Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 March 1892 — California’s Big Trees. [ARTICLE]

California’s Big Trees.

If the groves of the Sequoia gigantea, the famous big trees of California, are to be preserved for another generation to see and wonder at, the national Government will have to act very soon. The ruthless destruction of these forest kings that is going on through the entire belt of the groves, wherever the Government has not already thrown its protecting hand, is beyond appreciation by any one who has not seen it. These trees grow nowhere in the world but along a certain well-defined belt of the we tern slope of the Sierra Nevadas, at an elevation of about 6,000 feet, where they are scattered in irregular groups, numbering perhaps a score, through a distunce of about two hundred miles. One would think that objects so unique, to say nothing of their beauty and grandeur and their marvellous age, would be safe from the hands of the lumberman, and particularly as sinco the mountain sides are covered thickly with forests that are just as valuable, for money-making purposes, as the sequoias. But the lumberman is nildevouring. Ho hasuttacked these few groves of giant trees as if his sole purpose in life was to exterminate them as quickly as possible. North of tho Yosemite Valley tho Calaveras grovo is untouched. Thirtyfive miles south of the valley is the Mariposa grove, which is included in the Yosemite grant, and is therefore safe. But the Fresno Flats grove, tho next one in the belt, is a scene of destruction.

It belongs to the California Lumber Company of San Jose. Their policy has been to slaughter the trees without regards to age or size, beauty or grandeur. This was once ono of tho most beautiful of tho groves, but to-day it is <• pitiful wreck. Giants of the forest, fiftoen, twenty, and thirty feet in diameter, lie on the ground in every direction. The largest trunks, those that are too large to be handled easily with the saw, have been shattered with blasting powder. Stumps of the trees six, ten, or a dozen feet high are all about, an army of witnesses to the malevolent avarice of ificn. Occasionally there is a mighty tree still standing, with a great gash, perhaps five feet deep, cut and sawed into one side. This grove has been almost annihilated. When the company cleans up tho trunks and limbs that now cover the ground its work of destruction will be just about completed. It has been engaged on this grove for a number of yeurs, and has turned its attention almost entirely to the sequoias. If the big tree lumber brought higher prices than any other sort, the zeal which is shown in the destruction of the groves could be understood. But it rates no higher in the market than the sugar pine, with which tho mountain slopes are densely covered. The lumber companies could havo made just as mnch money and been at no expense for blasting powder if they had let the big trees alone and turned to tho sugar pine. In the further south the same scene is repeated time nftor time. In that portion of the sequoia belt between the north and south boundaries of Tular county alone thore are at least ten mills, every ono of which is industriously working away at the big trees. Their owners evidently fear that the national Government will some day awakon to tho wisdom of throwing protection around these unique groves, and thoy are determined to get just as much money out of them as possible before that day comes. In the Fresno grove, which is on the line between Fresno and Tulare counties, the General Grant National Park preserves a few of tho big trees. It is only a square mile in extent, and does not include the whole of the grove. The rest of it is rapidly disappearing. A little to the southtust the Sequoia National Park includes tho North Kaweah and South Kaweah groves, which wore withdrawn from sale in time to save them from destruction. Through the remainder of tho groves one comes upon the same scene again and again. Everywhere axe, saw, and blasting powder are doing their detestable work with speed and thoroughness. —[New York Sun.