The late 19th century witnessed the beginnings of the national park idea. A young, newly-settled nation struggled to find a way to avoid deforesting her mountains and to avoid the seemingly inevitable plundering of her resources. The struggle surrounding such preservation attempts become evident as we detail the history of Sequoia National Park.
Guide to Sequoia
Early California
Following the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, Mexico ceded a large block of the southwest to the United States. With the discovery of gold less than a year later, it seemed the U.S. had hit the lottery. California quickly achieved statehood in 1850, and droves of settlers headed west to cash in. Everything was for sale.
Newly formed railways brought the masses into what would one day become America’s most populous state. These same railroads were also transporting extracted goods from resource-rich areas, such as the mountains of the Sierra, where abundant strands of timber stood, defenseless against the saw.
Board Feet Sequoias
The Sequoia tree was far from the best wood for lumber as it split apart too easily compared with its cousin the Coastal Redwood. Nevertheless, the trees were under attack, as there was simply a massive amount of board feet of usable lumber in each tree, and the growing population of the American West in the second half of the 19th century required lumber.
The massive trees soon became a spectacle and some were cut down simply to ship large pieces back east and to Europe to be shown in museums and at expositions during a time when tall tales of the western US were being spun to no end by land speculators and promoters.
In 1875, a San Fransisco entrepreneurial promoter named Martin Vivian felled a massive tree, whose modern-day remnant is now the well-known “Centennial Stump” in Grant’s Grove, in Kings Canyon. His purpose for cutting the tree was simply to ship a section of it back east, to be displayed at the Missouri State Fair and later at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, to celebrate the nation’s 100th birthday.
Flaws in the Law
John Muir happened to be in the grove at the time and witnessed the felling of the great tree. Although he and others were critical of the action, there was nothing they could do to stop the action. Although the California state legislature had passed a law in 1874 forbidding the cutting of any tree over 16 feet in diameter in this area, the law had a loophole, and Vivian found it.
As the law was written, anyone who was convicted of the crime of cutting one of the trees was to be fined. Vivian had already been convicted of cutting trees, and was indeed fined, however, the flawed statute forbade the retrying of a person for the same crime. Thus, upon paying a fine for his crime, Vivian was essentially able to return to the forest and cut away…
Although many were lining up to extract timber from the Sierra, the idea of preserving these forests was a simple matter-of-fact to some from early on.
Hale Dixon Tharp
The earliest European settler to see the heights of Sequoia was Hale Dixon Tharp, a miner who had came west during the gold rush. Soon, Tharp abandoned mining to become a cattleman and built a small shack near what is today, Three Rivers, at the southwest entrance to the park in 1856.
Tharp would come and go over the next few years, but with guidance from the local native Potwisha people, he would find his way into the upper regions of the mountains and is believed to be the first non-native person to climb Moro Rock and to visit what John Muir would later name the Giant Forest.
Tharp returned with his brother-in-law in 1858 and built a small cabin in the Giant Forest. He also constructed a small home in a giant fallen log that had been partially burnt out. Both of these structures can be visited in the Giant Forest today, and are listed on the US National Register of Historic Places as Cattle Cabin and Tharp’s Log, respectively.
Although he went on to graze cattle in the area, he was a vocal advocate for preservation of the forest and its trees. He often received visits from Muir at his hollowed out log home, which the renowned naturalist reportedly considered “a noble den”.
As the years passed and the scars of logging became more visible, many local residents became incensed and some began to take action.
George Stewart, editor of the Visalia Delta, a local newspaper, began to write editorials in the late 1870s dedicated to preserving the big trees and halting logging operations in the nearby forests. He was connected to a few influential people back in the nation’s capitol, and used his connections there to pitch the idea of preserving these trees through federal action.
Walter Fry
A few years later, a Midwestern fellow took a job as a logger in the forests of the Sierra, and his influence upon the park would one day be significant. Walter Fry’s logging career would not last long, but his life among the trees was just beginning in 1888, when he and team of men spent five days, felling a giant sequoia. Intrigued by the immense size of the tree, Fry sat down and began to count the rings. In a mere five days of work, the men had ended a life of 3,266 years.
Fry subsequently walked away from the axe, and when a petition began to circulate calling for the formation of a national park to protect these ancient trees, his was the third signature to be counted.
