Save the Redwoods 



3 



rivers in majestic forests a distance of nearly seventy miles, the 

 continuity of this portion of the belt being but slightly broken 

 save by the deep canons. 



In these noble groves and forests to the southward of the 

 Calaveras Grove the axe and saw have long been busy, and 

 thousands of the finest Sequoias have been felled, blasted into 

 manageable dimensions, and sawed into lumber by methods de- 

 structive almost beyond belief, while fires have spread still 

 wider and more lamentable ruin. In the course of my explor- 

 ations twenty-five years ago, I found five sawmills located on 

 or near the lower margin of the Sequoia belt, all of which were 

 cutting more or less Big Tree lumber, which looks like the 

 redwood of the coast, and was sold as redwood. One of the 

 smallest of these mills in the season of 1874 sawed two million 

 feet of Sequoia lumber. Since that time other mills have been 

 built among the Sequoias, notably the large ones on Kings 

 River and the head of the Fresno. The destruction of these 

 grand trees is still going on. 



On the other hand, the Calaveras Grove for forty years has 

 been faithfully protected by Mr. Sperry, and with the excep- 

 tion of the two trees mentioned above is still in primeval beauty. 

 The Tuolumne and Merced groves near Yosemite, the Dinky 

 Creek grove, those of the General Grant National Park and 

 the Sequoia National Park, with several outstanding groves 

 that are nameless on the Kings, Kaweah, and Tule river basins, 

 and included in the Sierra forest reservation, have of late years 

 been partially protected by the Federal Government ; while the 

 well-known Mariposa Grove has long been guarded by the 

 State. 



For the thousands of acres of Sequoia forest outside of the 

 reservation and national parks, and in the hands of lumbermen, 

 no help is in sight. Probably more than three times as many 

 Sequoias as are contained in the whole Calaveras Grove have 

 been cut into lumber every year for the last twenty-six years 

 without let or hindrance, and with scarce a word of protest on 

 the part of the public, while at the first whisper of the bonding 

 of the Calaveras Grove to lumbermen most everybody rose in 

 alarm. This righteous and lively indignation on the part of Cal- 

 ifornians after the long period of deathlike apathy, in which 



