FORESTRY AMONG THE GIANTS 



645 



that he knows of at least two 

 other trees cut in that vicin- 

 ity which were between 21 

 and 2.2 feet in diameter. Ac- 

 cording to Mr. Clar the larg- 

 est tree now standing in So- 

 noma County is located on 

 what is known as Eagle 

 Nest Flat, about four miles 

 from Guerneville. He says 

 that about twenty years ago 

 he assisted a member of the 

 faculty of the University of 

 California to measure the 

 tree. According to those 

 measurements, of which he 

 kept a copy, the tree was 357 

 feet high and 20 feet in di- 

 ameter. The bole is not sym- 

 metrical but measured 22 

 feet in one direction and 18 

 feet in the other. The tree 



was at that time perfectly healthy but started to die at 

 the top about 1910. It is still alive except for the upper 

 half of the crown and will probably live for many years. 

 Adjacent to it is another old tree from which the flat 

 takes its naime. The earliest settlers on the Russian 

 River remarked a large nest in its top in which a pair 

 of ospreys, or fish eagles, annually reared their brood. 

 About 1890 during logging operations a neighboring 

 tree struck it in falling, demolishing the nest and break- 

 ing ofif thirty feet of the top of the tree. The eagles 

 built the nest up again the following year and used it 

 undisturbed until April, 1906, when the earthquake shook 

 the tree so hard that the nest was shaken to pieces. Again 

 the eagles built it up and today the Eagle nest tree and 

 its stag-headed companion are familiar landmarks to all 

 who go up and down the Russian River. 





REDWOOD CUT-OVER LAND ABOUT A YEAR AFTER THE REMOVAL OF LOGS. CLUMPS 

 OF SPROUTS ARE COMING UP AROUND THE OLD STUMPS BUT ARE TOO FAR APART TO 

 PRODUCE CLEAR LUMBER. PLANTING EXPERIMENTS ARE BEING CARRIED ON WITHIN 

 THE AREA SHOWN. 



Stories of remarkable yields per acre are told a'bout 

 various sections of the redwood region and records close 

 to or slightly in excess of one million board feet are 

 quoted. The Pacific Lumber Company scaled an acre 

 near Dyarville about a year ago which exceeded a mil- 

 lion feet and there were probably many similar acres 

 cut in the early days. One of the most interesting rec- 

 ords of this kind is vouched for by John Armstrong, of 

 Guernevi'.le who scaled timber at various points along 

 the coast in the eighties. I have the story through Mr. 

 I. M. Clar, mentioned above. It seems that about 1885 

 Armstrong was scaling for Mr. George Guerne who 

 owned and was logging a particularly fine redwood flat 

 about a mile from what is now Guerneville. Mr. Guerne 

 had an argument with one of his friends as to whether 

 the timber would run more or less than 750,000 feet 

 per acre. Finally a wager was made, the loser to pay 



for a champagne supper at 

 the famous old Poodle Dog 

 Restaurant in San Francisco, 

 and Armstrong was instruct- 

 ed to carefully measure off 

 an acre and scale the logs 

 which were cut from it. This 

 he did, following the practice 

 in those days of scaling each 

 log inside the sap wood 

 which was not considered of 

 any value. He says that the 

 total scale for this acre was 

 1,287,000 board feet and he 

 believes it to have been the 

 heaviest stand of timber any- 

 where on the Pacific Coast. 

 The record is apparently au- 

 thentic and when one consid- 

 ers that this is a log scale 

 and not a stump scale the fig- 

 ure is still more astonishing. 



DOUGLAS FIR SEED TREES LEFT ALONG THE TOP OF A RIDGE IN MENDOCINO COUNTY 

 IN AN ATTEMPT TO GET NATURAL REPRODUCTION OF THIS SPECIES BETWEEN THE 

 CLUMPS OF REDWOOD SPROUTS. THESE TREES AVERAGE OVER 2 FEET IN DIAMETER 

 AND HAVE SUCCESSFULLY SURVIVED THE LOGGING FIRE AND SEVERE WINDS OF 

 THEIR FIRST WINTER OF ISOLATION. 



