BIG TREES BOOSTERISM

Lady standing along the San Lorenzo River near the swinging bridge entrance to Big Trees Grove, circa 1900 - Courtesy of Ross Eric Gibson

"Perhaps the strongest reason for the unlimited popularity of the place [Santa Cruz] as a homesite and a resort, lies in the fact that easily accessible to the beach with its improvements and pleasures are the attractions of the mountains. The giant redwoods with their massive boughs outstretched and surrounded on all sides by more ever green trees are easily seen from the beach as they rise majestically from the wooded heights back of the city. Of romantic and absorbing interest is the drive from the city to the world-famous grove of Big Trees, five miles north. The road follows the cañon of the San Lorenzo the entire distance, leading one through numberless vistas of redwood, pine, manzanita and madroño, growing from brilliant green banks of moss and fern, past rushing streams and springs, around corners from which can be seen, hundreds of feet below, the seething river as it turns sharply in its course, and finally through a ford in the river to the grove itself. There one stands and looks, absorbed and awe-struck, at these monuments, the sequoia sempervirens in all their impressive greatness. 'The Giant' attracts particular attention, being three hundred and six feet high, and over twenty-one feet in diameter. All of the larger trees are named for great Americans – Theodore Roosevelt, General Sherman, General Grant and General Fremont. In the hollow of one, General Fremont is supposed to have once camped."

"This grove can be reached from Santa Cruz every day in the year by train as well as by carriage."

Source: “At Santa Cruz by the Sea,” by H.R. Judah Jr. (Secretary Santa Cruz Board of Trade), Sunset Magazine, June 1907.