CIRCLE OF ACQUAINTANCE

A tour group from Seattle recounted their visit to Big Trees Grove in 1893. 

Author's Personal Collection

"We have just visited the big trees near Santa Cruz. The wagon road was impassable and so Superintendent Fillmore took  us up on a special train ... The big trees have been often referred to and by people who were so much more gifted as liars than I am that I shrink from the task of writing about them. We saw probably a hundred of them, but I will not try to speak of more than four or five.  Each of the larger ones is named – some of them for the great generals, one for the Y.M.C.A. and one for Col. Ingersoll ... There is one big tree around which the entire train loaded of people stood. This gives one an idea of how large it is. There is a solemn grandeur about these trees which makes even excursionists and tourists silent for five or six minutes. I measured one tree and have the string with me. It is sixty feet in circumference, and yet it is not the largest in the redwood family ... Visitors pin their cards on these trees, thus giving an added dignity to the tree by showing its wide circle of acquaintance.”

Sources: “Under the Big Trees,” by Edgar W. Nye, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 30, 1893; “California Trees,” by Edgar W. Nye, The Yellowstone Journal [Miles City, Montana], May 6, 1893.