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Genl. Grant National Park, California. The World's Largest Tree.
California Historical Society
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From Redwood National Park
in the north to Joshua Tree in the south, California’s parks are as varied and
diverse as the population of the Golden State itself. The oldest, Yosemite, was
established in 1890; the youngest, Pinnacles, graduated from monument to park
just three years ago, on January 10, 2013. Each California park has its own
kind of beauty and all are a reflection of the society into which they were
born—a reflection of us. With this offering in the “Mirror of Us” series, the
California Historical Society celebrates Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks.
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Rising Up from the Ground, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks
Courtesy National Park Service; photograph by Stephen Leonardi
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If the history
of California’s national parks was to be written as a musical drama—à la the
recent Broadway sensation Hamilton—the
hands-down stars of the show would be Sequoia & Kings Canyon National
Parks.
Where else
does one find the largest living thing on earth today, a giant Sequoia formerly
known as Karl Marx; the highest mountain in the continental United States; and
places in each park named for opposing figures in the Civil War?
This being
California, the story also features a Utopian community led by a fiery labor
leader, scenic valleys coveted as dam sites, and—like Alexander Hamilton
himself—an immigrant to the
United States,
who, through his advocacy for the Sierra Nevada, set the bar for wilderness
preservation in California.
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John Muir
Courtesy Library of Congress
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Wandering
south from Yosemite in 1876, John Muir, a Scottish immigrant who came to
California in 1868, encountered Hale Tharp, a keeper of cattle in the area of
the Kaweah River watershed. Tharp introduced Muir to the mighty Sequoia groves
Muir would later call the Giant Forest, “a magnificent growth of giants grouped
in pure temple groves.” Logging of the sequoias had been taking place since the
1860s, which troubled San Joaquin valley farmers concerned about watersheds and
George W. Stewart, editor and publisher of the Visalia Delta, among others. With the help
of Stewart’s editorials advocating preservation of the forests, a bill was
introduced in Congress in 1881 to preserve a vast area of the southern Sierra.
Like many that would follow, however, these early efforts failed.
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Burnette Haskell
California Historical Society
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Meanwhile, in
1885, fifty members of the Cooperative Land and Colonization Association a
utopian community hoping to settle in the area of the Giant Trees and begin
logging operations, filed claims for land ownership there. The group—later
known as the Kaweah Cooperative Commonwealth Association, or Kaweah Colony—was
led by Burnette Haskell, a native of Sierra County who, after careers as a
Republican party activist, editor, and lawyer, found like minds in the
progressive trade labor movement in San Francisco. Haskell came to see
socialism as a means of transforming society and of giving “each man the full
product of his labor and his fair share of earthly benefits.” Haskell had high
hopes his utopian dreams could be borne out in the areas along the Kaweah River
east of Visalia.
Once settled,
and while awaiting final ownership rights, the colonists named the largest tree
in the forest—indeed the largest currently living tree on earth, called today
the General Sherman tree—for their idol, Karl Marx.
Over time, the
Kaweah Colony grew to include roughly two hundred members who lived in tents on
the land and built an 18-mile wagon road in the direction of the Giant Forest.
At the same time, Visalia Delta editor George Stewart, with the support
of a number of other interests, continued to bring increasing attention to
threats to the giant sequoias through various governmental land acts and by
logging concerns such as the Kaweah colonists.
On September
24, 1890 Stewart’s efforts finally met with success, and Sequoia National Park
was created, becoming the second national park after Yellowstone. One week
later, on October 1, 1890, the federal government created the contiguous
General Grant National Park, thus protecting another giant sequoia grove. The
same act also created Yosemite National Park. Additionally, the legislation
tripled the original size of Sequoia National Park, preserving hundreds more
square miles of Sierra wild land.
After years of
work to purchase the land, the Kaweah Colony was forced to abandon their
operations inside the park boundaries. To add insult to injury, the colony’s
symbolic sequoia was renamed for famed Civil War General William Tecumseh
Sherman (a man known, ironically, for committing some environmental destruction
of his own during his famous “march to the sea” at the end of the Civil War).
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Mt. Whitney from Whitney Portal, Owens Valley, California
Courtesy Alison Moore
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The acreage
added to Sequoia National Park also brought Mt. Whitney into the park’s fold.
Named for state geologist Josiah Whitney, the peak is the highest in the United
States outside of Alaska. Also ironically, Whitney argued that glaciers had played
no role in the formation of the Sierra range. His opposite in the controversy,
and winner of this geological bet, was none other than John Muir.
