November 26, 1890.] 



Garden and Forest. 



57i 



townships six miles square. Taking- the estimates of the 

 paper the amount of Sequoia forest in the reservation is 

 3,500 acres; the Government still owns 5,500 acres; the 

 Government holds 4, 500 acres which are otherwise claimed, 

 while 24,000 acres have passed from Government owner- 

 ship. The map also gives the boundaries of the Yosemite 

 Reservation as lately extended. The reason for such 

 extension, as may be plainly seen, is that it includes 

 the sources and courses of the streams which find their 

 way into the valley, and this will enable the Government 

 to protect these waters from being destroyed or diminished 

 or diverted to other use before they reach the valley. 



In the Standard Guide Book to the Pacific Coast, of a late 

 issue, we read this statement : " There are nine groves of 

 Big Trees in California ;" and in the descriptive sketch follow- 

 ing this remarkable statement we find three of the nine groves 

 mentioned as lying south of King's River, vaguely described 

 as : The King's River grove, the grove in the basin of North 

 Tule, and the grove in the basin of South Tule. There are in 

 the localities named as containing three no less than seven 

 distinct groves and forests of Big Trees, while in the enumera- 

 tion given there is no mention whatever by the author of the 

 several groves and forests of Middle Tule, Kern or Kaweah 

 Rivers, nor of the most southern grove, on Deer Creek ; in 

 short, the omissions comprise some twenty distinct Sequoia 

 groves and forests, aggregating an area of at least 25,000 acres. 

 Few, indeed, of the inhabitants of Tulare County, where most 

 of the forests are found, have any conception of the wide ex- 

 tent of their Sequoia possessions ; probably not one person in 

 500 knows of the existence even of Big Trees on the Kern 

 River slope, and many would dispute the fact — a fact I have 

 never seen referred to in print — and yet there are no less than 

 2,000 acres in that region, and some of it the most dense for- 

 est-growth of Sequoia gigantea known to man. And so with 

 other groves ; many of them are to the general public practi- 

 cally unknown and unexplored. 



It is my purpose in this paper to briefly mention what may 

 be termed the forests of Sequoia, and the neighboringgroves; 

 and in making the distinction between forests and groves it 

 will be necessary to draw a somewhat arbitrary line, and for 

 this purpose we will classify as forests all areas of 1,000 acres 

 or upward, and all below that as groves. According to this 

 distinction we can safely assume that all forests of Sequoia 

 gigantea are to be found to the south of King's River, and 

 nearly all of them in Tulare County ; and, with mere mention 

 of the better known northern groves — the Calaveras, South 

 Park, Tuolumne, Merced, Mariposa, Fresno and Washington 

 — we will therefore confine our sketch to a description of this 

 region only. 



The first, going southward, and probably the largest com- 

 pact body of all, is the Converse Basin Forest on the south 

 slope of the South Fork of King's River, in Fresno County. 

 The area of this tract is about 5,000 acres. These figures can 

 at best be but an approximation. For most part the Sequoia 

 country is so broken, and the variation of density of growth 

 so great, and the limits so vaguely defined, that an exact esti- 

 mation is almost impossible ; besides, it is likely to be mis- 

 leading from the fact that it represents, in some instances, 

 what might be called a heavy continuous growth, while in 

 others it is more or less broken and scattering. In nearly all 

 cases there is found mixed with the Sequoia a plentiful growth 

 of other timber, principally Yellow and Sugar Pine {Pinus ftou- 

 derosa and Pinus Lambertiana), with a sprinkling here and 

 there of Fir, Cedar and other trees. However, I have aimed 

 everywhere to keep my estimates of areas well within bounds. 

 This first forest, together with the one next in order, are owned 

 by one of the leading lumber firms of California. And they 

 are about to celebrate at Sanger the completion of their forty- 

 mile lumber flume connecting their capacious mills in the 

 mountains with the railroad on the plains. They propose to 

 clean up everything as they go along, stripping the land 

 bare, and moving their mills and extending their flume from 

 point to point as the timber supply becomes exhausted. It 

 will probably take years for them to reach the Boulder Creek 

 Forest, so named from the affluent of King's River, on whose 

 slopes it is found. The area of this forest and neighboring 

 groves cannot be less than 1,500 acres, probably more. These 

 two already mentioned lie together on the waters of King's 

 River, in Fresno County, but the forest next to the south, the 

 Fresno Big Tree Forest, is on the divide between the waters 

 of King's and Kaweah Rivers, partly in Fresno and partly in 

 Tulare Counties. Its original area cannot be computed at less 

 than 2,000 or 3,000 acres, but so much of it has been stripped 



of its timber that its limits are hard to determine. Here have 

 been the principal milling operations in Sequoia for the past 

 twenty years. Four sections ot it, containing what is known 

 as the " Fresno Big Trees," have already been reserved by the 

 United States Government, it being the only reservation ever 

 made in these southern forests for the purpose of saving the 

 Sequoia. This is the reservation recently confirmed by the 

 Honorable Secretary of the Interior, and containing the famous 

 Big Tree known as " General Grant," said to be forty feet in 

 diameter. 