John Muir
John Muir was of course an active voice in the push for preservation, although at this point he was indeed a self-described “unknown nobody”. Born in Dunbar, Scotland, Muir had moved to Wisconsin with his family in 1849. His father was a strict Presbyterian minister and saw that young John learned Biblical scripture. By age 11, he was able to recite three-quarters of the Old Testament from memory, in addition to the entire New Testament.
After leaving his family farm, the energetic Muir studied botany and geology at the University of Wisconsin, and took a mundane factory job that worried him for a possible future of mediocrity. Upon recovery from a factory injury that left him temporarily blinded, Muir set out to live…
He headed first, on foot, to Florida where he became ill, likely suffering from Malaria. Somewhere along the way, he learned of a place in the western state of California that held a great valley, with massive surrounding mountains, great trees and rushing rivers. A place that was known as Yosemite…
Anywhere that is Wild
He thus set sail for San Fransisco and upon disembarking from the ship that gave him passage, he was asked where he would like to go. His response: “anywhere that is wild”.
He made his way directly to Yosemite and began to explore the Sierra Nevada mountains, soon finding his way to the southern end of the mountain range, and into what would one day become Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
Despite his relative invisibility at that point, Muir was in love with the mountains of the Sierra. He led nature hikes into the forests and mountains, detailing with great specificity individual plants, trees and insects, and would speak passionately for hours to anyone who would listen about the importance of protecting these magnificent areas.
The young naturalist wandered for days on end through the mountains, talking to trees, plants and rocks and pioneered an early route up the east face of Mount Whitney, the tallest of all peaks in the lower 48 and a mountain that lies some 70 miles east of the Giant Forest at a time before the High Sierra Trail connected the areas.
To Muir, this was all simply part of his submission to a greater power, or as he saw it, an “unconditional surrender” to nature. His respect of the Sequoia tree was obvious.
“God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fools.”
As Stewart, Fry and Muir were advocating federal protection for the forests, a group of utopian socialists in San Fransisco was eying the area as well.
The Kaweah Colony
The Kaweah Colony was founded by a group of labor activists who were seeking to form a communal organization that would apply the tenants of socialism in a cooperative colony in which workers would own and control the production and profit of their business.
Their business: logging… The group filed fifty-seven timber claims on nearly 12,000 acres of land in what would soon become Sequoia National Park. Some contend that it was never the goal of the colony to extract Sequoias, but other, smaller trees. The colonists had good knowledge of the area and knew its trees well, naming what we know today as the General Sherman Tree, the Karl Marx Tree. It is the subject of debate as to which name was first bestowed upon the massive tree, the largest in the world.
In 1886, Kaweah colonists formed a tent community just north of Three Rivers which had grown to as many as 300 people by 1887. They built the first road into what would become the park with approximately 30 men working mostly with picks and shovels along the North Fork of the Kaweah River. The road climbed over 5,000 feet and went 18 miles up into the forest and took nearly four years to complete and was an astounding feet. The road exists today, and the Colony Mill Trail, a hiking trail, takes the route past their old mill and up into the Giant Forest, passing just below Colony Peak.
The colonists completed their road in the summer of 1890, set up a small mill and began extracting lumber. They built a community center, a blacksmith shop, a store and a barn, among other small buildings and even published their own newspaper, the Kaweah Commonwealth.
The road meant that the colony could remove timber from the forest by horse and wagon, and transport it into the valley below to be sold without the use of railroad, thus eliminating a great expense. Unfortunately for the Kaweah Colony however, just as their roadwork was completed, the mountain area in which their claims were laid, was named a national park.
A National Park… & A Bonus?
The bill that created Sequoia National Park was signed by President Benjamin Harrison on September 25, 1890, thanks to a bill sponsored by House Representative for California’s 6th district, William Vandever.
Oddly, there was an expansion of the park, a mere week later. The bill to create Yosemite National Park was signed by Harrison on October 1st. The original Yosemite bill (H.R. 8350) was replaced by a substitute (H.R. 12187) that included provisions for the creation of General Grant National Park, as well as the expansion of Sequoia to include the acreage upon which the Kaweah Colony had filed their claims and had constructed their road.
Those Railroad Boys…
A few theories attempt to explain this and some claim that these lands were included in the expansion to essentially kill the Kaweah Colony, as a few historians contend that their independent logging efforts would have proved costly to the Southern Pacific Railroad, which owned a number of lumber interests and was the leader in transportation of these materials in the San Joaquin Valley.
Rep. Vandever’s connections to SPR attorney, Daniel Zumwalt, whose namesake meadow is found at Road’s End in Kings Canyon, add to the theories surrounding the mysterious enlargement of Sequoia so soon after it was designated.
