12 



GEOLOGIC GUIDEBOOK ALONG HIGHWAY 49 



[Bull. 141 



Accounts of that terrible mountain tragedy did nothing to turn 

 aside the flood of western expansion which was now gaining rapidly in 

 volume. And so it was that considerably before the hordes of Argonauts 

 arrived to spread over the foothills like a swarm of locusts, scattered 

 Americans were at home in the region. Americans had looked with 

 wonder into the great canyons of most of the Sierran rivers and had 

 discovered many of the distinctive features that set the western slope 

 of the Sierra Nevada apart from all the rest of the world. 



They had discovered some of the groups of giant sequoias, the most 

 massive as well as the most magnificent trees in existence. Oldest of all 

 living things, they have grown in their isolated groups for as many as 

 three thousand years. Some of them have attained a height of three 

 hundred feet, and the trunks of the biggest specimens are as much as 

 thirty-five feet in diameter. Thirty-two separate groves of these forest 

 giants are scattered between Tulare and Placer Counties. Although fossil 

 remains indicate that in long past ages they inhabited much of the 

 northern hemisphere, this western flank of the Sierra is the only place 

 in the world that they exist today. 



A century ago the discoverer of a group of these survivors of a 



vanished age could not know how rare a find he had made. He had seen 

 that many of the natural features of California were on a huge scale 

 and here was another. But today's traveler in the Mother Lode Country, 

 knowing the extreme antiquity of the ftequoia giyantea, which is even 

 more astonishing than its size and beauty, will certainly wish to visit 

 one or another of the groves. Calaveras Big Trees State Park, northern- 

 most of the larger groves, is easily accessible from the Mother Lode High- 

 way. At Angels Camp, Highway 4 offers a direct route through Murphys, 

 one of the best preserved of the old mining towns. Twenty miles northeast 

 of Murphys the grove lies south of the road close to the North Fork of 

 the Stanislaus River. At any season it is a memorable sight. In spring 

 when the sturdy lower growth of dogwood is in blossom it is incredibly 

 beautiful. 



And this is only one of the dozens of byways that tempt the traveler 

 to turn aside for a time from the pleasant winding artery of the Sierran 

 Gold Belt and explore more deeply into the foothill and mountain coun- 

 try. Every branching road and trail offers some scene of natural beauty, 

 some landmark of historical significance, some relic of the colorful past 

 or evidence of the manifold activity of todav. 



FKI. 1. Old covered In-idce :n Bridgeport spmminj; the North Fork of 

 the Yuha Kiver. Still iji us* 1 . 1'hot'i by Olfif /'. Jenkins. 



FIG. '2. Winter view from Sierra City on Highway 4!> toward the pre- 

 tertiary divide. Phiita liil Olnf /'. Jenkins. 