Burnette
Haskell, whose socialist dreams died with the creation of Sequoia National Park
returned to San Francisco in 1892 and died, destitute, in 1907.
The effort to
preserve greater areas of the southern Sierra continued, buoyed by the support
of the Sierra Club and the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916.
Once again it had been John Muir who first brought national attention to a
Sierra landscape. Visiting Kings Canyon in 1873 Muir later wrote, “In the vast
Sierra wilderness, far to the southward of . . . Yosemite Valley, there is yet
a grander valley of the same kind . . . situated on the south fork of the Kings
River.”
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Bubbs Creek, Kings River Canyon
California Historical Society
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Many years
later, opposition to additional National Park lands in this area came from
farming, mining, and hydroelectric interests, including the Los Angeles Bureau of
Power and Light, which sought to build Hetch Hetchy-type dams in the canyons of
the Kings River watershed, among others.
During the
1920s and 30s environmental activists continued efforts to add the Kings Canyon
region north of Sequoia into the national park system, and in 1935 Secretary of
the Interior Harold Ickes proposed a bill to establish Kings Canyon National
Park. It would take another five years, however, for negotiators for the
various interests to reach a settlement. On March 4, 1940 President Franklin D.
Roosevelt signed the bill establishing Kings Canyon. General Grant Park, which
included an eponymously named Sequoia tree, was then incorporated into this
newest national park and today the two parks are administered as one.
Following its park
designation, battles over the Kings Canyon area continued for a number of years.
Efforts to create each of California’s national parks—indeed all of our
national parks—involve conflicting interests and complex political and social
events, many of which are unknown to the public at large.
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Moro Rock, Sequoia National Park
California Historical Society; photo by Lindley Eddy Studios
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Today people
flock to Sequoia & Kings Canyon to gaze in awe at the mighty General
Sherman and Grant trees and to enjoy the awesome beauty of the Yosemite-like
Kings Canyon, Moro Rock, and the high country. Much of the area of these parks
is accessible—by design—only to backpackers.
Neither
Ulysses S. Grant or William T. Sherman—both figures of great political and
social complexity themselves—lived to see the creation of the parks or trees that
bear their names. General Sherman, though, did speak with prescience when he
wrote: “Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was
drunk, and now we stand by each other.”
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(Left) General Grant Sequoia, Kings Canyon National Park
Courtesy www.theguardian.com; photo Mark Ralston
(Right) General Sherman Tree, Sequoia National Park
Courtesy www.livescience.com; photo Linda & Dr. Dick Buscher
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Alison Moore
Strategic
Initiatives Liaison
Sources
Mary Boykin
Chesnut, A Diary from Dixie (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980)
Lary M.
Dilsaver, “Conservation Conflict and the Founding of Kings Canyon National
Park,” California History LXIX (Summer 1990)
Lary M.
Dilsaver and Douglas H. Strong, “Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks: One
Hundred Yeaers of Preservation and Resource Management,” California History
LXIX (Summer 1990)
James D. Hart,
A Companion to California (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1987)
“Joseph Le
Conte”; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_LeConte
Jay O’Connell,
Co-Operative Dreams: A History of the Kaweah Colony (Van Nuys, CA: Raven
River Press, 1999)
“Sequoia
National Park turns 125 years old today,” Fresno Bee (Sept. 24, 2014);
“Three Rivers,
California - Gateway to Sequoia National Park!”;
William Tweed,
Kaweah Remembered: The Story of the Kaweah Colony and the Founding of
Sequoia National Park (Three Rivers, CA: Sequoia Natural History
Association, 1986)
U.S. Department
of the Interior/National Park Service, “Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Official Map
and Guide”; https://www.nps.gov/seki/planyourvisit/upload/Text_Side_SEKI12139F01_updated.pdf; https://www.nps.gov/seki/planyourvisit/upload/sekiMap.pdf
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Read
about other parks in A Mirror of Us: CHS
Celebrates the National Park Service Centennial:
Death Valley National
Park; http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/02/a-mirror-of-uschalliss-gore.html
Joshua Tree National Park;
http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/03/a-mirror-of-us-chs-celebrates-national.html
Pinnacles National
Park, http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-mirror-of-us-chs-celebrates-national.html
Lassen Volcanic
National Park, http://californiahistoricalsociety.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-mirror-of-us-chs-celebrates-nps-and.html
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NPS Centennial Events at
Lassen Volcanic National Park
Learn more about the NPS Centennial
Initiative
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