How to Protect the Park?
Nevertheless, the nation now had a second national park, and with this came the responsibility of protecting it. The Kaweah Colony continued cutting trees in the park, and members were immediately arrested. Their dreams of a utopian community in the forest valleys of the Kaweah River were dashed with the stroke of a pen. Today, the only visible remnant of the colony within the park is the Squatter’s Cabin, built in 1886, which can be found in Huckleberry Meadow, near the Giant Forest.
The idea of national parks was new, and no one really knew what would become of these places or how to effectively protect them, as no real budget had been set forth to properly administer such a place. Soon, it became the task of the US Army to oversee the new park and to provide law and order in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada.
Captain Charles Young
In 1903 the 9th and 10th US Calvary regiments, African-American units that were commonly referred to as “Buffalo Soldiers” entered the scene under the command of a striking young black officer, Captain Charles Young.
Young was born into slavery in 1864 near Maysville, Kentucky, although his father escaped from slavery the following year, taking Young and his family across the Ohio River and settling in Ripley, Ohio, where Charles attended high school. In 1884, Young was accepted into The US Military Academy at West Point, becoming the institution’s third African-American graduate in 1889, commissioned as a second lieutenant.
After several appointments leading black units of the Army in Ohio, Nebraska and Utah Young received a promotion to the rank of Captain and was sent to San Fransisco. Two years later, in 1903 he was dispatched into Sequoia National Park and the nearby Grant’s Grove National Park (Kings Canyon) where he was appointed acting superintendent of the newly created parks, becoming the first African-American to hold that position.
Captain Young and the Buffalo Soldiers set to work continuing the road that was begun by the Kaweah Colonists, and within months the road led to the Giant Forest and around to Moro Rock, allowing wagons of visitors to reach the spectacular heights of Sequoia for the first time.
Today, Young’s service is remembered with the designation of his previous home as a national park service unit, at the Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument, near Wilberforce, Ohio. Here, Young lived and served as a professor of military science at Wilberforce University, a private, historically black university, where he worked alongside W. E. B. De Bois and other prominent black professors of the day.
With the completion of a road into the forested area that Muir had named the Giant Forest, Sequoia began to see visitors as never before.
Aiding in the efforts to complete this road was the logger turned conservationist, Walter Fry. He had taken a job as a road foreman in the park in 1901 and in 1905, became a park ranger. By 1910, he had worked his way up to Chief Ranger, administering the lands beside the Army superintendents assigned to the remote location.
The Park Idea Catching On
By 1914, the nation held 9 national parks. The idea of preserving wilderness for the sake of wilderness was catching on. Ideas were being floated for a National Park Service, a unit of the Department of the Interior, that would manage the burgeoning collection of parks.
The Army was relieved of its duties in that year, its tasks handed over to the civilian sector. The position of park superintendent had to be filled. Thus, in 1914, the man who had once helped fell a 3,266-year-old giant Sequoia, Walter Fry, was named the first superintendent of the nation’s second national park.
Fry would lead the park in this role for the next 6 years, during which time the NPS was created in 1916. Fry would remain in the Park Service through his retirement in 1930, forming the first Nature Guide Service in 1922, through which he shared his passion for the land with nature walks and countless hours spent speaking with the visiting public about the park.
With the road providing relatively easy access to this unique mountain forest, development came quickly in the Giant Forest, a lodge sprung up in 1915, and soon there were cabins and a gas station. Within 20 years, there were more than 400 structures in the area. The scientific impacts upon the natural forest were not positive, according to numerous studies in the 1920s that were ordered by Park Service Director Stephen Mather.
The General’s Highway was completed in June of 1935. It combined Sequoia and Grants Grove with a convenient winding road through heavy forest to bends with spectacular views and gave motorists the option of beginning a trip in one park and ending in the other.
A New Sister Park
1940 gave Sequoia a sister park, when Congress approved Kings Canyon National Park, which enlarged and replaced General Grant National Park. Due to the fact that the nation’s resources were being applied to the efforts of World War ll, managing duties of these adjacent lands were combined and the parks have remained co-managed to this day.
Over the course of the next few decades, the park would struggle with the question all popular destinations face that are committed to preserving the natural wonder of that land… how to protect a sacred place, yet provide the public access to its splendor.
These questions are still under debate today as our national parks receive record visitation and Sequoia and Kings Canyon are no exception.
Guide to Sequoia
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