FOREST MONARCHS

The Giant (a.k.a. Fremont's Tree) by Dave Kuty

The Giant is certainly the monarch of Big Trees Grove. Due to its overall size, the Giant remains the grove’s largest redwood. In the 19^th century the Giant towered above all its neighbors, with estimates of its height varying between 306 to 381 feet.* We are fortunate not only that Joseph Warren Welch first protected this forest monarch when he purchased the grove in 1867, but also for the failure of a scheme which earlier threatened the Giant’s very survival.

 

The threat to the Giant came in 1853. Ironically, that initial threat originated with the discovery of the giant sequoia in the Sierra Nevada the year before. The story goes that the giant sequoia were “discovered” by Augustus T. Dowd in Calaveras county while he was hunting for meat to feed crews working on a water project for the town of Murphys.**

 

One of the men who first accompanied Dowd to the site of his discovery was a gentleman named Lewis who had a money-making scheme. Lewis proposed that the bark of the largest tree in the Calaveras Grove, the Mammoth Tree (since known as the Discovery Tree), should be stripped, and reassembled as an exhibit for profit. 

 

Mammoth Trees of California compiled by J. Otis Williams, 1871.

Lewis’ scheme was thwarted when competing entrepreneurs, the Lapham brothers, filed a pre-emption claim on the tree’s location and their friend Captain William H. Hanford followed through on Lewis’ idea. Sadly, the bark of the Mammoth Tree was stripped away and initially set up for exhibition for a dollar admission fee in "a hall near the corner of Bush and Montgomery Streets" in San Francisco. The tree’s bark was reconstructed using scaffolds and within the bark shell, a man played a piano for the entertainment of paid guests. After two months, the bark of the giant monarch was packed up in 43 crates and shipped off to New York where on May 30, 1854 it was exhibited on Broadway. Though Hanford’s exhibit drew quite a bit of attention, it was a financial flop. Before he could ship the exhibition to Paris, the crates containing the bark burned while sitting in storage.

“Mammoth Tree,” Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, Volume VI,  No. 10, March 11, 1854.

Before Hanford’s financial failure became apparent, Lewis continued to pursue his original plan. Now seeking to find a giant tree to rival his competitor and still upset at the "underhanded proceeding" he suffered, Lewis traveled to Santa Cruz to visit the large coast redwood originally described by John Charles Frémont in 1846. Upon arrival Lewis soon realized that Fremont’s Tree would not satisfy his plans for "… although large, only nineteen feet in diameter and 286 feet in height, while that in Calaveras county was thirty feet in diameter and 302 feet in height, he then turned his steps [elsewhere] … consequently, much discouraged, and after spending about five hundred dollars and several weeks’ time, he eventually abandoned his undertaking."

 

Thankfully, our beloved Giant was not large enough for Lewis’ scheme and we still have it here to enjoy today.

 

* Sometime in the 19^th century a windstorm reportedly broke off the Giant’s top, removing anywhere from an estimated 25 to 75 feet. Today the Giant measures just over 275 feet.

 

** Of course, the Native people of the Sierra Nevada knew of the giant sequoia for many centuries. During the 1840s and early 1850s there were several American pioneers who also claimed to have “discovered” the giant sequoias. As it turned out, most of these reports were ignored until the one provided by Dowd. 

 

Sources: “Santa Cruz Big Trees,” Santa Cruz Evening Sentinel, April 1, 1902; Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California, by J.M. Hutchings, A. Roman and Company, Publishers, New York, 1875; King Sequoia – The Tree That Inspired a Nation, Created Our National Park System, and Changed the Way We Think About Nature, by William C. Tweed, Heyday and Sierra College Press, Berkeley, 2016; “How a Giant Tree’s Death Sparked the Conservation Movement 160 Years Ago,” by Leo Hickman, The Guardian, June 27, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/jun/27/giant-tree-death-conservation-movement.

