HARD TO BELIEVE

Santa Cruz County, California - Illustrations by S.H. Willey, 1879

"Grace Greenwood in a letter from California to the New York Times (1872) says: ‘We had a day of pure enjoyment in the woods. We drove for five or six miles up the beautiful canyon of the San Lorenzo, a shadowed, winding mountain road, such as we find nowhere but on this coast, and picnicked among the ‘big trees.’ These are gigantic redwoods, not quite equal to those of Calaveras or Mariposa, but wait a few hundred years and you will see. The largest, named for Fremont, is two hundred and ten feet in height, and eighteen feet in diameter. In the hollow trunk of another he had his quarters for awhile. A man can ride into this on horseback and stable the horse. I was told that a devoted wife once spent here several months with her husband, a lumberman, and kept a couple of boarders. I felt for her. I know what it is to live in a trunk … But I have found that the only safe way in this country is to doubt nothing that you hear."

The Fremont Tree to which Ms. Greenwood refers is the original Fremont's Tree, so named by Isaac Graham back in 1846 during the visit of that famed explorer. Today we know it as simply, the Giant. The tree with the hollow base she does not name is now known as the Fremont Tree. Perhaps back in 1872 when Ms. Greenwood visited, the entrance of the Fremont Tree may have allowed the entrance of a man on horseback. Since the tree's hollow was first created by fire, its bark has slowly grown to heal the scar. Today adult visitors must either bend over or crawl on their knees to enter the hollow. Perhaps in another 50 to 100 years, the entrance of the Fremont Tree will seal up forever. 

Source: “Among the Big Trees,” The Charlotte Democrat, (Charlotte, North Carolina), August 6, 1872, 4:2