RAPIDLY DISAPPEARING

Author's Personal Collection

In 1877 Laura De Force Gordon described the lumbering region adjacent to Big Trees Grove resort:

"From The Big Trees To Felton is little more than a mile, and the increase of wood and trees of magnificent proportion, evidences that this is a profitable lumber region, and on reaching the town we find proof of the rich yield of that commodity. This is the terminus of the Santa Cruz and Felton Railroad, and also of the grand flume belonging to the railroad company, which brings logs, lumber and shingles from their mills thirteen miles above, in the redwoods. The flume carries 250 square inches of water, and has a capacity of floating 100,000 feet of lumber per day."

"This bewooded town, though rustic and primitive enough in appearance, is the objective point to which considerable business centers. The population is about 200, and the commercial transactions are entirely dependent upon the main business of lumbering and of the numerous lime kilns in the immediate vicinity. There are two variety stores, three hotels, blacksmith shop, shoe shop, etc., and the usual number of saloons, which latter almost everywhere are far more numerous in the aggregate than all the business houses together."

"There are four lumber mills in this vicinity, beside the railroad company's mill at the head of the flume, which manufactures 50 (million) feet of lumber per day."

The rapid pace of logging in the Santa Cruz Mountains during the 19th century makes the survival of Big Trees Grove and the act of preserving it by Joseph Warren Welch in 1867 all that more remarkable.

Source: “Down the Coast,” Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, September 29, 1877.