 

 

THE BIG TREE OUTRAGE

Apparent tree dedication plaque for the Christian Endeavor in Dixie - California State Park collections

The bronze plaque pictured above was likely used as part of a tree dedication to a southern branch of the Christian Endeavor in 1925. The Christian Endeavor Society, formed in 1881 in Maine, was the first national church youth organization.

Here is a description of an earlier Endeavor group visit to Big Trees Grove in 1897:

"Nine-fifty finds us on the narrow gauge, ready for our climb of seven miles to the big trees. Those who have thus passed up the San Lorenzo valley, will not need to be reminded of the deep valley far below, seen through the beautiful foliage of stately redwoods, nor of the hills yet far above us, nor of the perfect blending of hill and valley, of tree and shrub and flower, and permeating all is the pure, clear air of that fair land, where the dreams of other countries are real and tangible. Soon we hear the brakeman’s voice, 'Big Tree Grove.' No second call is needful. Out of the car, down the steps, through a high gate, across a wood yard we go, until halted by the shell of a monstrous tree. Within its cavernous depth fifty people can stand. The dream of our childhood is realized; we have seen the big trees. After ordering dinner for thirty-two, we secure a guide and proceed to make the tour of the grounds. The Monarch attracts our attention, then the Giant, greatest of all the single trees in the grove, being 20 feet in diameter; but space forbids my saying more than to mention the three trees 90 feet around before they divide; the fallen tree lying undecayed for ages; the single giants, the families of colossal brothers and sisters must be omitted."

"Returning to the dining room we found a rapacious landlord had sold our dinner to late comers, and we could feast on nature’s marvels. However, it is not good to eat over-much when travelling. With regret we leave this grand park of nature’s own planting, and once more turn city ward." 

During that 1897 visit, the Endeavors had more problems than a missed lunch as explained in a searing editorial entitled "The Big Tree Outrage" by Santa Cruz Sentinel Editor, Duncan McPherson:

"There is no denying the fact that we had a disgusted lot of Endeavors in this city last Wednesday afternoon, and a humiliated community here, over the outrageous and unprecedented admission charge of twenty-five cents to the Big Trees."

Previously the admission charge to Big Trees Grove was 10 cents. The Editor's indignant response to this sudden price change proved successful, at least for the Endeavor group. The Santa Cruz Evening Sentinel that same day included an article entitled, "The Big Trees - Endeavors Will Be Admitted to the Grove Free of Charge." The article went on to explain that manager "Joseph Ball had nothing to do with the charge of  twenty-five cents for visitors to the Big Trees; that charge was made by S. [Stanly] Welch, one of the owners, who had gate keepers with him from San Francisco to collect the admission fee." The sudden reversal was prompted when railroad management got wind of the controversy and declared that if the "exorbitant" fee were repeated then the railroad would no longer stop at Big Trees Grove. 

Despite the controversy, from that point forward the new 25 cent admission fee remained in place and for the time being, the railroad backed off their threat and continued to stop their trains at Big Trees Grove. 

That was, until 1902, when a new competitor arrived on the scene. With the establishment that May of the neighboring Cowell's Big Trees resort by Milo Hopkins, the railroad now had an alternative to dealing with the difficult Welch brothers. It didn't take the railroad long to make the switch. By July, Big Tree Station was moved from the Welch resort, a couple hundreds feet down to the back of Hopkins' new Club House.

Sources: From New Jersey to California ’97 – A History of the Journey of the New Jersey C.E. Special to the Sixteenth International C.E. Convention, at San Francisco, July 6-12, 1897, compiled by T.E. Davis, Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor (N.J.), published by C. H. Bateman, Unionist-Gazette, Somerville, N.J., 1897; "The Big Trees - Endeavorers Will Be Admitted to the Grove Free of Charge," Evening Santa Cruz Sentinel, July 17, 1897; "The Big Tree Outrage," Santa Cruz Sentinel, July 17, 1897.