TALL TALES

A man holding what appears to be a tripod poses at the entrance to the Fremont Tree - Author's Personal Collection

Over the years quite a mythology developed about Big Trees Grove. Many fanciful stories were told by the guides. But some locals also mischievously contributed to the lore as described in this 1871 Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel article. When one set of out-of-town visitors asked about the history of the grand old trees, this is the response they received:

“They belonged to the Mission,” said we, “as early as 1794 - A couple married in that tree - Thirty sailors deserted from a man-o-war and lived in that tree all winter - A son of St. Crispin lived as a recluse, sold his beads and repaired soles in that yawning cavity.”

One of the persistent tales is that of a child being born within the hollow of the Fremont Tree. In 1880 a version of this story appeared in a St. Louis newspaper. 

"There is a fair-sized room in the bottom of this tree called 'Fremont's Cabin,' said to be twenty feet square, it having been accidentally burnt out ... Of course, there is a romance connected with this grim old monarch. The beautiful daughter of Don Castro, a Spanish grandee, ran away with her father's herder and lived here a year and a half, a child being born to them during this exile."

Author's Personal Collection

Perhaps truth is stranger than fiction.

In 1904 a visitor claimed he had an odd encounter while he made his way through the recently logged land adjacent to Big Trees Grove. The visitor described “an insane old French hermit, who lives on charity and spends his life in a little hut, among these black stumps, soliloquizing of the wickedness of the men who would fain rob the Creator of his glory on such grand creation.”

“While I couldn’t understand much of the man’s talk … I could comprehend his energetic scathing eloquence, now pathetic and then vindictive, as, regardless of my presence, he preached to the black tombstones of the once mighty towering redwood trees.”

The visitor described this denizen of the forest as “the very likeness of the bald-headed, bow-legged St. Paul we see in the paintings of the ‘Masters.’”

The identity of the old hermit, if he really did exist, remains a mystery. 

Note:  St. Crispin was the patron saint of shoemakers.

Sources: “Santa Cruz – The Newport of the Pacific,” by J. Whillikens, Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, June 3, 1871; “The Big Trees of California,” by J.W. Greene, The Western Fruit-Grower, August 1904; “Monarchs of the Forest – A Visit to Santa Cruz and to the Big Trees,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 18, 1880.

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