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    Calaveras Big Trees
    Calaveras Big Trees
    Calaveras Big Trees
    Ebook194 pages53 minutes

    Calaveras Big Trees

    By Carol Kramer and Calaveras Big Trees Association

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    About this ebook

    For decades, Caldwell County has been known as the Furniture Center of the South. However, the history of Caldwell goes beyond the miles of furniture retailers and successful manufacturers, back to a time when Caldwell, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, was on the frontier of America. The story of Caldwell County includes pioneer forts perched on the edge of a vast wilderness; Confederate soldiers struggling in America's most famous battle, Gettysburg; logging companies and growing railroads; the remarkable furniture industry that has employed generations of residents; and the world-renowned Lenoir High School Band. The images within this book-of explorers and settlers, homes and schools, church functions and family gatherings, the famous and ordinary, and the beautiful and industrious-help tell the story of Caldwell County, her people, and her place within the history and culture of North Carolina and the United States.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439625224
    Calaveras Big Trees
    Author

    Carol Kramer

    The park’s colorful history springs to life in these pages by writer Carol A. Kramer and the nonprofit Calaveras Big Trees Association. Images from the archives of Calaveras Big Trees State Park, the Calaveras County Archives, the Old Timer’s Museum, the Calaveras County Historical Society, and the Society of California Pioneers showcase the rich history of this treasure of California’s state park system.

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      Book preview

      Calaveras Big Trees - Carol Kramer

      (SCP)

      INTRODUCTION

      The Big Tree . . . is Nature’s forest masterpiece, and as far as I know, the greatest of all living things.

      —John Muir

      On July 5, 1931, the famous North Calaveras Grove of giant sequoias was officially dedicated as Calaveras Big Trees State Park. It was a long time in coming and only a partial victory. The nearby and much larger South Grove of giant sequoias was in the hands of a lumber company and would remain so for another 23 years before joining the safe embrace of the California state park system.

      But on that summer day, the hundreds of people gathered were happy to celebrate the preservation of the well-loved grove of Big Trees, among nature’s most magnificent wonders and one of California’s earliest tourist attractions.

      Giant sequoias are the largest living trees on earth. They can achieve 300 feet in height, making them as tall as the dome of the U.S. Capitol building or the Statue of Liberty. Yet it is not their height alone that overwhelms the senses. Many are between 20 and 30 feet in diameter at their base with a circumference approaching 100 feet, and sometimes more.

      Explorers, hunters, and immigrants traversing the rugged terrain of the Sierra Nevada in the 1830s were the first non-native people to spot the mammoth trees, most likely southern groves near Yosemite. Early reports of some trees extremely large, spread by word of mouth or in obscure published reports, were considered fanciful tales.

      By the late 1840s, all eyes were focused on the search for gold and the prospect of overnight wealth. Stories of big trees were of no interest to men seeking the next big strike in the California foothills.

      Augustus T. Dowd was not the first to visit the Calaveras Big Tree Grove, yet he is the one credited with its discovery. A hunter for the Union Water Company, Dowd likely had heard none of these stories when he headed into the woods in the spring of 1852. He was simply doing his job, hunting game to feed the workers building ditches, flumes, and canals near Murphys, a thriving mining camp. He was chasing down a wounded grizzly when the sight of two enormous trees stopped him in his tracks. He could scarcely believe his eyes. Later known as the Sentinels, one still stands today, with the other fallen at its feet.

      Dowd was further amazed when he stepped around these and spotted a tree even more gigantic. The Discovery Tree is estimated to have been about 300 feet tall and 32 feet in diameter at its base. More unbelievable still, he realized he was at the edge of an entire grove of 100 gargantuan trees.

      Because tall tales told around the campfire were typical for an evening’s entertainment among the miners and workers, Dowd’s dinner companions laughed and made fun of his story. Not willing to let it drop, Dowd used a ruse a few days later to lead a small group of men the 15 miles or so back to the grove.

      Upon their return to Murphys, the men shared the story of their adventure. Word of the big tree soon spread throughout the area, with an early report published in the Sonora newspaper in June 1852. Other newspapers soon reported the finding and sent reporters to verify its veracity. Within six months, the big tree story had circled the globe.

      Yet many people in the middle of the 19th century found it hard to believe that trees of such monumental size existed. To the rest of the country in the decade before the Civil War, California was still a world away, the wild and unexplored West. Many simply scoffed at the nonsense of such tales.

      It was not long, however, before some hardy adventurers began trekking to the grove to see the big tree with their own eyes. Among the early visitors were William H. Hanford, president of the Union Water Company, and Joseph M. Lapham of Murphys. Hanford quickly saw an opportunity to make his fortune by stripping the bark from the tree for a worldwide exhibition.

      Lapham conceived of another way to make his fortune. Rather than cart bits of the tree around the country, he sought to bring tourists to the grove to see the big trees for themselves. Lapham staked a claim and built a cottage for visitors in 1853, thus opening one of California’s first and longest running tourist attractions.

      By late 1858, the Big Trees Ranch and Mammoth Tree Grove Hotel were in the hands of James L. Sperry and John Perry, hoteliers from nearby Murphys. Sperry owned the big trees, with a series of partners, for the next 42 years. In the late 1890s, as he was getting on in years, Sperry put the word out he wanted to sell.

      Fearing that the wondrous beauty of the grove would fall to the lumberman’s ax, the first organized effort to preserve the big tree grove was launched. Despite intervention from such luminaries of the day as John Muir, and even passage of a bill in Congress, the sale took place in 1900. Amid much hew and cry, Robert B. Whiteside, a wealthy timber man and mine owner from Duluth, Minnesota, bought both the North and South Groves from Sperry for $100,000.

      Whiteside maintained the groves as tourist attractions until 1926,

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