96 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



of the drenched western slopes of the Cascades and 

 the Sierra. It is Washington, Oregon, and Cali- 

 fornia which carry the world's honors in great trees. 



The giant tree of the northwestern states is the 

 Douglas fir, second in grandeur only to the two se- 

 quoias of California, rising frequently to 180 feet or 

 more with trunk diameters as much as ten feet. The 

 western white pine, while rarely more than a hun- 

 dred and twenty-five feet high in the Rockies, is 

 twice that on the Pacific slope, with some occasion- 

 ally scoring as high as 275 feet in stature with trunk 

 diameters of five or six feet. Western red fir occa- 

 sionally reaches two hundred feet, with trunks six 

 feet thick. Western red cedar averages nearly as 

 lofty a stature, with trunk diameters of eight, twelve 

 and sometimes even sixteen feet at the swollen base. 

 Incense cedar attains a hundred and a quarter feet, 

 occasionally more, Engelmann spruce a hundred feet 

 on high mountain slopes, western hemlock a hundred 

 and seventy-five feet with occasional giants, sugar 

 pine a hundred and eighty feet and sometimes more, 

 with diameters sometimes as great as seven feet, 

 giant sequoias two hundred and eighty to three hun- 

 dred and thirty feet, with diameters up to twenty- 

 eight feet well above the ground, and redwood two 

 hundred and fifty to three hundred feet with occa- 

 sional examples even higher and diameters of six to 

 twelve feet, occasionally more. 



These dimensions are desirable in order to em- 

 phasize the gigantic character of the western forest 