Passing on to the west side of Township 14, Range 28, we 

 find along Redwood Creek a forest of some 3,000 acres. 

 This most magnificent growth has also passed from the 

 possession of the Government to private ownership. Far- 

 ther south, we next come to a forest on the North Fork of 

 the Kaweah River, where there are upward of 1,500 acres of 

 Big Tree forest still owned by the Government. The whole 

 township is timbered and well worth preserving, aside from 

 the Sequoia. 



A few miles southward brings us to the Giant Forest, which, 

 although still in the hands of the Government, is claimed by 

 individual locators, by reason of their locations having been 

 made in good faith and filed previous to the withdrawal from 

 entry of these townships, as explained hereafter. It is gener- 

 ally thought that they will substantiate their claims and acquire 

 the land, and public sentiment seems to favor it. Passing to 

 the Middle Fork of Kaweah River, we find several groves, 

 some of which are still in the hands of the Government, but 

 there exists on this branch no Sequoia tract that could prop- 

 erly be called a forest. 



Southward, on the East Fork of the Kaweah River, we come 

 to what is designated as the Mineral King Forest, from a min- 

 ing district of that name, comprising, with the detached groves, 

 some 3,000 acres ; the main body is in Township 17, Range 

 30, the township whose recent restoration to entry gave rise 

 to the movement culminating in the Vandever Sequoia Park 

 Bill, lately passed in the lower house of Congress. In Decem- 

 ber, 1885, Commissioner Sparks, of the General Land Office, 

 withdrew from entry eighteen certain townships, of which this 

 was one. The reason for this suspension was the alleged 

 fraudulent character of the surveys. We need not consider 

 the condition of these surveys ; but, from the character of the 

 country, it would seem that the subdivision lines could be 

 more readily run with a ruling pen than with chain and transit; 

 and at that time the compensation for either system of survey 

 was supposed to be the same. But one thing is certain — on 

 many of the Government plats you will search in vain for any 

 trace of Sequoia growth, even where the alleged lines run 

 through sections now known to be heavily timbered with the 

 Mountain Redwood. It is to this fact largely, no doubt, that 

 the very existence of certain Sequoia forests has so long re- 

 mained unknown to the public. 



The fact that several of the suspended townships contained 

 Big Trees had nothing whatever to do, so far as we know, with 

 influencing the act of the Commissioner. But Commissioner 

 Sparks " builded better than he knew," and the ultimate out- 

 come of his order of withdrawal has been to preserve, in the 

 Government's undisputed possession, several forests of these 

 Big Trees that would otherwise have gone the way of all the 

 rest into the hands of speculators and lumbermen. Thus the 

 matter remained in statu quo till the opening of the present 

 year, the friends of Sequoia preservation resting easy in the 

 fancied security of their position, inasmuch as the Department 

 had expressly declared its policy not to restore to entry these 

 lands in advance of an official examination. At the opening 

 of the present year, parties interested in acquiring timber 

 by some means secured the release of the suspension of 

 Township 17, Range 30. It was restored to entry on May 

 23d, and in less than six weeks the entire Mineral King Forest 

 was filed on by timber-land claimants, and the tract effectually 

 cleaned up. While thus the greed for Big Tree timber was 

 developing the supply was growing short, and the attention 

 of timber prospectors was turned to other forests, and it was 

 found that in the next township to the south there was a forest 

 practically unexplored that offered the best field for their next 

 work. The same measures that had proved so successful 

 in opening up Township 17, Range 30, were forthwith set to 

 work to secure this more valuable prize. At this juncture 

 a few citizens of Tulare County took steps to thwart the 

 attempted spoliation of the Sequoia forests. As the forest 

 in Township iS, Range 30, was the one the timber men 

 most wanted, the inference was reasonable that it was the 

 best of all for the Government to keep. The ultimate out- 

 come of its opposition has been the Vandever Bill, embracing 

 in the proposed reservation two townships and four sections 



