memories over the 44 years that followed, Little Basin became the summer camp of the storied “HP Way” of early Silicon Valley, where company picnics, camp outs and jamborees led employees to feel they were as much a part of a family as workers in a corporation.

“We had some great times up there as a family,” said Gary Ruppel, 79, of Palo Alto. “I remember Bill and Dave vividly. They really loved to serve steaks and hamburgers off the grill. They never got tired. They would keep serving until there was nobody in line. They played softball with us. They sat in the dunking booth.”

Packard’s daughter, Julie, the executive director of the Monterey Aquarium, remembers the timeless landscape.

“I went up there with my dad for company events a few times,” she said. “It was a beautiful setting in the redwoods, cool and restful. The kids would hunt for pennies in a big pile of sawdust for fun. My biggest memory was a huge stand of native Western Azaleas blooming in the picnic area when we went up there. The aroma knocked you out.”

After David Packard died at age 83 in 1996, Hewlett followed at age 87 five years later, and the company merged with Compaq, a Texas-based computer maker. The new HP put Little Basin up for sale. Two environmental groups, the Peninsula Open Space Trust in Palo Alto and the Sempervirens Fund in Los Altos, bought the land for a bargain price of $4 million. They created a fund to upgrade its facilities, and sold the property to the state parks department in 2011.

It was added to Big Basin state park, connected along a 2-mile trail, and opened to the public. Over the past decade, a new generation of families experienced its rustic charms.

But Little Basin’s 38 tent spaces and 12 wood cabins — built by Hewlett Packard employees in the 1960s — are gone now. So is the recreation hall, the camp headquarters, dining pavilion, restrooms and amphitheater.

“Everything got evacuated last Tuesday. Our campground was full,” said Donna Doran, vice president for Basecamp Hospitality, the Red Bluff company that operates Little Basin’s campground. “You couldn’t see flames but there was a lot of smoke. The rangers from Big Basin told people to get out fast.”

A Bay Area News Group reporter and photographer who hiked Wednesday afternoon into the blackened area off State Route 236 past fallen trees, burned cars, ruined homes and downed power lines saw a near-complete loss.

Of Little Basin’s buildings, which included a maintenance center where the husks of small tractors and riding mowers lay amid the rubble, nothing was left standing but the broad, tall brick chimney of the recreation hall. Every cabin burned to the ground.

The big redwood trees around the ruins of the recreation hall — its wreckage full of blistered and bent metal picnic tables — were particularly hard hit, completely blackened, with their foliage torched to the crowns.

Across a wide field, in the middle of which the American flag flew unburned on a metal pole, a giant redwood tree was fire-blasted and missing its top 20 feet, a similar fate suffered by many of the huge redwoods near Big Basin park headquarters a few miles downhill. At the edge of a field, a singed coyote limped away upon catching sight of people. One Stellar’s jay flew from tree to tree, but for the most part, Little Basin’s diverse wildlife was absent.

While the forest in and around the camp presented a picture of blackened, ashy desolation, a few patches escaped the flames. The fenced softball field was undamaged, its grass still green. A sand volleyball court appeared pristine, except for the melted net hanging across it. Also undamaged was the boulder near the mess hall that contains the ground-out depressions left by the region’s first inhabitants, the Ohlone, who pulverized oak acorns here to make flour and meal.

California State Parks environmental scientist Tim Hyland said Wednesday evening as he left the area that the camp’s fiery demise is a “human tragedy,” but the forest will likely end up better off. Even most of the deeply charred redwoods should survive, he said, with all but the smallest capable of withstanding a fire that in Little Basin appeared to be “pretty intense.”

The redwoods, the oaks, the madrones, manzanita and ceanothus shrubs with their aromatic purple-blue blossoms all will benefit, Hyland said.

“The forest is adjusted to fire,” he said. “And high-intensity fire is nothing that it hasn’t seen before. The forest will be back.”

When, or if, the cabins and other lost buildings will return is unknown. Doran said company officials still have not seen the extent of the damage, but expect the worst.

“We’re heartsick about the history that’s been lost,” she said. “We believe most of the redwoods will survive. But we’re all ready to take the challenge and rebuild. It will never be what it was, but maybe it can be better.”

BOULDER CREEK, CA – AUGUST 26: A stand of scorched redwoods rises up from a meadow in Little Basin Campground in Big Basin State Park, Wednesday, Aug., 26, 2020, after being burned during the CZU Complex fire near Boulder Creek, Calif. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group